The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/policing/)
The focus comes as the Justice Department issues two reports focusing on the mental health and safety of the nation’s police officers. One example given is the trauma experienced by members of the SWAT team that went to Columbine High School in 1999.
Los Angeles officers fired their weapons 33 times last year compared with 44 shootings the previous year — a 25 percent decrease. It’s the second-fewest incidences of police shootings since 1989.
The killing of an armed man in a restaurant parking lot may have been legally justified, but a video of the incident “raises some serious questions about the officers’ tactics,” says one expert.
The Laguna Beach City Council will reconsider their decision to order flags posted on the city’s police cars. One council member calls the idea that flags might hurt immigrants’ feelings “ridiculous.”
Some 125 of the 410 officers have been outfitted with body cameras. But the federal grant that pays for them is due to expire, and the department isn’t sure it can afford to continue.
The police officer, Aaron Petitt, and the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association sued in July, saying the city violated the officer’s First Amendment and due process rights.
The four officers fighting their dismissals are accused of falsifying or approving police reports that exaggerated the threat posed by the 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was high on PCP as he refused police commands to drop a knife while walking away from police on a Southwest Side street.
Members of the Los Angeles police civilian oversight panel are raising questions about whether a police data analysis program aimed at reducing property crime disproportionately targets black and Latino communities.
A Minneapolis police officer who killed an unarmed Australian woman as she approached his squad car after calling 911 was reacting to a loud noise and feared an ambush, his attorney told a jury, calling the shooting “a perfect storm with tragic consequences.”
A Princeton University researcher confirms what many advocates of preventative policing have argued: the visible presence of more cops on the streets, rather than the number of arrests they make, can reduce crime.