Tag Archives: crime and justice

Cops Kill Many More Americans Than the FBI’s Data Shows

by MUBCaseyumfu Posted on October 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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A new investigation from the Guardian gives a detailed look at the deep flaws in the FBI’s database on fatal police shootings. The inadequacy of the federal data, which is built from information voluntarily reported by police departments, has come into view as the Guardian and the Washington Post have tracked officer-involved killings in 2015. FBI Director James Comey recently called the federal data “embarrassing and ridiculous,” and US Attorney General Loretta Lynch has announced a new program aimed at better tracking civilian deaths at the hands of police.

More MoJo coverage on policing:


Why No One Really Knows a Better Way to Train Cops


Video Shows Arrest of Sandra Bland Prior to Her Death in Texas Jail


How Cleveland Police May Have Botched a 911 Call Just Before Killing Tamir Rice


Native Americans Get Shot By Cops at an Astonishing Rate


Here Are 13 Killings by Police Captured on Video in the Past Year


The Walter Scott Shooting Video Shows Why Police Accounts Are Hard to Trust


Itâ&#128;&#153;s Been 6 Months Since Tamir Rice Died, and the Cop Who Killed Him Still Hasn’t Been Questioned


Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?


The Cop Who Choked Eric Garner to Death Won’t Pay a Dime


A Mentally Ill Woman’s “Sudden Death” at the Hands of Cleveland Police

The Guardian examined the FBI’s justifiable homicide data for the decade spanning from 2004 to 2014 and found:

In 2014, only 244—or 1.2 percent—of the nation’s estimated 18,000 law enforcement agencies reported a fatal shooting by their officers.
Several high-profile deaths, including those of Eric Garner in New York, and Tamir Rice and John Crawford in Ohio, were not included in the FBI’s count, as the police agencies involved did not submit their data for those years or report those incidents to the FBI. The NYPD, for example, did not submit data for any year during this period except for one, in 2006. Still the FBI’s count did not match up with the NYPD’s own data from that year, which the NYPD publishes in a separate annual report.
The FBI lists 32 ways of classifying the incidents based on the circumstances—but only one denotes killing by a police officer: “felon killed by police.” There is no category for cases where an officer killed someone who was not a felon. (See Mother Jones’ previous reporting on the FBI’s classification of justifiable homicides.)
Some police departments reported unjustified killings by cops as killings between civilians. Other deaths in which officers were charged or convicted, such as that of Oscar Grant, Rekia Boyd, Malissa Williams, and Timothy Russell, did not show up at all in the FBI database.
A rise in the number of police shootings corresponded with a rise in agencies reporting their figures, obscuring any potential trends over the decade reviewed.

The Guardian included a chart showing the lack of reporting annually by states on fatal police shootings. Two of the nation’s most populous states, Florida and New York, barely reported any data at all:

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Cops Kill Many More Americans Than the FBI’s Data Shows

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The Obama Administration Is (Rather Belatedly) Making Homegrown Terrorism a Priority

by EtsukoTunbridge Posted on October 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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In the wake of this year’s series of devastating mass shootings on American soil, the Department of Justice is boosting its efforts to fight the loosely defined menace of “domestic terrorism” with the appointment this week of a “domestic terrorism counsel.” The new appointee has not yet been named but will coordinate cases, identify trends, and “analyze legal gaps or enhancements required to ensure we can combat these threats,” Assistant Attorney General John Carlin, head of the agency’s National Security Division, said Wednesday.

“We recognize that, over the past few years, more people have died in this country in attacks by domestic extremists than in attacks associated with international terrorist groups,” Carlin said in a speech at George Washington University.

Mass shootings have struck a number of communities across the United States this year, from this summer’s massacre at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, to the killings at Umpqua Community College in Oregon earlier this month.

The shooting in Charleston set off debates in the media and across society on how the perpetrators of ideologically motivated attacks are to be viewed. Are they disenfranchised, potentially mentally ill young Americans? Or are they “domestic terrorists”? And if the latter, what qualifies as domestic terrorism? FBI Director James Comey drew criticism for saying shortly after the Charleston shooting that the attack did not appear to bear the marks of terrorism, a claim contested by historians and security experts.

Carlin on Wednesday offered an expansive definition of violent extremism and terrorism, terms he used interchangeably, saying, “The threat ranges from individuals motivated by anti-government animus, to eco-radicalism, to racism, as it has for decades.”

Carlin also drew a close parallel between these domestic attacks and the activities of the brutal radical Islamist group ISIS, which has seized broad swathes of territory across Iraq and Syria and is currently under fire from US air strikes.

Both ISIS and domestic extremists have made intensive use of social media to promulgate their messages and attract followers, and both have lately seen a rise in attacks by “lone offenders,” he said.

While there is no definitive evidence proving the role of social media use in the rising tide of mass shootings, a recent Mother Jones investigation found that many law enforcement and forensic psychology experts do believe there is a connection.

In order to combat the menace of homegrown terrorism, Carlin called for the use of all means at investigators’ disposal—including, controversially, the cooperation of internet service providers.

“Service providers must take responsibility for how their services can be abused,” he said. “Responsible providers understand what the threats are and take action to prevent terrorist groups from abusing their services to induce recruits to commit terrorist acts.”

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The Obama Administration Is (Rather Belatedly) Making Homegrown Terrorism a Priority

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Why No One Really Knows a Better Way to Train Cops

by JaysonMuirden Posted on October 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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After a year in which killings of unarmed suspects by the police have become a major national issue, activists, law enforcement experts, and political leaders have all stressed the importance of introducing more and better training for officers. Police departments across the country have begun to re-evaluate how they teach cops to use physical force, defuse tension with suspects, approach the mentally ill, and check their own unconscious biases. But what do we really know about police training as a solution? Will it be effective? Here are some of the key questions:

What specific steps have police departments taken? A recent survey by the DC-based Police Executive Research Forum revealed that the majority of an officer’s training on use of force consisted of firearms and defensive tactics. “We spend much less time discussing the importance of deescalation techniques and crisis intervention strategies,” Chuck Wexler, the group’s executive director, wrote in August. The Presidential Task Force on 21st Century Policing, formed in response to Ferguson and other controversial police shootings, urged that “the need for expanded and more effective training has become critical.” Its top recommendations to law enforcement agencies include making classes on crisis intervention mandatory for basic recruits and officers in the field, and forming “training innovation hubs” between universities and police academies.

More MoJo coverage on policing:


Video Shows Arrest of Sandra Bland Prior to Her Death in Texas Jail


How Cleveland Police May Have Botched a 911 Call Just Before Killing Tamir Rice


Native Americans Get Shot By Cops at an Astonishing Rate


Here Are 13 Killings by Police Captured on Video in the Past Year


The Walter Scott Shooting Video Shows Why Police Accounts Are Hard to Trust


Itâ&#128;&#153;s Been 6 Months Since Tamir Rice Died, and the Cop Who Killed Him Still Hasn’t Been Questioned


Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?


The Cop Who Choked Eric Garner to Death Won’t Pay a Dime


A Mentally Ill Woman’s “Sudden Death” at the Hands of Cleveland Police

In 2012, Washington state’s police academy introduced cadets to a new curriculum that emphasized trainings in crisis intervention, building social skills, and critical thinking—a shift from its previous boot camp approach. The NYPD is currently retraining its officers on de-escalation, communication, and minimizing use of force. In early September, Cleveland introduced plans to ramp up training that teaches officers how to respond to suspects who may have mental illnesses—a change prompted by the city’s recent settlement with the US Department of Justice following a federal investigation into the Cleveland PD.

After the fatal police shooting of Antonio Zambrano-Montes in Pasco, Washington, the DoJ announced in May that it would train Pasco officers for a year in order to “enhance trust and communication between the community and the police department.” And following a record number of officer-involved shootings in 2010, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department overhauled its training curriculum, which now includes instruction on implicit bias and “reality-based trainings” focused on appropriate use of force.

How do we know whether these kinds of reforms will help reduce officer-involved shootings? Some departments that have introduced training reforms, such as those in Las Vegas and Maryland’s Montgomery County, say the changes have lowered problematic use-of-force incidents. Yet researchers have little data on potential impacts with regard to use of force, mental-health crisis intervention, and building community trust. “We know virtually nothing about the short- or long-term effects associated with police training of any type,” Northwestern University political scientist Wesley Skogan wrote in a 2014 paper published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology.

In a report commissioned by the National Research Council in 2004, Skogan and others found that while it had long been assumed “that more and better police training leads to improved officer performance,” there were “scarcely more than a handful of studies on the effects of training,” and that “research on the effects of training content, timing, instructor qualifications, pedagogical methods, dosage, and long-term effects is virtually nonexistent.” In the decade since, Skogan says, “there has not been much progress.”

The lack of rigorous scientific assessments on police training programs means that in areas like crisis intervention or hostage negotiations, “we’re flying by the seat of our pants,” says Dave Klinger, a former officer and a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. That can be dangerous for both the officers and the communities they serve, he adds.

Why isn’t there more research available on these kinds of training programs? The argument that policing should be rooted in science is nothing new, but translating academic research into practice on the streets is complicated territory. As researchers at the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy explained in a 2012 paper, what works at one department may not work in another. Scientists and police departments might also disagree, they said, on how to measure an agency’s effectiveness or define what “good policing” looks like. “The worlds of the practitioner and the scientist operate on vastly different timelines,” they wrote, “with police chiefs believing that they need quick solutions, and academics believing that without adequate deliberation, the quality of the science might be compromised.”

What does all of this cost? Officers spend hundreds of hours training both in the academy and out in the field, costing an average of $1.3 million per academy, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Municipal police agencies, for example, spent an average of $2.2 million on academy training in 2006, with basic recruit training taking up an average of 883 hours in the classroom and 575 hours in the field, according to the latest available data. Certified state training academies spent an average of $3.6 million per academy in the same year.

Why don’t we know more about what training works? Part of the answer is that ultimately it’s hard to know whether an officer’s behavior during any given scenario was directly affected by training that he or she received. There have also been some “serious methodological limitations” in past research on training, Skogan found in his 2004 report. It’s also hard to isolate the effect of training from other factors that could influence an officer, such as his or her workload, stress, or other factors influencing the operations of a police department and its personnel.

Lorie Fridell, a criminologist at the University of South Florida, says she has been thinking about how to better measure racial or other implicit bias in policing since 1999, when she wrote a book on the subject. She says it’s been “incredibly challenging” to come up with effective approaches. Fridell runs a training program that teaches officers to recognize and check their implicit bias, and she plans to conduct a controlled study on the effects of the training to determine how an officer’s attitude and skills may have changed as a result. But the study won’t be able to show how the training affected an officer’s behavior on the streets, she explains, because measuring bias in that setting would require pinpointing the motive behind an officer’s actions in any given situation.

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Why No One Really Knows a Better Way to Train Cops

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Outrage is Boiling Over the Outcome of New Probes Into the Police Shooting of a 12-year-old. Here Are 6 Takeaways.

by MariMacDonnell Posted on October 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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Update, 1:45 p.m. EDT: In the hours since two new investigations into the fatal police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice concluded that a Cleveland police officer’s actions were “reasonable,” outrage has spread on Twitter and protesters have taken to the streets. Some called on authorities to redefine what is legally “reasonable.”

Activists in Cleveland and elsewhere saw the reports as a sign that it’s unlikely Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann will face criminal charges for his actions. As demonstrations took place in cities such as Cleveland and Oakland, several high-profile figures weighed in:

Meanwhile, a police union attorney for Frank Garmback, the officer who drove the squad car near Rice before Loehmann opened fire, told Mother Jones Garmback has decided that he will not testify before the grand jury.

Garmback is still considering submitting a written statement to Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy McGinty, according to his lawyer Michael Maloney.

“While we are not facing a strict deadline at the moment, it is clear we have to advise the prosecutor of our intentions fairly soon,” he said. Maloney declined to comment further on questions about whether Loehmann will testify or submit a statement soon.

Previously:

Late on Saturday night, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office released conclusions from three additional investigations into the death of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was shot and killed by a police officer at a Cleveland park last November.

Two of the reports, written by police use-of-force experts, determined that the actions of Cleveland officer Timothy Loehmann, who fatally wounded Rice within a few seconds of arriving at the scene on November 22, were “objectively reasonable” under federal case law and did not violate the Fourth Amendment. A third investigation reconstructed the shooting scene at the Cudell Recreation Center and examined how quickly the police car was moving when it pulled up to Rice.

Here are the key takeaways from the reports, and questions that remain almost a year since Rice’s death:

The fact that Rice was a kid, or that his gun turned out to be fake, are “irrelevant” in determining whether Loehmann’s actions were reasonable under federal law. According to use of force experts S. Lamar Sims and Kimberly Crawford, the available evidence shows Loehmann could not have known at the time of the shooting that Rice was a boy with a toy gun. Therefore Loehmann acted reasonably—as defined by previous US Supreme Court decisions—when he fired his weapon at Rice, Sims and Crawford concluded. And while key details in the 911 call—that Rice was “probably a juvenile” waving a gun that was “probably fake”—were not relayed to the officers, they “cannot be considered,” Crawford wrote.

Whether Loehmann and the officer who drove the squad car, Frank Garmback, used appropriate tactics also fell outside the scope of Sims and Crawford’s investigations, they said. Garmback pulled the police vehicle to within several feet of Rice, and Loehmann fired shots within two seconds.

“To suggest that Officer Garmback should have stopped the car at another location is to engage in exactly the kind of ‘Monday morning quarterbacking’ the case law exhorts us to avoid,” Sims wrote. While it could be argued that the officers escalated the situation “by entering the park and stopping their vehicle so close to a potentially armed subject,” Crawford added, that speculation has “no place in determining the reasonableness of an officer’s use of force.”

The reports do not discuss the fact that Loehmann and Garmback did not administer first aid while Rice lay bleeding. Surveillance footage of the incident showed Loehmann and Garmback stood around for about four minutes without attempting to give any medical attention to Rice. When Rice’s sister approached, Garmback tackled her to the ground. Later, an FBI agent arrived and began to tend to Rice’s wound before an ambulance took him to a hospital. Rice died the next day.

A fundamental principle of policing is that once a threat has been eliminated and a scene secured, an officer’s first priority is to aid an injured person, Seth Stoughton, a law professor at the University of South Carolina studying policing, told Mother Jones in May. “At that point, the officer and his medical kit might be the only thing between the suspect and death,” said Stoughton, who who previously served as a police officer in Florida for five years. “It’s not only an ethical requirement, but almost certainly a departmental imperative to do what they can to save the life of the suspect. The failure to do that is really disturbing.”

The officers still aren’t talking to investigators. Both Loehmann and Garmback have declined to give statements to investigators or the county prosecutor, under the advice of their lawyers. In June, their attorney Michael Maloney told Mother Jones that the officers “have not ruled out the possibility” of providing a written statement to the prosecutor. They have not decided whether they will testify before the grand jury.

It’s unclear whether Loehmann will face criminal charges. A total of four investigations have now been made public in the wake of Rice’s death, none of which are intended to draw conclusions about whether officer Loehmann should be charged. As county prosecutor Timothy McGinty explains, all reports will be reviewed by a grand jury, which will then determine whether Loehmann will face criminal charges.

The officer who drove the car may face scrutiny, too. Thus far, the investigation into Rice’s death has focused on Loehmann, and it remains unclear whether the actions of Garmback will warrant a separate criminal or departmental investigation.

Stoughton, the law enforcement expert, told Mother Jones, “It was a ludicrous way to approach a scene where you’ve been told that there is a person with a gun who has been aiming it at bystanders. I would expect the officers would park at a safe distance and walk up, using cover and concealment, and try to initiate communication at a distance. That’s the ‘three Cs’ of tactical response.”

It’s unclear when a grand jury will take up the case. The new documents, along with the initial probe into the shooting led by the county sheriff’s office, will be presented to a grand jury as it decides whether to indict Loehmann, McGinty said in Saturday’s press release. McGinty’s office declined to comment further on the grand jury process. It remains unclear whether a grand jury has been impaneled and when a hearing will take place.

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Outrage is Boiling Over the Outcome of New Probes Into the Police Shooting of a 12-year-old. Here Are 6 Takeaways.

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Girls Are the Fastest-Growing Group in the Juvenile Justice System

by MarielBrookfiel Posted on October 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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Over the past 20 years, there’s been a promising decline in arrests of youths in the United States. The reasons for the drop are elusive, but one factor might be a renewed interest within the juvenile justice system in paying better attention to child welfare before kids are drawn to crime. States are also seeking alternatives to traditional punishment once kids are in the system.

But a new report out this week finds that for young girls, the trend is going in the opposite direction. The proportion of girls in the juvenile justice system has increased at every stage of the process over the last 20 years, from arrests to detention and probation.

National Women’s Law Center/ National Crittenton Foundation

The report’s authors, Boston College law professor Francine Sherman and Annie Balck, a policy consultant at the National Juvenile Justice Network, attribute the gender gap to the juvenile justice system’s long-standing “protective and paternalistic” approach to dealing with delinquent girls. The system tends to detain girls, the authors write, because they’re seen as needing protection. It’s a strategy that is ill-suited to the personal histories of trauma, physical violence, and poverty that lead many girls into bad behavior. Even when the system acknowledges these factors, there are limited options available beyond traditional arrests and detention.

This report highlights several disparities in the treatment of girls in the system. For instance, there’s a gender gap in the detention of girls for low-level crimes: Nearly 40 percent of detained girls were brought in on status offenses (behavior that is only illegal when you’re under 18), compared with just 25 percent of boys.

National Women’s Law Center/ National Crittenton Foundation

Among girls in the system, there’s also stark racial inequity. In 2013, African American girls, the fastest-growing segment of the juvenile justice population, were 20 percent more likely to be detained than white girls, while American Indian girls were 50 percent more likely.

The authors also argue that detention is uniquely harmful to youths, and can lead to catastrophic consequences for girls. One study cited in the report found that girls who had been detained were five times more likely to die by age 29 than children who had not. For Latina girls, that likelihood increased—they were nine times more likely to die by age 29 than the general population. Detention is a drastic and developmentally incorrect measure to take, the report’s authors maintain, because in most cases the crimes girls commit are the result of past trauma that isn’t being properly addressed. Few have been found delinquent for more serious offenses such as assault.

The report cites a 2014 study of traumatic experiences in justice-involved youth. In the study, 31 percent of girls reported a personal experience of sexual violence in the home, 41 percent reported being physically abused, and 84 percent reported experiencing family violence. Girls reported having been sexually abused at a rate 4.4 times higher than boys.

“Greater restriction is rarely the answer and cannot address the violence and deprivation underlying so many girl offenses,” write the authors. To reverse the growing gender gap in juvenile justice, they say, “systems must craft reforms that directly address the root causes of their behavior and provide an alternate, non-justice-system path for girls’ healthy development and healing.”

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Girls Are the Fastest-Growing Group in the Juvenile Justice System

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George Zimmerman Posted a Photo of Trayvon Martin’s Dead Body

by Bobbie07Ynuwisj Posted on September 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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Over the weekend, George Zimmerman retweeted an image of Trayvon Martin’s dead body. The image was first tweeted to him by a fan who wrote, “Z-Man is a one man army.”

After the tweet was deleted, apparently by Twitter, Zimmerman posted a tweet directing media inquiries to the phone number of a car audio shop. When I called it, a disgruntled man said it was not affiliated with Zimmerman. I asked what he meant, and he said, “It’s pretty cut and dry, dude. Do you understand English?” Then he hung up. The number, it turns out, belongs to a man Zimmerman has been waging a social media campaign against.

Twitter would not comment on why they took down the photo, but the company directed me to its policy, which states that users “may not publish or post threats of violence against others or promote violence against others.”

Previously, Zimmerman’s tweets have referred to black people as primates and “slime.”

In August, Zimmerman teamed up with the owner of a gun store with a no-Muslims-allowed policy to sell prints of his Confederate flag art, which he says “represents the hypocrisy of political correctness that is plaguing this nation.”

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George Zimmerman Posted a Photo of Trayvon Martin’s Dead Body

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The Criminal Investigation of FIFA’s Sepp Blatter Is Finally Here

by BereniceNepean Posted on September 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Friday, Swiss officials opened a criminal investigation into embattled FIFA president Sepp Blatter “on suspicion of criminal mismanagement” and “misappropriation.”

In September 2005, Switzerland’s Office of Attorney General said in a press release, Blatter signed a television contract with the Caribbean Football Union deemed “unfavorable to FIFA” during former FIFA executive Jack Warner’s tenure as league president.

Blatter was also accused of making a “disloyal payment” of 2 million Swiss francs to UEFA president Michel Platini “at the expense of FIFA” for work conducted between January 1999 and June 2002.

The criminal probe comes five months after 14 top soccer officials and corporate executives, including Warner, were indicted for widespread corruption spanning the past two decades. Blatter resigned in June before walking back his resignation weeks later.

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The Criminal Investigation of FIFA’s Sepp Blatter Is Finally Here

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Oklahoma May Execute an Innocent Man on Wednesday

by OfeliaTZUZ Posted on September 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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In June, the US Supreme Court cleared the way for Oklahoma to execute Richard Glossip—who has been sitting on death row since 1998, when he was convicted of first-degree murder—using a controversial drug that’s been implicated in several botched executions. Barring a last-minute stay by Gov. Mary Fallin, the state plans to put him to death on Wednesday. But if it does, it may execute an innocent man.

Glossip’s landmark Supreme Court petition challenging the method of his execution is a footnote to a larger story that highlights the death penalty’s many flaws.

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Oklahoma May Execute an Innocent Man on Wednesday

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Baltimore Just Proposed a Settlement With Freddie Gray’s Family

by ShanelParas8 Posted on September 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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Six months after Freddie Gray died from a spinal injury suffered after an alleged “rough ride” in the back of a police van, the city of Baltimore has tentatively agreed to settle with Gray’s family for $6.4 million. From the Times:

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said in a statement that the settlement with the family of Freddie Gray would be sent to the Baltimore Board of Estimates for a vote on Wednesday…

“The proposed settlement agreement going before the Board of Estimates should not be interpreted as a judgment on the guilt or innocence of the officers facing trial,” Ms. Rawlings-Blake said. The proposed settlement will be paid as $2.8 million in the current fiscal year and $3.6 million in the year beginning in July of 2016.

Six Baltimore police officers are currently being tried on criminal charges relating to Gray’s death, which sparked massive national protests in April.

The proposed settlement is close in amount to the $5.9 million agreement reached in July between New York City and the family of Eric Garner, who also died at the hands of the police, and eclipses the total $5.7 million that Baltimore has paid in all 102 alleged police misconduct cases since 2011, according to the Baltimore Sun.

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Baltimore Just Proposed a Settlement With Freddie Gray’s Family

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Freddie Gray Hearings Open Amid Police Clashes

by AmbroseCawthorn Posted on September 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Hearings in the case against six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray began this morning against an all-too-familiar backdrop of police confrontations with protesters.

The first pretrial hearing of the case, involving six officers charged in Gray’s death in police custody, opened with victories for the prosecution, as a judge denied motions to dismiss the case and to recuse the state’s attorney. Outside the courthouse, protesters clashed with police. People on the scene described police grabbing women, harassing members of the press, and restricting sidewalk access to the courthouse. Netta Elzie, a prominent black activist, also tweeted an account of Kwame Rose, another black activist and Baltimore resident, being hit by a police car and promptly arrested.

Inside the court, Circuit Court Judge Barry Williams denied motions to recuse State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby from the case and to dismiss charges because of alleged prosecutorial misconduct on behalf of Mosby. Defense attorneys for the six officers, who face charges ranging from involuntary manslaughter to second-degree assault, argued that Mosby should recuse herself, citing her relationship to the Gray family’s attorney and her husband’s position as a city councilman as reasons for a conflict of interest.

This story will be updated as it develops.

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Freddie Gray Hearings Open Amid Police Clashes

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