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Quiz: How Much Do You Know About America’s Sleaziest Presidential Races?

by ChastitHaviland Posted on October 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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Courtesy of Quirk Books

Think the 2016 election is shaping up to be an ugly fight? In historical terms, it might not be so bad.

In his new book, Anything for a Vote, Joseph Cummins looks back at more than two centuries of campaign sleaze and scandal, from twisted words and unfounded rumors to blackmail and burglary. While this grimy lens can be a hilarious way to look at the history of presidential politics, it’s often a sobering one as well—colored by policies of discrimination and assaults on voting rights that are still relevant today. It’s enough to make Donald Trump’s Twitter-bullying look pretty tame.

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})(jQuery);How much do you know about the dirty tricks and cheap shots of presidential campaigns past? Take this quiz of trivia from Cummins’ book:

var quiz = jQuery(‘#quiz_container’).quiz(‘1J2PUUHGw4Te1L1AILzae5rWBJX5iZ7MnxGcNxB_pXEk’);

View this article:

Quiz: How Much Do You Know About America’s Sleaziest Presidential Races?

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Bernie Sanders Wants the DOJ to Investigate Exxon

by Phillip9950 Posted on October 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by the Huffington Post and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday joined a push for the Department of Justice to investigate allegations that ExxonMobil hid research confirming fossil fuels contribute significantly to climate change.

In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Sanders accused the oil giant of a “potential instance of corporate fraud,” which he added could “ultimately qualify as a violation of federal law.”

“Exxon Mobil knew the truth about fossil fuels and climate change and lied to protect their business model at the expense of the planet,” Sanders, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, wrote.

Last week, two House Democrats sent Lynch a very similar letter, pressing her to launch an investigation into Exxon’s actions. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, another Democratic presidential candidate, has also indicated support for an official inquiry

The requests come after in-depth reports by the Los Angeles Times and Inside Climate News revealed that decades of research conducted by senior Exxon scientists warned burning fossil fuels could lead to increasing global temperatures.

Continue Reading »

Read the article:  

Bernie Sanders Wants the DOJ to Investigate Exxon

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Bernie Sanders Wants the DOJ to Investigate Exxon

Billionaire Who Lost Case Against Mother Jones Settles Related Lawsuit

by StuartLehner Posted on October 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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Two weeks ago, we told you about Mother Jones‘ victory in a lawsuit filed by a billionaire political donor, Frank VanderSloot. On Monday, another portion of the case came to a conclusion: VanderSloot’s case against Peter Zuckerman, a former Idaho newspaper reporter whose work we cited in our article, was settled.

Here’s the background: In 2005, while working for the 26,000-circulation Post Register in Idaho Falls, Zuckerman got a tip about a pedophile in the local Boy Scouts. He dug deeper and ended up writing an investigative series exposing how Boy Scout and Mormon Church leaders had failed to stop the man from working in a Boy Scout camp.

VanderSloot took issue with the series and placed full-page ads in the Post Register attacking both the series and Zuckerman. The ads pointed out that Zuckerman is gay and said that “for whatever reason, Zuckerman chose to weave a story that unfairly, and without merit, paints Scout leaders and church leaders to appear unscrupulous, and blames them for the molestation of little children.”

When we wrote about VanderSloot in February 2012—after it emerged that his companies had donated $1 million to Mitt Romney’s super-PAC—we took note of this controversy.

That’s what VanderSloot sued us over. He also filed suit against Zuckerman for an interview the reporter had given to Rachel Maddow after our article appeared. (Mother Jones has paid for Zuckerman’s defense.) In a document filed with the court this past July, Zuckerman detailed his experience in 2005, after VanderSloot’s first ad about him ran.

“There was an immediate and dramatic impact in my life, which I believed was directly tied to the publication of the ad and was like nothing I’d experienced before. By outing me in my own newspaper (and linking my orientation to an attack on my integrity as a reporter), the ad profoundly affected my daily life as well as my professional reputation.

“My experience was that I was ‘outed’ because of the ad—a large audience, if not most people I interacted with in Idaho, found out I am gay because of the ad.”

The day after the ad ran, Zuckerman said in the document, he came home from work and found his partner on the couch. “He appeared to have been crying. I asked what was wrong. He told me he had been fired because they had found out he is gay because of the ad.”

There had been harassment before, Zuckerman continued, especially when the hosts of a local radio show went after him and the series. But it “quickly died down…What happened after the ads ran was traumatic, one of the worst periods of my life.”

People left notes on his doorstep, he said, one of which read “FUCK YOU FAGGOT.” Someone called, more than once, and threatened to rape him with a handgun. A man approached his car in a parking lot one evening and said, “I know who you fucking are. You better watch your back,” before running after him as he drove off. Another man followed him through the aisles at Walmart and said, “I read about how you’re homosexual and who you are. You’re going to fucking pay for this.”

A young woman at the drive-through where he got coffee, Zuckerman said in the document, “refused to serve me. She said something like, ‘I read about you in the paper and I know what you are. You aren’t welcome here and you don’t belong in Idaho Falls.”

There’s more. You can read the full document, which is public as part of the lawsuit, here.

In a statement released as part of the settlement, Zuckerman said his comments on the Rachel Maddow Show “could have been clearer.” He reiterated that there had been attacks against him before VanderSloot’s ads. He also said that while his then-boyfriend had claimed to have been fired because of the ads, that turned out not to have been true. (VanderSloot threatened to sue the ex-boyfriend last year, backing off only after the ex-boyfriend recanted his previous statements.)

Zuckerman also took note of VanderSloot’s recent support for a campaign to add the words “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to Idaho’s anti-discrimination law. “A ‘gay basher’ would not be a strong supporter of such a campaign,” he said in the settlement statement. “I hope Mr. VanderSloot and his companies further their support for this human rights movement.”

Zuckerman’s attorney, Gary Bostwick, said in a statement, “Peter was sued for commenting on television about someone who played a major part in the last national campaign for President. I have often been surprised that someone who chooses to jump into the ring of public affairs can’t take a critical punch without suing. But I’ve seen it a lot. And I’m proud to have done what I could to help Peter fight for our treasured right to freely debate how we are to be governed.”

As for us at MoJo, we’re glad this ordeal is over for Zuckerman. He has been standing up to intimidation and attacks from VanderSloot for more than a decade, and we hope this is the last of it. The kind of reporting he did for the Post Register—local muckraking that often offends the most powerful people in town—is absolutely vital for a functioning democracy, and it is under enormous pressure across America. We salute it, and him.

Originally posted here: 

Billionaire Who Lost Case Against Mother Jones Settles Related Lawsuit

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Billionaire Who Lost Case Against Mother Jones Settles Related Lawsuit

A Federal Judge Just Gave an Epic Defense of Planned Parenthood That Everyone Should Read

by DannielleLay Posted on October 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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In a blistering opinion, a federal judge blocked Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s attempt to defund Planned Parenthood in the state, saying the move would cause “irreparable harm” to the 5,200 women who depend on the organization for health care.

In July, Jindal ordered an investigation into the group following the release of a series of highly edited videos that show Planned Parenthood officials discussing fetal tissue donation. He also ordered the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) to cancel Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s (PPGC) Medicaid contract, which it did in August, effectively defunding the organization in the state. Neither of the two Planned Parenthood clinics in Louisiana offer abortions. Planned Parenthood took the DHH to court later that month.

US District Judge John W. deGravelles issued a restraining order against the DHH’s move late Sunday. The order will remain in place for at least two weeks while the judge makes a final ruling on the case. However, in his opinion, deGravelles was outspoken in his support of Planned Parenthood. He wrote that the DHH attack on the organization was baseless:

The uncontradicted evidence in the record at this time is that PPGC does not perform abortions in Louisiana, is not involved in the sale of fetal tissue and none of the conduct in question occurred at the PPGC’s two Louisiana facilities. Based on the record before it, it appears likely that Plaintiff will be able to prove that the attempted termination against it are motived and driven, at least in large part, by reasons unrelated to its competence and unique to it.

He also disputed a common Republican argument (which former Mother Jones reporter Molly Redden debunked last month) that closing Planned Parenthood won’t burden its patients, who would have access to other reproductive health providers in the area. According to deGravelles, defunding Planned Parenthood would leave thousands of women without options:

The Court turns to the uncontested and unquestioned facts—PPGC serves 5,200 poor and needy women, and PPGC has repeatedly been deemed a ‘competent’ provider by DHH—and honors the public interest in affording these women access to their provider of choice…For decades, PPGC has served numerous at-risk individuals and helped DHH combat a host of diseases, and, in the process, become the regular provider of over 5,000 women.

Several other states, including Arkansas, Utah, and Alabama, have cut funding for Planned Parenthood by canceling Medicaid contracts. In August, the Obama administration notified Alabama and Louisiana that cutting Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding may violate federal law.

For its part, Jindal’s office said on Monday that the governor would “continue to fight to ensure Planned Parenthood no longer receives taxpayer funding.”

Excerpt from:  

A Federal Judge Just Gave an Epic Defense of Planned Parenthood That Everyone Should Read

Posted in Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Federal Judge Just Gave an Epic Defense of Planned Parenthood That Everyone Should Read

The GOP’s Problems Go Way Deeper Than the Speaker Mess

by Lenore55Fuug Posted on October 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Hudson Christie

Has any piece of legislation in American history held on by its fingertips more dramatically than the Affordable Care Act? Let’s review the tape.

In 2009, it passed in the Senate by a margin of zero votes. In 2010, thanks to some fancy parliamentary maneuvering, it survived the loss of the Democrats’ filibuster-­proof majority after Sen. Ted Kennedy’s death. In 2012, it squeaked through a Supreme Court challenge after Chief Justice John Roberts reportedly changed his vote at the last minute. It hung on again later that year when President Barack Obama won reelection. In 2013 came the disastrous rollout of its website, and in 2015, yet another unsuccessful Supreme Court challenge. And along the way it outlasted more than 50 attempts by congressional Republicans to repeal all or part of it.

For six years, Obamacare has been the ultimate Republican punching bag. It helped win the party a landslide victory in the 2010 midterms. Repealing it has consistently been an applause line for conservative politicians. And even now that it’s up and running pretty successfully, poll after poll shows at least 40 percent of the public still disapproves of it.

All this means that Obamacare should be a killer issue for Republicans in 2016. It’s fragile, it’s unpopular, it’s hated by the base, and this is their last realistic chance to repeal it. If they don’t take the presidency and both houses of Congress next year, they’ll have to wait until 2020 for another opportunity. By that time, the law will have been in place for a decade, and it will be covering upward of 20-25 million people. While that might not be enough to make it as beloved as Social Security or Medicare, it’s certainly enough to make it politically unassailable. Conservatives have been warning for years that if Obamacare doesn’t get repealed this instant, it will soon be too late. This time they’re finally right.

And yet, so far the issue has been oddly MIA in the Republican primary. Chants of “repeal and replace” are still around, but they have a distinctly pro forma ring to them. Obamacare was barely mentioned in the first two Republican debates, eclipsed by Donald Trump, border walls, and ISIS. And even if a Republican wins the White House next fall, conservative health care wonks have nearly given up on enacting anything more than a partial rollback of the law.

So what happened? What killed off the frenzied demands to destroy Obama’s signature achievement?

The most obvious answer is that conservatives have been whipping up outrage about the law for so long that even its most ardent haters are exhausted. What’s more, it’s much harder to take away a benefit that lots of people are actually relying on than to repeal a theoretical one.

But Obamacare’s foes running out of steam is just the most obvious sign of a larger trend: A lot of traditional conservative issues are losing their momentum. Gay marriage lost its fear factor years ago and was taken off the table once and for all by the Supreme Court in June. The economy is probably in good enough shape to not be a big campaign issue. Taxes have already been lowered so much that the average family pays only about 5 percent of its earnings to the IRS. And 14 years after 9/11 and four years after Osama bin Laden’s death, accusing liberals of being spineless on terrorism no longer packs the same punch.

True, Republicans still have a short list of hot-button topics that inflame their base, but increasingly these are wedge issues that promise nearly as much downside as upside. Immigration is the most visible example. Hysteria over border walls, birthright citizenship, and anchor babies risks losing Hispanics to the Democratic Party for good—something the GOP can ill afford. And the problems go far beyond immigration. Republican voters aren’t sold on the idea of Iraq War 2.0, and as a result even the most hawkish candidates are unwilling to propose sending more than a few thousand troops to fight ISIS. Even abortion runs the risk of becoming a wedge issue for the party as activists demand that candidates take extreme positions such as opposing exceptions for rape, incest, or the life and health of the mother—even though these are popular among most Republican voters.

This is the point at which liberals are supposed to sneer that the GOP is now the party of no new ideas. But that’s not really fair. The difference between the two parties isn’t so much one of ideas, but of unity behind those ideas. Thirty years ago, Democrats were the ones torn apart by wedge issues: affirmative action, crime, abortion, taxes. These tensions haven’t gone away completely—just look at Black Lives Matter activists heckling Sen. Bernie Sanders over the summer—but they no longer dominate the party. Now the tables have turned. A recent survey showed that nearly half of Democrats agreed with their party’s core position on at least six of seven major issues. Only a quarter of Republicans were in such broad agreement with their party. And the discord is coming at the worst possible time, just as long-term demographics are starting to seriously eat into their base.

Millennials, the most socially liberal generation ever, are increasing their share of the electorate as more conservative cohorts die off. And every year, the racial minority share of the population rises by 0.4 percent. The net result is simple: Every four years, roughly 2 percent of the population leans further left. It’s a slow enough process that Republicans can still win presidential elections, but in a 50-50 nation even small changes in support are enough to make these wins more difficult. Gerrymandering and incumbency effects may keep Republicans in partial control of Congress for a while longer, but the presidency is slipping out of their reach.

There are no obvious solutions. If Republicans move to the center—as Democrats did in the ’80s—they risk losing the support of their base. If they move to the right, they lose moderates and independents. Arthur Brooks, president of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, acknowledged this conundrum recently when he told the Washington Post that “Republicans need to recognize this and change the terms of the conversation—or they’ll pay the price for decades.”

Every party faces conflict between its center and its base, but the emergence of the tea party and the Fox News echo chamber has put this dynamic on steroids. Moving even to the moderate right, let alone to the center, is all but impossible for the GOP. Its base demands not just a border fence, but the repeal of the 14th Amendment; not just opposition to gun control, but rejection of universal background checks, which even the National Rifle Association used to support; not just skepticism about climate change, but insistence that global warming is a grand hoax perpetrated by liberals to subvert the free market. This conflict between party and base entered uncharted territory earlier this month when Republicans literally couldn’t find a single plausible candidate willing to be Speaker of the House. No one wanted to deal with the bomb-throwing antics of the reactionary wing of their own party. Even candidates who consider themselves tea partiers didn’t think they could control a caucus dominated by tea partiers. Among Republicans, becoming Speaker is now considered a career death sentence.

It’s hard to see any way out of this. If Republican candidates appeal to nativism, they lose the Hispanic vote. If they appeal to social conservatives, they lose the millennial vote. If they appeal to older white voters, they energize black voters and do the Democrats’ grassroots organizing for them. And if they throw up their hands and rely on endless hysteria about Benghazi and Hillary Clinton’s email server, the tea partiers will turn out in droves but they lose everyone else. In an era when the inmates are running the asylum, it’s not just Obamacare bashing that’s become a double-edged sword for Republicans. It’s nearly everything they’ve relied on for the past three decades.

Increasingly, this is the GOP’s true dilemma. It’s not the party of no ideas; it’s the party of no escape.

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The GOP’s Problems Go Way Deeper Than the Speaker Mess

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Check Out the Homes of Some of the Bay Area’s Biggest Water Guzzlers—Including Billy Beane

by JaredSatterwhite Posted on October 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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One of the most frustrating things about the ongoing California drought is knowing that some people just don’t give a damn. Letting your lawn die and your toilet bowl turn yellow can seem absurd when you know that a few water hogs are keeping their gardens as green as Costa Rican golf courses (like the mystery Bel Air resident who uses 12 million gallons per year).

Citing privacy concerns, every major California water district has refused to name their biggest users. Until today.

The East Bay Municipal Utility District just released a partial list of homeowners who have violated its new excessive-water-use rules. In this district encompassing the cities and hills east of San Francisco, scofflaws are defined as those whose daily usage exceeds 1,000 gallons—four times the 250-gallon a day residential average.

EBMUD’s list of shame only covers customers who are billed in September, and excludes any who filed appeals. Yet it reveals many cases of egregious water use among the owners of massive properties in the East Bay hills. One of the largest violators is Oakland A’s executive Billy Beane, whose team is known as one of the most eco-friendly in baseball.

Here are the top five water guzzlers on the water district’s list—and aerial snapshots of their homes:

1. George Kirkland, former vice chairman of Chevron
Daily water use: 12,579 gallons
Location: Danville, California
Property value: $3.5 million
Mitigating factor: Kirkland told the San Jose Mercury News that there was a leak in a water line to the two acres of vineyards on his four-acre lot.

2. Mark Pine, venture capitalist
Daily water use: 8,091 gallons
Location: Alamo, California
Property value: $6.9 million

3. Billy Beane, vice president of baseball operations and minority owner of the Oakland A’s
Daily water use: 5,996 gallons
Location: Danville, California
Property value: $4.8 million

4. Dane Bigham, software executive
Daily water use: 5,747 gallons
Location: Walnut Creek, California
Property value: $891,000

5. Gene Yee, intellectual property attorney
Daily water use: 5,659 gallons
Location: San Leandro, California
Property value: $269,000
Mitigating factor: Yee’s water use is hard to explain given that he has very little landscaping. Perhaps he also has a leak?

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Check Out the Homes of Some of the Bay Area’s Biggest Water Guzzlers—Including Billy Beane

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Early Polls Suggest Hillary Clinton Did Pretty Well in Tuesday’s Debate

by LorrineBucher Posted on October 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Now it’s time to take a look at the Democratic side of the presidential race. Obviously nobody cares about Webb, O’Malley, or Chafee, so let’s zero in on Clinton and Sanders. Who won Tuesday’s debate? Andrew Prokop summarizes the early polls in the chart on the right.

Now, these results are fairly consistent with Bernie supporters thinking Bernie won and Hillary supporters thinking Hillary won—plus a few extra for Hillary. We’ll have to wait for the big national polls to see if the debate actually changed support levels much for either of them. At a rough glance, though, it looks as if most of the folks who prefer Joe Biden in the polls ended up choosing Hillary when the choice was limited to just her and Bernie.

This makes sense ideologically, since Biden and Clinton occupy pretty similar niches, and it makes sense from a name recognition standpoint too. But I’d point out one other thing that we political junkies might miss: Bernie Sanders can sometimes come across on TV as loud and angry. We’re all so used to his speaking style that it doesn’t affect us much, but for people tuning in for the first time, it might have been fairly off-putting. I don’t know if likely Democratic voters feel the same way, but they might. Just a thought.

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Early Polls Suggest Hillary Clinton Did Pretty Well in Tuesday’s Debate

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Heroin’s Death Toll Reaches Another Gruesome Landmark

by MellissCawthorn Posted on October 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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For the first time in Virginia’s history, more people died last year from overdoses on heroin and prescription opioids than from automobile accidents. The state joins 35 others that have seen heroin and opioid deaths eclipse traffic deaths, in an alarming trend that has begun to draw attention on the presidential campaign trail.

In 2014, 728 people succumbed to heroin or opioid-related overdoses, compared to 700 people who died in car crashes. A year earlier, the statistical comparison was flipped, with the highway death toll in Virginia at 741, compared to 661 deaths from drug overdoses. The year before that, in 2012, the numbers were even more skewed toward automobile accidents, as 750 traffic deaths trumped the 504 drug overdoses in the state.

As the rate of traffic deaths drops—those 700 deaths are the fewest in a decade—the heroin overdose rate continues to climb. According to the office of Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, fatal heroin and prescription drug overdoses have increased by 57% in the last five years alone.

“This heroin and prescription drug epidemic is a public health issue, a public safety and law enforcement issue, and most importantly, it’s a family issue,” Herring’s office stated in a press release last week. “The rising and tragic death toll adds a dose of reality and a sense of urgency to our efforts and those of our local, state and federal partners.”

The rise in fatal overdoses is not limited to Virginia. In 36 states and Washington, DC, more people are dying from drug overdoses than from traffic incidents. According to the nonprofit Trust for America’s Health, more than 2 million Americans abuse prescription drugs, and the number of new heroin users has doubled in the past seven years. As opiates prescribed by physicians have become more expensive, people have turned to heroin, a cheaper option with similar effects. The Center for Disease Control reports that heroin deaths quadrupled between 2000 and 2013.

“They are addicted to prescription opiates because they are essentially the same chemical with the same effect on the brain as heroin,” CDC director Frieden said at a press conference in July. “Heroin costs roughly 5 times less than prescription opiates on the street.”

Although heroin and opioid deaths are climbing at an alarming rate, less than one percent of the US population abuses heroin, according to the CDC. That figure, however, does not include people in the military, homeless people, or prison inmates, so the true number may be higher.

Presidential candidates have had to field questions about the growing trend while on the campaign trail. At an August public forum in New Hampshire, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton expressed surprise at the prevalence of the problem.

“I have to confess—I was surprised,” Clinton said. “I did not expect that I would hear about drug abuse and substance abuse and other such challenges everywhere I went.”

In May, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed a bill designed to stymie substance abuse, and a week later expressed his frustration at what he considered a correctable issue. “This is a treatable problem,” Christie said. “And we need to be talking about it and treating it like an illness, and not like some moral failure.”

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, whose daughter died in 2009 after years of drug and alcohol abuse, argued against imprisoning people for their drug problems. “Drug addition shouldn’t be criminalized,” Fiorina told a group of reporters during a conference call in May. “We need to treat it appropriately.”

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Heroin’s Death Toll Reaches Another Gruesome Landmark

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Bernie Sanders Gave a Helluva Defense of Hillary’s Email Scandals at the Debate. There Are 32 Problems With It.

by RollandMacansh Posted on October 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Sen. Bernie Sanders delivered one of the most enthusiastic applause lines of the first Democratic presidential debate when he came to Hillary Clinton’s defense over her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state. After CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Clinton about her upcoming testimony in front of Congress related to her emails, she offered the same answer she has repeatedly given in response.

“I’ve taken responsibility for it,” she said. “I did say it was a mistake.” She then employed her recent campaign strategy of linking the criticism of her email setup to the heavily politicized House Select Committee on Benghazi, which she described as “basically an arm of the Republican National Committee.”

But before everybody moved on, Sanders weighed in. “I think the secretary is right,” he said. “And that is, I think the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.” Clinton smiled and thanked him, and the crowd roared its approval.

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Bernie Sanders Gave a Helluva Defense of Hillary’s Email Scandals at the Debate. There Are 32 Problems With It.

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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.

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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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