the crime report

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President

American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada

Nevada

siegel@unr.edu

Race, age, and gender are big factors in who is stopped by police in Toronto, reports the Toronto Star. Looking at blacks and whites of all ages, blacks are three times more likely to be stopped. Black males aged 15-24 are stopped and documented 2.5 times more than white males the same age. In each of the city’s 74 police patrol zones, blacks were documented at significantly higher rates than their overall census population by zone, and that in many zones, the same holds true for “brown” people — mainly people of South Asian, Arab and West Asian backgrounds. (more…)

“The Role of Research in Addressing Racial and Gender Bias in Policing:  A Social Psychological Approach.”

A Talk by Dr. Phillip Goff, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Los Angeles

John Jay College

899 10th Avenue NYC

Room 630T

RSVP to
Delores Jones-Brown djbrown@jjay.cuny.edu
Daryl Wout dwout@jjay.cuny.edu.

A growing body of research and training in nearly a dozen law enforcement agencies across the country is aimed at eliminating persistent racial profiling by police, USA Today reports. Researchers are examining virtually all facets of police behavior, from officers’ interactions with new immigrants to car stops and the use of lethal force. Police officials are inviting the increased scrutiny, representing a generational change in law enforcement. (more…)

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It’s been seven years since Congress tied purse strings to the issue of disproportionate contact between non-white youths and the criminal justice system, but according to the newest bulletin on the subject, disparities are still stark. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Deliquency Prevention reports that African-American youth are still arrested at twice the rate of white youth, while white youth are seven times more likely to live in a neighborhood with an alternative detention program.

Click here to read the full report. Click here to read the accompanying manual.

Use The Crime Report for more information on Race and Sentencing, Juvenile Justice and Race and Gender in Prison.

The arrest by a white police officer of a black Baltimore Ravens player at a downtown restaurant last weekend is being called by some a case of racial profiling comparable to the Cambridge, Ma., arrest of black scholar Henry Louis Gates in his own home, says Baltimore Sun crime blogger Peter Hermann. After getting a report of a patron’s possibly possessing a gun, Sgt. Joseph Donato approached player Tony Fein partly because it seemed unusual for Fein to be wearing a hooded sweat shirt on a hot day.

The incident led to a confrontation and an arrest charging the player with pushing the police officer. Fein, it turns out, was armed only with a cell phone. Hermann says the sergeant had probable cause to stop and frisk Fein, based on a tip from a security guard (who is, like Fein, African American). The sweat shirt is an added clue for the sergeant but not the reason he is confronting the player. When a gun is involved, police act first and ask questions later. They want the element of surprise and don’t want the suspect to have a chance to go for the weapon.  Says Hermann: “In Fein’s mind, he was being jacked up for no reason, he was angry and he felt he deserved an explanation before he consented to anything, an explanation the officer was not yet prepared to give.”

Police departments are divided about what lessons can be drawn from the arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates at his home, says National Public Radio. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick called what happened to Gates “every black man’s nightmare,” but it’d be fair to say that what happened in Cambridge is every police department’s nightmare, too. “We’ve been all watching, and it forces you to take a step back [and] look at what you’re doing to ensure what you’re doing is appropriate,” says Martin Flask, Cleveland’s public safety director. (more…)

The divergent accounts by Henry Louis Gates of Harvard and Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley in the now-infamous arrest of Gates at his own home are borne out by research on the “implicit biases that work below the conscious level in many of us, including those of us who want to be without prejudice,” criminologist Lorie Fridell of the University of South Florida tells the Washington Post.