I’m not certain what this actually means, but it seems to be working: In a wide-ranging interview this week, [Philadelphia] Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said he hoped that the trend reflected the department’s shake-up in training and tactics, which range from adopting a “statement on the sanctity of human life” to emphasizing “reality-based” weapons…
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Let me start by saying we’ll never know for certain what happened when Officer Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown. [Update: but we not do have a much better idea based on a DOJ report.] No. Seriously. Think about it. You don’t know what happened. I don’t know what happened. So whatever you think, whatever…
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Imagine, say, you get a call for an armed person waving a gun in a park. Here’s what you don’t do: drive right up to that person on muddy slippery ground to put your partner in an unprotected and defenseless position a few feet from the suspect. I feel sad for the officer involved. He…
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This happened back in March, so it’s not news. But still, the number of similarities between this case and the killing of Michael Brown are interesting, especially if you are one of those who think that “unarmed” suspects cannot ever really threaten police officers to the point where lethal force might be necessary. Here’s gist:…
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Trying to set the record straight is a bit like pissing into the wind. The substantively wrong pro-publica story has now been repeated by every news source I can find. I suspect that over time the idea that from 2010-2012, blacks males 15-19 years-old were 21 times more likely than non-hispanic-whites males to be killed…
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I’m going to wait till more is known before saying more. But here is yet another — I won’t say “common” but I will say “too common” — shootings that perhaps should but won’t become big national news. There probably won’t be protests. There won’t be unrest. But did police really break into the house…
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[Update: Cut to the chase. You might just want to read my summary post.] Related to the “not 21 times” previous post, I received a tweet from one of the authors: “Differences in our methodologies: you count Hispanic homicides as white… deflate the results.” So back to running stats for me. But there’s a problem…
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[Update: Cut to the chase. You might just want to read my summary post.] One of my liberal de Blasio-loving not-so-fond-of-cops friend send me an email with the subject “you gotta check yo facts” and a link to ProPublica: “Young black males in recent years were at a far greater risk of being shot dead…
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I asked Jim, my Dominican-born Austin-raised San Francisco-living white friend, why he thought so many Californian cities were high on my PIHN list. He thought for a very few short seconds and answered, “because hispanics aren’t violent but police think they are.” I love over-generalizations and stereotypes that could very well be true. So I…
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The city of Riverside, California appears to be, by far, the city in which police are most likely to commit justifiable homicide. I listed a rough rank order of cities in my previous post. Riverside is almost 50 percent higher than the next highest cities, St. Louis and Baltimore. (Even more so if one takes…
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