Homicide is up at a record setting two-year pace. But you wouldn’t know it from yet another press release by the Brennan Center. I think they time these to provide a “crime is not a problem” narrative to journalists, quite a few of whom are about to write year-end stories with the headline: “Oh shit,…
Read more
Ah, the ol’ Tale of Two Cities trope. But the diverging homicidal paths of Chicago and New York City are striking. The New York Post has a surprisingly good (especially for the NY Post) article on homicide in Chicago and NYC. These are raw numbers and not a rate. Chicago is roughly one-third the size…
Read more
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…
Read more
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…
Read more
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…
Read more
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…
Read more
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…
Read more
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,…
Read more
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…
Read more
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…
Read more