the crime report

Police officers and paramedics sometimes must use dashboard computers, sophisticated radios, navigation systems, and cellphones at high speeds, while weaving through traffic, sirens blaring, says the New York Times. The drivers say the technology is a huge boon for their jobs, saving valuable seconds and providing instant access to essential information but it presents a clear risk and the potential to take a life while they are trying to save one. (more…)

Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan need heightened survival instincts to avoid bomb attacks. The Associated Press says that doesn’t always translate when soldiers return home to their jobs as law enforcement officers. A survey by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance found officers who feel compelled to use tactics they employed in war zones and feel less patient toward the public they serve. (more…)

When Tiger Wood crashed into a fire hydrant and his neighbor’s tree after Thanksgiving, he  made hundreds of people angry at the Florida Highway Patrol, reports the Orlando Sentinel. A  Sentinel review of more than 400 e-mails to the patrol found that people flooded the agency with concerns or complaints, accusing it of doing shoddy work and treating Woods more like a celebrity than a suspect. People were upset that day after day, Woods’ wife, agent, or lawyer turned away troopers who wanted to question the golfer and to gather evidence about whether Woods was driving while drunk or under the influence of drugs. (more…)

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An art historian and criminologist argues that efforts to battle sophisticated art-theft rings are stymied by the lack of academic research and by public misconceptions about the trade in stolen art.

Once a gentleman-thief’s activity, art thefts now earn hundreds of millions of dollars for organized crime. Over the past 50 years, international syndicates have not only been responsible for most art thefts and forgeries, but have used the profits to fund activities such as the drug and arms trades, and terrorism.

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How did New York State manage to cut its prison population while reducing crime? Send many fewer drug offenders to prison and have many more minor offenders serving shorter sentences, experts told a “smart justice” symposium yesterday near Washington, D.C. The session was sponsored by the CNA consulting firm in Alexandria, Va., which is working with the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance on a “smart policing” initiative. (more…)

All the good news about crime rates dropping since 1994 “is not quite as good as it seems,” says John J. DiIulio Jr. of the University of Pennsylvania, writing in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. DiIulio says that “four sets of facts mug the conventional post-1994 crime-drop narrative.” He says we don’t know why crime is down or how to keep it on the run, the federal government systematically undercounts crime, and that “far too many young Americans are still being lost to what Barack Obama has eloquently called ‘an epidemic of violence that’s sickening the soul of this nation.’ ” (more…)

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca released 343 nonviolent offenders from the county jail system this week, well before they had served their full sentences, says the Christian Science Monitor. The sheriff says budget cuts have forced changes to a longtime policy requiring inmates to serve at least 80 percent of their time before release. Now, those jailed for crimes such as check kiting, petty theft, and drunk driving will serve just 50 percent of their sentences. (more…)