The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/race-and-equity/page/2/)
Civil rights groups filed the suit on behalf of the advocacy group Black Love Resists in the Rust after a 2012 “Strike Force” unit established traffic checkpoints in high-crime areas in Buffalo, with what it claimed were adverse affects on minorities. These checkpoints were disproportionately placed in Black and Latino communities.
A new book examines the arrest data produced by police stops in North Carolina, and finds the public safety benefit was minimal. In a conversation with The Crime Report, co-author Frank Baumgartner says it should make police departments across the US reevaluate a practice that is often considered racial profiling.
All New York City police officers are being trained via a $4.5 million contract with Fair and Impartial Policing, a Florida company. Lorie Fridell, a criminologist at the University of South Florida who runs the firm, said the training is not meant to cure officers of biases, but to teach them to be aware of moments when an acquired bias surfaces, so that it can be managed.
Among 100 cases handled by one Jacksonville prosecutor, blacks received sentences that were nearly four times as long on average as those handed down to white offenders. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune and Florida Times-Union looked into racial bias by prosecutors and other criminal justice officials.
A study finds that police killings of unarmed black Americans contribute nearly two additional days a year in which a black person suffers some mental health toll. The study found no such effect on the mental health of whites, nor did blacks report this kind of distress over police killings of armed black suspects.
The department, which has been criticized for racial bias in its traffic stops, is preparing to comply with a new state law that takes effect on July 1. It mandates collection of detailed data on all officer interactions with the public in an effort to study and curb racial profiling.
GOP-appointed judges hand down longer sentences to African Americans than whites for similar offenses, according to a study by two Harvard professors. They argue the current polarized political climate in judicial politics is a “source of persistent racial and gender disparities.”
Too many black families still suffer from the consequences of racism– conditions that undermine upward mobility and perpetuate unacceptable levels of poverty, crime and other social ills, according to Project 21, a network of black leaders from across the nation, in a report released.
Blacks make up 30 percent of Kansas City’s population but get 60 percent of traffic tickets. Most of them are not for driving offenses.
Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson agreed to mentor the two black men arrested at the coffee chain’s location in downtown Philadelphia last month. The city also agreed to create a $200,000 fund for a pilot program that will assist public high school students who aspire to be entrepreneurs.