If only we cared about homicide victims as much as we did about traffic fatalities, we might see an article in the paper about the biggest homicide spike in 50 years. Instead, there is a Times article about distracted driving: “Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps.” The rise in traffic deaths…
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Over at the Cato Institute, Steven Teles wrote a piece about conservatives and how we can de-incarcerate. A group of people, myself included, are writing response pieces. Here is mine: A few years back, for a brief while, it really did seem as if conservative Republicans were interested in reducing the number of prisoners in…
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Once again an excellent Facebook post from my friend. The words are his. The idea he got from a San Fransico Police Officer: Safety pins have become a symbol of solidarity with minority groups who feel threatened by events in this country. People are posting selfies with their pins, letting those minority groups know they…
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Somehow, between the Cubs winning the World Series, the presidential election, friends and family visiting, and, you know, my job, I missed this. The Brennan Center, which has been repeatedly telling us not to worry about rising homicide, predicts that this year’s homicide increase will be even bigger than last year’s increase (last year’s was…
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The funeral for Sergeant Tuozzolo just happened. My friend Ari Maas posted this on facebook after his death: For the second time this week, the law enforcement community suffered a great loss. NYPD Sgt. Paul Tuozzolo was shot in the head while attempting to arrest a very bad man. That bad man had 17 prior…
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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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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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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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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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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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