Tag Archives: police-department

Cop Tells Drivers to Run Over Black Lives Matter Protesters

by SharylLightfoot Posted on January 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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A St. Paul, Minnesota police officer has been placed on administrative leave after allegedly telling drivers to run over Black Lives Matter protesters who planned to block traffic as part of a march on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Around 1 a.m. on Saturday, a Facebook user named “JM Roth” posted a comment on a Pioneer Press article about the scheduled protest that said: “Run them over. Keep traffic flowing and don’t slow down for any of these idiots who try and block the street.” The comment then suggested how drivers could legally justify hitting protesters with their cars:

Screenshot by Andrew Henderson, via St. Paul Pioneer Press

Andrew Henderson, a local activist who maintains the Minnesota Cop Block Facebook page, first noted and reported the comment, which has since been deleted, to the St. Paul Police Department. In phone conversations he recorded and uploaded to YouTube, Henderson told Saint Paul Police Department officials that the “JM Roth” account belonged to Sergeant Jeffrey M. Rothecker. Henderson said Rothecker had admitted in previous comments that he was “JM Roth.”

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and Police Chief Thomas Smith have denounced the comment and announced that an investigation into the matter is underway. Senior Commander Shari Gray, the head of the department’s internal affairs unit, also met with Henderson on Sunday, according to the Pioneer Press.

“There is no room in the Saint Paul Police Department for employees who threaten members of the public,” Coleman said in a statement released on Monday. “If the allegation is true, we will take the strongest possible action allowed under law.”

The St. Paul Police Federation, the union for officers, is representing Rothecker, according to the Star Tribune.

The news comes one year after motorist Jeffrey P. Rice struck a teenage girl who was protesting outside a Minneapolis police station. The girl was part of a November 2014 demonstration that took place after a Ferguson, Missouri grand jury declined to indict the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown. The girl suffered a minor leg injury. Last October, Rice, who is from St. Paul, pleaded guilty to a charge for failing to yield to a pedestrian. He was fined $575 and ordered to attend a driver’s education course.

See the article here – 

Cop Tells Drivers to Run Over Black Lives Matter Protesters

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NYPD Slowdown Not Likely to Tell Us Much About Broken Windows

by LorrineBucher Posted on December 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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As long as we’re talking about crime today, the New York Times reports that the NYPD’s slowdown in citing people for minor violations doesn’t appear to be doing any harm:

In the week since two Brooklyn officers were killed by a man who singled them out for their police uniforms, the number of summonses for minor criminal offenses, as well as those for parking and traffic violations, has decreased by more than 90 percent versus the same week a year earlier, and felony arrests were nearly 40 percent lower, according to Police Department statistics.

….Yet reports of major crimes citywide continued their downward trajectory, falling to 1,813 from 2,127 for the week, a nearly 15 percent drop, according to Police Department statistics.

Mike the Mad Biologist thinks this might be a useful natural experiment:

Here’s the thing: this might not be like the sanitation workers strike. Then, it was obvious what the consequences were—mounds of rotting garbage. But what happens if, after a couple weeks of slowdown, there’s no uptick in violent or property (i.e., breaking and entry) crime? That would undermine the current policing philosophy of the NYPD (and many other cities)….If violent crime doesn’t increase, then arresting people for minor violations doesn’t seem like a good strategy.

Helluva experiment. Let’s see what the outcome will be.

Unfortunately, I doubt that this will tell us anything at all. The timeframe is too short and there are too many other things going on at the same time. Crime statistics have a ton of noise in them, and it’s hard to draw any conclusions even from a full year of change. You need years of data, preferably in lots of different places. A few weeks of data in one place is basically just a null.

So….yes, it’s potentially an interesting experiment. In real life, though, it’s not. It’s just a howl of protest from the police that will tell us little about anything other than the state of relations between City Hall and the NYPD.

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NYPD Slowdown Not Likely to Tell Us Much About Broken Windows

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