Author: Moskos

RIP NYPD Sgt Paul Tuozzolo

NYPD Sergeant Tuozzolo was killed in the Bronx after confronting a domestic break-in suspectwith a long history of criminal trouble: Rosales’ 50-year-old mother-in-law had called 911 when the man, who had 17 prior arrests in Suffolk County, forced his way into the apartment she shared with his estranged 29-year old wife and their 3-year-old son,…
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Press release for journalists

From John Jay’s Crime Report: ATTENTION JOURNALISTS: The John Jay Center on Media, Crime and Justice, publisher of The Crime Report, is offering special reporting fellowships to attend the 12th annual Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America in New York City on February 16-17, 2017. All U.S.-based media working on print, online and…
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Don’t sh*t where you live

The Villiage Voice reportson how, after much effort, a guy got data on where NYPD officers live (the zip codes). There’s nothing too surprising here, but it is worth noting 1) the NYPD was reluctant to give it up, and 2) NYPD officers are forbidden to work in the precinct in which they live. This…
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“Number Two” at the range

Two days ago in the Bronx, an NYPD sergeant shot and killed Deborah Danner, a 66-year-old with schizophrenia armed with a baseball bat. Deborah Danner’s death is a tragedy. It is a failure of the system. But almost immediately, the officer who shot was stripped of his badge and gun and denounced by the mayor…
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“Chicago cop murders unarmed man after fender bender”

That’s the headline that wasn’t. Instead we have this headline: “Officer Didn’t Shoot Attacker Because She Feared Backlash.” A 43-year-old female 17-year-veteran suffered this: The man had punched her and “repeatedly smashed her face into the pavement” until she was knocked out, police said. She suffered head trauma and multiple cuts to her face and…
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“Why’d you have to shoot that criminal with a gun?”

So much of the body-cam debate, releasing or not releasing videos, comes down not to police behavior but to this: I know, as a lifelong police officer, that I see people on the worst day of their lives. People shouldn’t feel like when the police come to your house that what’s happened to you is…
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Dejuan Yourse Arrest

For the life of me, I can’t figure what Yourse is going to be charged with. Even with the game rigged in cops’ favor, I don’t see a crime. Yourse is under arrest after 9:10 when the officer doesn’t take kindly to Yourse invited his friends over. I can understand why the officer doesn’t want…
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When to call (and not call) 911

Interesting study by some prominent (and good) sociologists about the drop-off in 911 calls after there was publicity about a man severely beaten by off-duty Milwaukee cops in 2004. Calls dropped by about 17 percent for about a year. But that’s just a segue to this, which comes from a community listserve in Durham, NC.…
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Spin This: The biggest murder increase in 45 years

Murder is up. Who knew? (I’ve been saying so since last October.) Eventually, we’re all going to have to accept this (not in a moral sense but in a statistical sense). The accepted liberal reaction to this increase seems to be “it’s not a big deal” and “Don’t freak out.” Let’s not get “hysterical.” Let’s…
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2015 UCR is out

The 2015 UCRis finally out. This means we have real numbers on last year. And the numbers are not good. Homicide is up 10.8 percent. That’s biggest increase in 45 years. Don’t downplay it. I’ll talk about that in my next post, but first the boring roundup: Firearms were used in 71.5 percent, which is…
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