The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/policing/)
Researchers at Duke and Northeastern Universities found a stark gap in clearance rates when comparing fatal and nonfatal gun assaults in Boston. The reason: the “sustained investigative” effort devoted to homicide cases in the first two days wasn’t matched when there was a surviving victim.
“The occupation of policing is under a microscope,” says Chuck Wexler of the Police Executive Research Forum. “You don’t have to spend much time turning on the TV and seeing a video that makes the police look like they’re doing something wrong.”
A suspect who shot and injured six Philadelphia police officers was taken into custody early Thursday after a nearly eight-hour ordeal that included a gunfight and tense standoff in the northern part of the city. Mayor Jim Kenney said the shooting showed the need for more gun control.
Because most arrests are not for serious crimes but for offenses like drug possession, public drunkenness and disorderly conduct, many cases could be handled effectively by other means, and thus not contribute to the nation’s mass incarceration, says a report from the Vera Institute of Justice.
A man whose pickup truck was being impounded grabbed a rifle and opened fire, killing a California Highway Patrol officer and wounding two others before he was shot to death in a hail of gunfire, the assailant was clad in black and wielded an assault-style rifle.
A City Council member asked the Greater Baltimore Urban League if police detectives could use its headquarters for covert surveillance of drug dealing. The group’s president was taken aback and shot the proposal down.
Some California police and sheriff’s agencies are refusing to answer calls involving potential suicides so they will not be drawn into “suicide by cop” scenarios and use lethal force unnecessarily.
About two-thirds of police departments use cameras. They have had positive effects on policing, but haven’t changed the number of police shootings or increased prosecutions of cops.
Body camera footage in a fatal Colorado police shooting of a black man suspected in an armed robbery will be released this week, officials say. Protesters say officers shot De’Von Bailey, 19, in the back and they didn’t see him with a weapon. Police dispute that account.
“What this family really wanted wasn’t money—they would like to see some accountability,” said the lawyer representing the father of Clark, who was fatally shot by Minneapolis police in 2015.