In some ways this is yet another too typical police-involved shooting (not that police-involved shootings are typical — these kind of calls get handled in the thousands “without incident”). But it’s all here: a man with a gun, mentally disturbed, confronted by police. And not for the first time. The man is black, unlike the…
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So I’ve done a little work using the data from FatalEncounters.org on people shot and killed by police. Fatal Encounters is like the Washington Post database, but for adults. I combined/merged this with a city or police department’s population, number of cops, average number of murders in the jurisdiction (over 4 or 3 years), median…
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In some ways this is a very typical police-involved shooting, not that police-involved shootings are are typical. But it’s all here: a man with a gun, probably mentally disturbed, confronted by police. And not for the first time. The man is white. You hear cops saying, “We can help you.” You also hear the de…
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My op-ed in the Daily News: Police officer Lesly Lafontant emerged form a coma yesterday after a bystander, Kwesi Ashun, somehow deemed it appropriate to beat Lafontant with a metal chair while Lafontant was trying to arrest Dewayne Hawkes, wanted on a warrant, after Hawkes had urinated on the floor on a nail salon. Ashun…
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This was not a good shooting. And cringe-worthy from an officer’s perspective. From the suspect’s perspective, well, he’s dead. I’m quoted in this article. The background is the car popped up on a stolen car list (I think from an automated license plate reader). The officer is told to investigate. The car is in a…
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Inspired by some twitter threads — mostly this onewith Gary Cordner and this onewith Andrew Wheeler — I thought I’d look more at the cops getting killed as a factor in cops killing people. I like presenting this stage of research. In part because coming up with ideas and hypotheses and basic number crunching is…
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Welcome to 2019! I’ve compiled the past four years of Washington Post data on those shot and killed by police. Four years gives us a reasonable amount of data. The first thing that jumps out is that the number of people killed by police has remained strikingly constant each and every year for which we…
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Former Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder in the shooting of Laquan McDonald. This isn’t surprising. I think Van Dyke was found guilty because, get this, he was. I wrote this in 2015: The video is out. Finally. After long attempts to sweep it under the rugfailed. … It’s a…
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Forbes came out with a list of the 10 most conservative and liberal cities in America. Top ten conservative, in rank order: Mesa Oklahoma City Virginia beach colorado springs Jacksonville Arlington, TX Anaheim Omaha Tulsa Aurora Top ten liberal, in rank order: San Fran DC Seattle Oakland Boston Minneapolis Detroit NYC Buffalo Baltimore I’m not…
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So somehow perhaps I thought doing a podcast would be less time consuming or easier than writing a blog post? No. Hell, no. Do you know what editing entails? Even light audio editing? But it’s different. Kind of fun. What the hell. I hope it’s educational (and hopefully also entertaining). Anyway, here’s Nick Selby and…
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