The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/)
Tucked away in Trump’s $4.1 trillion budget this week was a note that the White House was calling for a $54.8 million cut in school safety research. There was no explanation for the cut. When The Crime Report asked DOJ for an explanation, it said it was awaiting results of the earlier research.
President Trump’s budget proposal released this week would reduce funding for addiction treatment, research and prevention. Some see the moves as a painful betrayal of Americans whose families have been devastated by addiction and trusted the president’s repeated pledges to make them a priority.
Banamex USA avoided prosecution this week by acknowledging its lack of oversight over more than $142 million in suspicious remittances between 2007-2012. But the fine imposed by the Justice Department amounted to little more than a “slap on the wrist,” says an analyst.
Budget office insists that an apparent 93 percent cut over 10 years in federal funding for the Violence Against Women Act is just a “technical maneuver” indicating that money may not be used from the federal Crime Victims Fund.
A 10-3 majority of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit says President Trump’s latest plan to deny visas to citizens of six majority-Muslim countries is “steeped in animus and directed at a single religious group.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions will take the issue to the Supreme Court.
In stark contrast to “sanctuary cities,” instead of declining to cooperate with federal immigration officials, 41 law enforcement agencies around the U.S. have volunteered to investigate the immigration status of prisoners when they are booked.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a new system called the Victim Information Notification Exchange (Vine) that officials say allows victims of crimes committed by immigrants to track the status of their perpetrators. Civil rights advocates have discovered that the database includes immigrants who are crime victims themselves and are supposed to be shielded from public disclosures for safety reasons.
Gov. Mary Fallin backed measures to reduce the prison population and save tax money. Committee chairman Scott Biggs blocked the measures, saying the state was trying to do too much, too fast.
After a Memorial Day weekend last year in which 71 people were shot, six of them fatally, Chicago will put an extra 1,000 police officers on the street for the next three days. Crime trends in one violent district are good.
Two lieutenants and a guard at the troubled federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn are accused of abusing nine female inmates. One made light of the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act on Facebook.
Tommy Arthur, 75, was put to death on his eighth scheduled date. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented over the use of a controversial sedative in the lethal injection process.
Los Angeles voters allowed the creation of an all-civilian disciplinary review board for police. Officers will have the option to take their cases to another board with fellow police on it.
Voters in eight states have legalized marijuana. Legislators in 17 states now have tried to legalize the drug, with mixed results.
Democratic progressives didn’t have any problem with Montana House candidate Rob Quist’s backing of gun rights. Quist lost yesterday’s primary election to Republidan Greg Gianforte.
The National Criminal Justice Association says President Trump’s budget proposal to Congress would harm state and local law enforcement by making another big cut in Byrne JAG grants, which help fund state and local innovations in crime-fighting. In the last seven years, funding for Byrne JAG already has been cut by one-third.