Any advice about what to do if you see somebody being violently attacked in a hate crime that does not include the words"call the police" -- actively argues against it, in fact -- is misguided, dangerous, and encourages vigilante street justice. nycagainsthate.org/wekeepussafe
Get help from someone else? Someone else?! Who? My cousin Vinnie? Some dude I heard who carries a gun "for protection"? My mom? Who is this mythical untrained community member who will solve everything?
Delegating somebody to call the police is perfectly fine, though.
"Don't call police" when you see a crime in progress is like the public safety version of anti-vaxxer propaganda.
Demands, indeed!
#1 is "don't call the police."
#2 is "give us money."
Funny that.
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Manahttan DA Alvin Bragg, the elected prosecutor, delivers as promised. The promise: "These policy changes ... will, in and of themselves, make us safer." This is what the people voted for, whether they knew it or not. Here are Bragg's Day One Policies and Procedures. 1/
Principles: "Reserving incarceration for matters involving significant harm will make us safer."
"Invest in diversion [not prosecution] and alternatives to incarceration."
"Actively support those reentering" 2/
Decriminalization/non prosecution for marijuana, turnstile jumping, trespass, driving without a license, traffic violation, resisting arrest, interfering with an arrest (unless "significantly physically"), prostitution, all desk appearance tickets (non assault crimes) 3/
Sure, maybe he was just lucky. But maybe what he did actually worked. Let's learn from success. dallasnews.com/news/commentar…
"García told me the department is every bit as proud of another statistic: “You haven’t seen a spike in arrests.” In fact, arrests have gone down by almost 5%.
“That tells us we are targeting the right individuals — not all individuals,” García said."
Using data to identify historically violent hot spots, García and his command staff deployed officers into specific blocks throughout the city to maintain a visible presence. Every so often, the patrols shift to other crime-ridden grids.
At the start of deBlasio's term I'd say perhaps 1 in 10 subway rides had something that would happen which would demand my attention (meaning I can't read or have a normal conversation or keep headphones on). Now it's more like 1 in 2. I just want an uneventful commute.
There were not fewer homeless or mentally ill people on the streets when deBlasio became mayor. In fact, if you you believe him, there were more. They simply don't have to be on the city's trains. Just like they're not on the suburban people's trains.
Starting w/ a bunch of caveats. A) This is crude data analysis. B) It it based on incomplete Uniform Crime Report data dependent on reliable data reported (not a given). C) I may have simply done this wrong. It's 2AM. (1/12)
D) This is important: arrests are NOT good for their own sake, but most policing is discretionary. And arrests can be a decent proxy for proactive policing. So there's something important going on here, based on last year's UCR Arrest data, limitations and all. 2/
Arrests in the US (again with the very important caveats, above) dropped 1% in 2018, 10% in 2019, and then 25%(!) in 2020. That's shocking. As much as 29% increase in murder. If this is good data, this is very consistent with a "Ferguson" like "George Floyd protest" effect. 3/
I'm trying to understand this story, and I'm having a tough time. Presumable somebody uses this does, but I've never used the National Vital Statistics System for police info. I actually didn't even know the name. nytimes.com/2021/09/30/us/…
It's certainly not an official count of police related deaths in my world. So I'm reading this going, researchers discover a bunch of police-related data is bad? Good (to discover it's bad). Make it better. But I wouldn't have thought it was a count, much less an undercount.
It was bigger news when I learned how much the UCR was undercounting deaths at the hands of police, because I was using UCR and though I knew the data wasn't good, I didn't want to believe how bad it was. It was the best we had at the time.
I'm starting to think cops in some jurisdictions should simply stop responding to criminals with guns. I'm not joking or making a rhetorical point. The rules of use of force engagement need to be clarified.
Criminals with guns can shoot you.
Not stop responding. But do not go near or engaged. Find cover. Issue verbal commands. Do not pursue.