Author: Moskos

Tamir Rice shooting “reasonable”

From when it happened I said the police shooting of Tamir Rice — though tactically shameful and morally tragic — was “reasonable.” That didn’t make me too many friends outside the police world. But “reasonableness” is judged from the perspective of a reasonable police officer. And now outside two reports have come to a similar…
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“We can’t walk away.”

Baltimore’s Acting Commissioner Kevin Davis speaks about this video where officers fight with a suspect: The community doesn’t expect police officers to walk by that type of thing. … I’ve watched the video 5 or 6 times and think the officers showed remarkable restraint. … This is where the art form of policing is really…
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2015 NYPD firearms discharge report

From the NYPD firearms discharge report for 2014: In adversarial conflict, 58 NYPD officers fired 201 rounds in 35 incidents. In total, 104 NYPD officers fired 282 rounds shot in 79 incidents. 18 incidents involving animal attack. There were 4 suicides. In adversarial conflict: 41% of officers fired one round. No officer had to reload.…
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The Freddie Gray investigation

Haven’t read this yet, but looks interesting. By Justin George in the Baltimore Sun: In the days following Freddie Gray’s death, The Baltimore Sun had exclusive access to police investigators as they gathered evidence, debated legal issues and weathered public pressure.

Data on police-involved killings of unarmed civilians

The creators of StreetCredrecently brought their work to my attention. They like data. So do I. They’re trying to flesh out the situations when police kill an unarmed person. Unarmed does not automatically mean a person isn’t a threat. It’s interesting that the majority of these cases are not officer initiated but involve police response…
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Murder in Baltimore Post Riot

Here’s the latest in terms of Baltimore homicides, pre and post riot. The downward slope is a slight silver lining in a homicide rate the doubled overnight.

Believe the hype: Murder is going up

A few months ago I warned people not to believe the hype (at least in NYC). But all signs do now indicate the murders are up. The numbers below come from “The Brainroom” at Fox News. They compiled publically released data from city police departments. There are some cities where murder isn’t up, of course,…
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Butt dials 30% of mobile calls to 911 in S.F.

The BBC: When the researchers [in San Francisco] sat by the call handlers and noted down what was happening – they found 30% of calls coming in from mobiles were accidental butt-dials, also known as pocket-dials. As well as being time-consuming taking the call, the impact of butt-dials doesn’t stop there. Each one requires further…
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It’s more dangerous to be black than to be a cop

I heard this somewhere recently and it made me go, really? So I thought I would double check. Indeed, one is more at risk to be murdered as a black person in America than as a police officer. For 2013 and 2014 I get an average of about 80 officers killed on duty per year…
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“And they made a chart with no Y-axis!”

I’m a stickler for the honest presentation of data. Too many people, it seems me, just don’t care. I mean, it is easier to just make numbers up and share a picture on facebook if it supports your ideological position. When it comes to data analysis, I didn’t expect to find an ally in late-night…
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