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Radley Balko Profile picture
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29 Dec 20, 5 tweets, 1 min read
In the city’s nearly 200 year history, Little Rock’s city council (which is called a board of directors) has never held a no-confidence vote on the city’s police chief. Today, driven by the police union, it will hold one for the black, reformist chief Keith Humphrey.
The head of the police union just stressed the importance of accountability and law enforcement officer being held to the highest standard. So. Ok.
Little Rock blogger Russ Racop just told black opponents of the no-confidence resolution to “Shut the fuck up.” Then told Mayor Frank Scott: “Fuck you, too.”
A city director who supports the no-confidence vote in the chief just referred to the “George Foreman protests” over the summer.
Huh. A city director (re: city councilperson) who says he wants the chief removed also says he’ll vote against the resolution for reasons related to personnel and city liability. So the resolution probably no longer has the votes, and the sponsor has just asked to withdraw it.

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More from @radleybalko

Radley Balko Profile picture
2 Dec 20
There are many possible reasons violent crime has spiked this year. Record unemployment. Social upheaval from a pandemic. Mistrust of police. Mistrust of government.

The least likely explanation: defunding the police. Because it hasn’t really happened.
A few cities did immediately abolish some specialty units. But among the dozen or so jurisdictions that cut police funding, most cut only a small percentage, and from what I’ve seen, none of the cuts took effect until FY 2021, which began 10/1. The crime surge began much earlier.
Ah, opponents of police reform say. But the protests still could have spurred the surge in violence, either by encouraging anarchy and mayhem, or by angering police and triggering a de-policing Ferguson Effect.”

So let’s look at crime this year in specific cities:
Read 13 tweets
Radley Balko Profile picture
10 Nov 20
So shortly after the 2016 election, I pointed out how odd it was that the Reason homepage was dominated by stories either mocking and ridiculing the left for being fearful of what was to come, or articles about how Trump might actually be good for libertarians.
Now, in 2020, we have one party so upset about the election, they’re openly fomenting a crisis of democracy. Here’s the Reason homepage today. There’s one article about all of that. There’s a hell of a lot more about the threat posed by Joe Biden. And more riciduling the left. Image
I’m picking on Reason. And I’ll add that there are people there who have sufficiently grasped the threat the last four years, despite the general editorial direction of the magazine. But it really underscores the disappointment I’ve had with my fellow libertarians in general ...
Read 13 tweets
Radley Balko Profile picture
9 Nov 20
A few links on the nonsense claim that Benford’s Law proves “irregularities” in the Biden vote tallies.

First, it’s far from clear that Benford’s Law is useful for detecting election fraud:

cambridge.org/core/journals/…
Second, even if it were, district level tallies are likely too fragmented for the law to apply. When you aggregate the data into larger geographical groupings, it’s fine:

alpha-xone.medium.com/do-bidens-vote…
Third, the posts you’ve probably seen on this have manipulated the data.

There’s also lots more discussion of the first two points at the link.

skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4978…
Read 4 tweets
Radley Balko Profile picture
4 Oct 20
These accounts of utter recklessness among Trump’s inner circle are jaw dropping.

But one thing about them I find puzzling: Trump is a notorious germaphobe. He’s also a coward. And his conversations with Woodward make clear that he knew COVID was both dangerous and airborne.
So I’ve just assumed all along that as he publicly played down the virus for political reasons, he was taking every precaution to protect himself. Like those rallies where everyone around him was required to mask up, but no one else was.

This of course would be consistent...
... with Trump’s general habit of going through life thinking he plays by a different set of rules.

So what happened? The best explanation I can come up with is some combination of him thinking his “great genes” made him impervious to COVID, and that he started to believe his...
Read 5 tweets
Radley Balko Profile picture
25 Sep 20
When the Hudson v. Michigan decision came down, many of us predicted it would basically unleash cops to render the knock & announce requirement all but meaningless. That's exactly what happened. See Louisville:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
And South Carolina:

washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch…
And Little Rock:

washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/…
Read 11 tweets
Radley Balko Profile picture
24 Sep 20
So a few years ago, @ScottGreenfield, @Volokh, @Popehat and others wrote about a case involving Texas magistrate named Dwight Goains.

A woman said DEA agents had beaten her while raiding her sister's store. A friend posted photos and an account on Facebook.

Goains was ...
... in charge of setting the store owner's bail. He granted it, but with crazy conditions: The sister had to get the guy who posted the story on FB to take it all down. She also had to make a public apology in two newspapers, admit the raid was ...

blog.simplejustice.us/2014/05/23/gag…
... legitimate, and state that her sister is the one who assaulted the DEA agents.

So as it turns out, Goains was a defense attorney before he was a magistrate. He represented defendants in capital cases. The problem: He wasn't very good at that, either.

Ready for the kicker?
Read 4 tweets

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