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Posted 11/23/20

FIX THOSE NEIGHBORHOODS!

Creating safe places calls for a comprehensive, organic approach

     For Police Issues by Julius (Jay) Wachtel. While campaigning in Charlotte four years ago, candidate Trump promised that he would place the nation’s impoverished communities on the path to prosperity with major investments in infrastructure, job development and education. He would also fight the disorder that bedevils poor areas and assure that justice was dispensed equally to all. While some Black voices were skeptical about the sincerity of Trump’s “New Deal for Black America,” others applauded his apparent enthusiasm for reform. Even after eight years of Democratic rule, poverty and crime still beset the inner cities. So give him a chance!

     And for a single term, America did. According to the Fed’s most recent (2019) survey, the economy performed well, with the gross domestic product going up unemployment going down. And until the ravages of the pandemic and urban disorder, violence was also on the way down. According to FBI figures, the violent crime rate dropped one percent during 2018-2019 and property crime fell four and one-half percent.

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     Yet not everyone benefited. As the Fed noted, income distribution has hardly budged in the last three decades, with the top one-third enjoying about a third of the nation’s wealth while the bottom half seems consigned to a measly two percent. Federal crime statistics demonstrate marked disparities as to place. Detroit closed out 2015 with 295 murders; New York City had 319. Once their populations are taken into account, the Motor City’s homicide rate – 43.8 per 100,000 pop. – was more than ten times the Big Apple’s measly 4.1. Four years later the results proved much the same, with Detroit’s 492 murders yielding a 41.4 rate while New York City’s 319 homicides delivered a far gentler 3.8, even better than the nation’s 5.0.

     Considering New York City’s seemingly benign crime numbers it seems to make perfect sense that Mayor Bill de Blasio calls it the “safest big city in America.” Only problem is, “New York City” is a place name. People live, work and play in neighborhoods. And during a career fighting crime, and another trying to figure out where it comes from, your blogger discovered that focusing on tangible places can prove illuminating in ways that yakking about wholes obscures.

     Politicians know that. Mayor de Blasio counts on a profusion of prosperous neighborhoods to produce low citywide crime numbers. Consider the Upper East Side. With a population of 220,000 and a poverty rate of only 7.2 percent (versus the city’s twenty), its police precinct, the 19th., posted zero murders in 2017, one in 2018, and zero again in 2019. And while 2020 has supposedly brought everyone major grief crime-wise, as of November 15 the 19th. has recorded just one killing.

     Contrast that with the Big Apple’s downtrodden Brownsville district. Burdened with a 29.4 percent poverty rate, its 86,000 residents have historically endured an abysmal level of violence. Brownsville’s police precinct, the 73rd., logged nine murders in 2017, thirteen in 2018 and eleven in 2019. That produced a murder rate (per 100,000 pop.) more than three times New York City’s overall rate and about thirteen times that of the Upper East Side. Then consider what happened this year. As of November 15 the poverty-stricken 73rd. logged an astounding 25 murders, more than twice its merely deplorable 2019 figure.

Upper East Siders managed to shake off the pandemic and George Floyd. Clearly not the Brownsvillians. Note to Hizzoner: they’re both your denizens.

     Switch shores. Los Angeles Police Department’s West Los Angeles station serves an affluent area of 228,000 inhabitants. Its primary ZIP, 90025, boasts a poverty rate of 11.25 percent. West L.A. Division reported two murders between January 1 and November 14, 2018, one between those dates in 2019, and four this year. In comparison, the 77th. Street station tends to a score of impoverished neighborhoods. Its primary Zip code, 90003, suffers from a poverty rate of 30.7 percent. Although the 77th. serves a substantially smaller population of about 175,000, it endured far, far more murders (39, 35 and 48) than West L.A. Division during the same periods. And while murder did increase in both areas between 2019 and 2020, check out the leap in the 77th.

Indeed, things in the poor parts of L.A. have deteriorated so markedly this year that four killings last night in South Los Angeles caused the city to reach that 300-murder milestone it successfully avoided for a decade. Shades of Brownsville!

     So, crime-wise, is there really a “New York City”? An “L.A.”? During the last decade posts in our “Neighborhoods” special section reported similar disparities within cities across the U.S. For example, consider Minneapolis, that usually tranquil place where the death at the hands of police of Mr. George Floyd set off national waves of protest that have yet to subside. Coding its eighty-five neighborhoods for violent crimes per 100,000 pop., we recently compared the four least violent (mean rate 0.7) with the four most brutish (mean rate 35.6). That exposed a huge disparity in mean family income: $106,347 for the calm areas, $45,678 in the not-so-peaceful.

     So is there only one Minneapolis? No more so than one Portland! Our national capital of dissent has at least 87 neighborhoods. Comparing the ten neighborhoods with the lowest violence rates (mean=1.5) against the ten with the highest (mean=9.0) revealed that only nine percent of the former were in poverty versus 21.4 percent of the latter. Ditto Baltimore, South Bend, Chicago and elsewhere. (Click here, here and here.)

     It’s hardly a secret that poverty and violence are locked in an embrace. Years ago your blogger and his ATF colleagues discreetly trailed along as traffickers hauled freshly-bought handguns into distressed neighborhoods for resale to local peddlers. Alas, a gun from one of the loads we missed was used to murder a police officer. That tragedy, which haunts me to this day, furnished the inspiration for “Sources of Crime Guns in Los Angeles, California,” a journal article I wrote while transitioning into academia.

     When yours truly arrived on campus he discovered that the criminal justice educational community was not much interested in neighborhoods. That lack of attention has apparently continued. But ignoring place can easily lead us astray. A recent study of Chicago’s move to facilitate pre-trial release approvingly notes that defendants let go after the relaxation were no more apt to reoffend (17 percent) than those released under the older guidelines. To be sure, more crimes did happen. (A news account estimated 200-300 more per year.) But as the authors emphasized, a six-month increase in releases from 8,700 under the old guidelines to 9,200 under the new (5.7 percent) didn’t significantly affect crime citywide. Given Chicagoland’s formidable crime problem, that’s hardly surprising. But set the whole aside. What about the poverty-stricken Chicago neighborhoods where most releasees inevitably wind up? Did their residents notice a change? Was it for the better or worse?

     Yet no matter how well it’s done, policing is clearly not the ultimate solution. Preventing violence is a task for society. As we’ve repeatedly pitched, a concerted effort to provide poverty-stricken individuals and families with child care, tutoring, educational opportunities, language skills, job training, summer jobs, apprenticeships, health services and – yes – adequate housing could yield vast benefits.

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     That notion, which the Urban Institute and others have long championed, is nothing new. And while there are some promising nonprofit initiatives – say, Habitat for Humanity’s neighborhood revitalization program – most efforts at urban renewal focus on rehabilitating physical space and helping industries and businesses grow. In today’s Washington Post, mayors representing cities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky peddled a “Marshall Plan” for Middle America that would create jobs through major investments in renewable power. While that could ostensibly yield great benefits, it hardly addresses the needs of the scores of unskilled, under-educated, poorly-served denizens of our inner cities. That, however, is the goal of Jobs-Plus, a long-standing HUD program that offers employment and educational services to the residents of public housing in designated areas. Its budget? A measly $15 million. Nationwide.

     Meanwhile impoverished communities continue to reel from crime and disorder. So here’s a hint for Mr. Biden, who absent a coup, will assume the throne in January. Your predecessor talked up a good idea. Alas, it was just that: “talk.” America urgently needs to invest in its impoverished neighborhoods. A comprehensive “Marshall Plan” that would raise the educational and skill levels and improve the job prospects, lives and health of the inhabitants of these chronically distressed places seems the logical place to start.

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Special topic: Neighborhoods

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RELATED ARTICLES AND REPORTS

Sources of Crime Guns in Los Angeles, California

Urban Institute: Exploring Capital Flows in Chicago (2022)

Tackling Persistent Poverty in Distressed Urban Neighborhoods (2014)

John Jay: Memo to Joe Biden: Focus on Neighborhood Safety (The Crime Report, Dec. 7, 2020)

Mayor’s Plan for Neighborhood Safety (2019)     Reducing Violence Without Police (2020)

HUD: Jobs-Plus     Neighborhoods and Violent Crime (2016)

WHEN MUST COPS SHOOT? (PART II)

“An ounce of prevention…” (Ben Franklin, 1736)

     For Police Issues by Julius (Jay) Wachtel. Part I described four problematic encounters that officers ultimately resolved by gunning someone down. Each citizen had presented a substantial threat: two flaunted knives, one went for a gun, and another reportedly used a vehicle as a weapon. Yet no one had been hurt before authorities stepped in. Might better police work – or perhaps, none at all – have led to better outcomes?

     Let’s start with a brief recap:

• Los Angeles: A 9-1-1 call led four officers to confront a “highly agitated” 34-year old man running around with a knife. A Taser shot apparently had no effect, and when he advanced on a cop the officer shot him dead.
   
• Philadelphia: A knife-wielding “screaming man” whose outbursts led to repeated police visits to his mother’s residence chased two officers into the street. As in L.A., he refused to drop the weapon, and when he moved on a cop the officer fired.
   
• San Bernardino, California: A lone officer confronted a large man who was reportedly waving a gun and jumping on parked cars. He refused to cooperate and a violent struggle ensued. During the fight the man reached for a gun. So the cop shot him dead.
   
• Waukegan, Illinois: A woman suddenly drove off when a cop tried to arrest her passenger/boyfriend on a warrant. (See 10/14/24 update) Another cop chased the car, and when it ran off the road the officer approached on foot. He quickly opened fire, supposedly because the car backed up at him. Its driver was wounded and her passenger was killed.

Click here for the complete collection of strategy and tactics essays

     Consider the first two instances. Agitated, mentally disturbed men went at cops with knives. Might a Taser strike have stopped them in their tracks? A decade ago, when Tasers were an up-and-coming tool, their prospects seemed limitless. Don’t physically tangle with an evil-doer. Don’t beat them with a club. Zap them instead! But as we discussed in a two-parter (“Policing is a Contact Sport,” I and II) that enthusiasm was soon tempered. Some citizens proved highly vulnerable to being zapped, and a substantial number died.

     Other issues surfaced. A 2019 in-depth report, “When Tasers Fail,” paints a decidedly gloomy picture. Recounting a series of episodes in which Tasers failed to stop assailants, including some armed with knives, it concluded that Tasers – and particularly its newest versions – was far less reliable than what its manufacturer claimed. For the relatively clumsy and uncertain tool to be effective its pair of darts must pierce the skin (or come exceedingly close) and be separated by at least one foot. That requires an accurate shot from a moderate distance. Even then, darts can be pulled out, and officers usually get only two shots before having to replace the cartridges. Even when darts are accurately placed, some persons are unfazed when struck while others become even more violent. A use-of-force expert adept with Tasers conveyed his colleagues’ change of heart:

When electronic defense weapons first came on the market, the idea was that they would be used to replace lethal force. I think that was sort of a misnomer.

     Tasers were never meant to keep cops from being killed. That’s always been a job for firearms. Even then, nothing’s guaranteed. When an angry someone armed with a knife is only a few feet away (supposedly, less than 21 feet) a cop may have insufficient time to unholster his weapon and shoot. Even with a gun in hand, firing under pressure often proves inaccurate. Bottom line: when facing a deadly threat, drawing one’s pistol well in advance, per the officers in Los Angeles and Philadelphia, is essential.

     Yet Los Angeles, which deploys two-officer units, had four cops on hand. Couldn’t they have effectively deployed a Taser before the suspect closed in? Actually, during the chase one cop apparently tried, but the suspect was running, and there was no apparent effect. LAPD’s overseers at the Police Commission ultimately ruled that the shooting was appropriate. But they nonetheless criticized the officers for improperly staging the encounter. Police Chief Michel Moore agreed. In his view, the sergeant should have organized the response so that one officer was the “point,” another the “cover,” and another in charge of less-than-lethal weapons. Chief Moore was referring to a well-known strategy, “slowing down.” Instead of quickly intervening, cops are encouraged to take the time to organize their response and allow backup officers, supervisors and crisis intervention teams to arrive.

     Might “slowing down” have helped to defuse what happened in San Bernardino or Waukegan?

• As San Bernardino’s 9-1-1 caller reported, the bad guy was indeed armed with a gun. He also vastly outsized the officer and the struggle could have easily gone the other way (click here for the bystander video.)
   

That the cop didn’t “slow down” probably reflected his worry about the persons in the liquor store where the suspect was headed. Waiting for backup would have risked their safety. So for that we commend him. Still, it’s concerning that he was left to fend for himself. Cities that deploy single-officer cars – and these are in the clear majority – normally dispatch multiple units on risky calls. Lacking San Bernardino’s log we assume that other officers were tied up. There’s no indication that the actual struggle was called in, so dispatch might have “assumed” that all was O.K. Really, for such circumstances there’s no ready tactical or management fix. Assuring officer and citizen safety may require more cops. And at times like the present, when taking money from the cops is all the rage, good luck with that.

• Waukegan was different. Neither of the vehicle’s occupants posed a risk to innocent citizens. But the officer who originally encountered the couple tried to do everything, including arresting the passenger, on his own. That complete self-reliance was duplicated by the cop who chased down the car. His lone, foot approach was unfathomably risky. Additional units could have provided cover, a visible deterrent and a means of physical containment. After all, the first officer was apparently still available. But the second cop didn’t wait, and the consequences of that decision have resonated throughout the land. No doubt, “slowing down” would have been a good idea. (See 9/28/22 and 10/14/24 updates)

     Could the L.A. and Philadelphia cops have waited things out? Watch the videos (click here for L.A. and here for Philly.) Both situations posed a clear, immediate risk to innocent persons. Agitated suspects who move quickly and impulsively can defeat even the best laid plans and create a situation where it’s indeed “every officer for themselves.” Worse yet, should a bad guy or girl advance on a cop before they can be “zapped,” other officers may have to hold their fire, as discharging guns or Tasers in close quarters can easily injure or kill a colleague. And such things do happen.

     So what about doing…nothing? In Waukegan there was really no rush. Waiting for another day might have easily prevented a lethal outcome and the rioting that followed. That, in effect, is the “solution” we peddled long ago in “First, Do no Harm.” Here’s how that post began:

It’s noon on Martin Luther King day, January 17, 2011. While on routine patrol you observe a man sleeping on the sidewalk of a commercial park…in front of offices that are closed for the holiday. A Papa John’s pizza box is next to him. Do you: (a) wake him up, (b) call for backup, then wake him, (c) quietly check if there’s a slice left, or (d) take no action.

To be sure, that gentleman was threatening no one and seemed unarmed. So the medical tenet primum non nocere – first, do no harm – is the obvious approach. But police in Aurora, Colorado have substantially extended its application. Here’s how CBS News described what happened in the Denver suburb on two consecutive days in early September:

…Aurora police officers twice walked away from arresting a 47-year-old man who was terrorizing residents of an apartment complex, even after the man allegedly exposed himself to kids, threw a rock through one resident’s sliding glass door, was delusional, was tasered by police and forced the rescue of two other residents from a second floor room in an apartment he had ransacked.

     According to a deputy chief, backing off was appropriate and prevented injuring the suspect or the cops. After all, officers ultimately went back and took the man into custody without incident. Yet as a Denver PD lieutenant/CJ professor pointed out, innocent citizens were twice abandoned and left at risk. “It was a serious call to begin with since it involved a child...I would not have left the guy two successive days, probably not even after the first call.”

     Aurora’s laid-back approach remained in effect. On September 24 a team of officers staked out the residence of a suspected child abuser who had a no-bail domestic violence warrant from Denver. He refused to come out and was thought to be well armed. So the cops eventually left. They later discovered that the man had an outstanding kidnapping warrant. But when they returned he was gone. And at last report he’s still on the lam.

     Check out the that post’s reader comments. Not all were complementary. Police undoubtedly feel torn. But the killing of George Floyd struck a chord and led to rioting in the city. You see, one year earlier, on  August 24, 2019, while Aurora’s cops were still operating under the old, more aggressive approach, they forcefully detained Elijah McClain, a 21-year old Black pedestrian whom a 9-1-1 caller reported was behaving oddly. McClain forcefully resisted, and during the struggle officers applied a carotid hold. On arrival paramedics diagnosed excited delirium syndrome (exDS) and injected a sedative (ketamine). McClain soon went into cardiac arrest and died days later at a hospital. On February 22, 2021 an official city report concluded that police did not have adequate cause to forcefully detain or restrain Mr. McClain and that officers and paramedics badly mishandled the situation. A wrongful death lawsuit was subsequently settled for $15 million (see 11/22/21, 1/21/23, 10/16/23, 11/6/23, 12/26/23 and 1/8/24 updates).

     Yet we’re reluctant to suggest doing nothing as a remedy. Imagine the reaction should an innocent person be injured or killed after cops back off. And while we’re fond of “de-escalation,” the circumstances in our four examples seem irreparably conflicted. Consider the suspects in San Bernardino and Waukegan. Both had substantial criminal records and faced certain arrest: one for carrying a gun and the other for a warrant. Yet officers nonetheless tried to be amiable. (Click here for the San Bernardino video and here for Waukegan.) In fact, being too casual may have been part of the problem. Our personal experience suggests that gaining voluntary compliance from persons who know they’re going to jail calls for a more forceful, commanding presence.

     Great. So is there any approach that might have averted a lethal ending? “A Stitch in Time” suggests acting preventively, preferably before someone runs around with a gun or brandishes a knife. Police departments around the country have been fielding crisis-intervention teams with some success (see, for example, our recent discussion of the “Cahoots” model.) New York City is presently implementing a mental health response that totally cuts out police; that is, unless “there is a weapon involved or ‘imminent risk of harm.’” As even Cahoot’s advocates concede, once behavior breaches a certain threshold even the most sophisticated talk-oriented approach may not suffice.

     And there’s another problem. While we’re fans of intervening before situations explode, in the real world of budgets and such there’s usually little substantial follow-through. We’re talking quality, post-incident treatment, monitoring and, when necessary, institutionalization. Such measures are intrusive and expensive, and that’s where things break down. That means many problematic citizens (e.g., L.A., Philly, San Berdoo, Waukegan) will keep misbehaving until that day when…

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     Full stop. Officers resolve highly conflicted situations every day as a matter of course. But unlike goofs, which get big press, favorable outcomes draw precious little attention and no respect. Yet knowing how these successes came to be could be very useful. (Check out the author’s recent article about that in Police Chief.)

     We’re not holding our breath. During this ideologically fraught era only one-hundred percent success will do. Consider this outtake from a newspaper account about the incident in San Bernardino:

During a news conference Friday morning, the police sought to portray [the suspect] as physically intimidating, listing his height and weight — 6 feet 3 and 300 pounds — and cataloging what they called his “lengthy criminal past,” prompting one bystander to remark, “What does that have to do with him being murdered?

Alas, that attitude pervades the criminal justice educational community. Many well-meaning academics have been rolling their eyes for years at our admittedly feeble attempts to reach for explanations in the messy environment of policing. Their predominant P.O.V. – that poor outcomes must be attributed to purposeful wrongdoing – has apparently infected L.A. City Hall as well. At a time when “homicides and shootings soar to levels not seen in the city in a decade,” the City Council just decided to lop $150 million off LAPD’s budget and shrink its force by 350 sworn officers.

     Was that move well informed? Did it fully consider the imperatives and constraints of policing? And just what are those? If you’re willing to think, um, expansively, print out our collected essays in compliance and force and strategy and tactics. As long as you promise to give them away, they’re free!

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Why do Officers Succeed?

WHEN MUST COPS SHOOT? (PART I)

Four notorious incidents; four dead citizens. What did officers face?

     For Police Issues by Julius (Jay) Wachtel. Many of our readers teach in college and university criminology and criminal justice departments. (That, indeed, was your blogger’s last gig.) So for an instant, forget policing. Think about your last evaluation. Was the outcome fair and accurate? Did it fairly reflect – or even consider – the key issues you faced in the classroom and elsewhere?

     If your answers were emphatically “yes” consider yourself blessed. The academic workplace is a demanding beast, with a “clientele” whose abilities, attention span and willingness to comply vary widely. And we’re not even getting into administrative issues, say, pressures to graduate as many students as possible as quickly and cheaply as possible. Or the personalities, inclinations and career ambitions of department chairs. (If you’re one, no offense!) Bottom line: academia is a unique environment. Only practitioners who face it each day can truly understand the forces that affect what gets accomplished and how well things get done. Actually, that’s true for most any complex craft. Say, policing.

Click here for the complete collection of strategy and tactics essays

     So what is it that cops face? Let’s dissect four recent, notorious examples. Two involved mentally troubled men with knives, one a rowdy ex-con packing a gun, and one a young, non-compliant couple whose male half had amassed a substantial criminal record and was apparently wanted by police.

Los Angeles, November 19, 2019

     Last November a citizen alerted an LAPD patrol sergeant that a man was running around with a knife (photos above.) Officers soon encountered a highly-agitated 34-year old male flaunting a “seven-inch kitchen knife.” Officers took off after him on foot (click here for the officer bodycam video).

     During the chase one cop reportedly fired a Taser but without apparent effect. Soon the man paused. As his pursuers tried to keep their distance, Alex Flores swiftly advanced on one. His knife was in his right hand, with the blade pointed in and tucked under his forearm. After Mr. Flores ignored repeated commands to stop the officer shot him dead.

     At a police commission hearing Mr. Flores’ grieving mother and sister argued that he wasn’t a criminal but a mentally ill man struggling with paranoia. “What type of system do you all serve?” his sister demanded to know. “Clearly this was a racist murder.”

Philadelphia, October 26, 2020

     During the early morning hours of October 26 two Philadelphia police officers responded to a call about a “screaming man” with a knife.
 

     Walter Wallace, Jr., 27, was flaunting his weapon on a second-floor porch, and when he spotted the officers he promptly came down the steps. Pursued by his mother, he briskly chased the cops into the street (left and center photos). Ignoring commands to drop the weapon, he kept on coming. So the officers shot him dead (right photo. For a bystander video click here.)

     Mr. Wallace’s parents said that their mentally-disturbed son had been acting up despite being on medication. Indeed, police had already been at their home three times that very day. Their final call, they insisted, was for an ambulance, not the police. “His mother was trying to defuse the situation. Why didn’t they use a Taser?” asked the father. “Why you have to gun him down?” According to the police commissioner neither officer had a Taser, but the agency has been trying to get funds so that they could be issued to everyone.

San Bernardino, California, October 22, 2020

     During the late evening hours of October 22 San Bernardino (CA) police were called about a large, heavyset man who was “waving around a gun” and “jumping on vehicles” in a liquor store parking lot.

     A lone cop arrived. Spotting the suspect, he drew his pistol and yelled “hey man, come here” (left photo). But the six-foot-three, three-hundred pound man would have none of it. Disparaging the cop for drawing the gun, Mark Bender, 35, announced “I’m going to the store” and kept walking (right photo). Although the officer was vastly outsized he tried to physically restrain Mr. Bender, and the fight was on (click here for the officer bodycam video and here for a bystander video.)

     As the pair struggled on the ground, Mr. Bender pulled a 9mm. pistol from his pockets with his right hand (left and center photos). The cop instantly jumped away (right photo) and opened fire. Mr. Bender died at the hospital. His gun was recovered.

     Police reported that Mr. Bender was a convicted felon with a lengthy criminal record. According to the Superior Court portal he was pending trial on a variety of charges including burglary, resisting police and felony domestic violence.

Waukegan, Illinois, October 20, 2020

     About midnight, October 20th, a Waukegan (IL) officer interacted with the occupants of a parked car. According to the city’s initial version, an unidentified officer responded to a report of a suspicious car, but as he arrived the vehicle suddenly left. Another officer found it parked nearby. When he approached on foot the car went into reverse. Fearing he would be run over, the officer opened fire, badly wounding the driver, Tafara Williams, 20, and killing her passenger, Marcellis Stinnette, 19.

     Given from the hospital where she is recovering, Ms. Williams’ account was starkly different. She and Mr. Stinnette were sitting in her vehicle, in front of their residence, when a cop drove up. He knew her boyfriend’s name and said he recognized him “from jail.” She asked if they could leave, then slowly drove off when the officer stepped back. But when she turned into another street her car was met by gunfire. Bullets struck her and Mr. Stinnette and caused the vehicle to crash. An officer kept firing even though she yelled they had no gun. "My blood was gushing out of my body. The officer started yelling. They wouldn’t give us an ambulance till we got out the car.”

     Ms. Williams denied any wrongdoing. She doesn’t know what prompted the attack. “Why did you just flame up my car like that? Why did you shoot?” Once videos were released, however, what actually happened clearly varied from both accounts, and most dramatically from Ms. Williams’. Bodycam video from the officer who first encountered the couple reveals that he recognized Mr. Stinnette and announced that he was wanted on a warrant. But when the cop walked around to the passenger side (left photo shows his hand on the car) and told Mr. Stinnette that he was under arrest the vehicle abruptly sped away (right photo.)

     We now turn to dashcam video from the second police car (click here.) That officer took over the pursuit as the fleeing vehicle evaded the original responder. After running through a stop sign the vehicle turned right and ran off the road to the left (left photo). The officer abruptly stopped at the left curb alongside the vehicle (right photo) and exited his car. Gunfire soon erupted. His bodycam wasn’t on, so the officer’s claim that Ms. Williams backed up at him can’t be visually confirmed. But he accused her of that moments later once he had turned on his bodycam (click here for the clip.) This officer was promptly fired for not having the bodycam on and for other unspecified policy and procedural violations.

     Was Mr. Stinnette in fact a wanted person? We lack access to warrant information, but it seems likely  (but see 10/14/24 update). He had accumulated a substantial felony record in Waukegan during 2019, including separate prosecutions for “stolen vehicle,” “burglary” and “escape,” and the details we reviewed online suggest that he had failed to comply with conditions for release. As for Ms. Williams, she was the sole defendant in a May 2019 “criminal trespass” that was ultimately not prosecuted (Lake Co. Circuit Court case #19CM00001381.) We know of no other record. But her “flame up my car” comment leaves us wondering.

     To be sure, retrospective vision is one-hundred percent. Things could always have been handled better. Yet from the perspectives of the craftspersons who were saddled with the initial burden – meaning, the cops – each encounter posed a substantial risk to themselves, their colleagues, and innocent citizens. Unruly folks running around with knives or guns is never a good thing. And although no weapon was involved, check out the Waukegan pursuit clip. Sixteen seconds in, Ms. Williams blew a stop sign. Consider what might have happened had there been an oncoming vehicle in the cross street.

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     Still, was deadly force necessary? Shooting someone dead is an inherently repulsive notion that seems acceptable only under the most pressing of circumstances, when innocent lives are at risk and no feasible alternatives are in hand. And even when a shooting seems justifiable, can we take steps to avoid a repeat? Over the years our Strategy and Tactics and Compliance and Force sections have discussed a wide variety of practices intended to keep cops and citizens (yes, the naughty and the nice) from hurting one another, or worse. Of course, special resources may be called for. And there will always be issues with human temperament and citizens’ disposition to comply.

     Our next post will bring such notions forward and apply them to each incident. In the meantime, please share your thoughts, and we’ll include them – anonymously, of course – in Part II. Until then, stay safe!

FOR UPDATES SEE PART II

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Acting? Or Re-acting?     San Antonio Blues     What Were They Thinking? (I)  (II)   Backing Off

A Partner in Every Sense     When Must Cops Shoot? (II)     Speed Kills     De-Escalation

A Stitch in Time     Making Time

L.A. WANTS “CAHOOTS.” BUT WHICH “CAHOOTS”?

Some politicians demand that officers keep away from “minor, non-violent” crimes

     For Police Issues by Julius (Jay) Wachtel. “Ideology Trumps Reason” and “A Conflicted Mission” blamed ideological quarrels for hobbling America’s ability to regulate its borders and control the pandemic. Here we turn to ideology’s insidious effect on crime control, as politicians capitalize on the social movement inspired by the death of George Floyd to push half-baked plans that would replace police officers with civilians.

     For an example we turn to Los Angeles, where the City Council recently approved a proposal by its “Ad Hoc Committee on Police Reform” to establish “an unarmed model of crisis response.” As presently written, the measure would dispatch civilian teams instead of cops to “non-violent” 9-1-1 calls that “do not involve serious criminal activity” and have at least one of six “social services components”: mental health, substance abuse, suicide threats, behavioral distress, conflict resolution, and welfare checks.

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     Approved by unanimous vote on October 14, the move was endorsed the very next day by none other than…LAPD!

The Los Angeles Police Department fully supports the City Council's actions today to establish responsible alternatives to respond to nonviolent calls that currently fall to the Department to handle. For far too long the men and women of the Department have been asked to respond to calls from our community that would be more effectively addressed by others.

     So how does George Floyd fit in? Although he’s not mentioned in the actual motion, Mr. Floyd is prominently featured in an extensive report prepared by the Council’s legislative analyst:

Following the nationwide protests over the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, calls for a reduced role of law enforcement in nonviolent calls has been reiterated. The need for alternative unarmed models of crisis response has grown out of concerns related to the increased rates of arrest and use of force by law enforcement against individuals dealing with mental illness, persons experiencing homelessness, or persons of color. Armed response has been noted to be incompatible with healthcare needs or the need for other services, including service for the unhoused community.

Analyst Andy Galan isn’t out on a limb. On the very day the motion passed, its most prominent signatory, former council president Herb Wesson, Jr. argued that George Floyd would still be alive and well had civilians handled the situation instead of cops:

Calling the police on George Floyd about an alleged counterfeit $20 bill ended his life. If he had been met with unarmed, trained specialists for the nonviolent crime he was accused of, George Floyd would be turning 47 years old today. This plan will save lives.

     Is he right? Might non-cops have done better? Here’s a partial transcript of the 9-1-1 call:

Caller:  Um someone comes our store and give us fake bills and we realize it before he left the store, and we ran back outside, they was sitting on their car.  We tell them to give us their phone, put their (inaudible) thing back and everything and he was also drunk and everything and return to give us our cigarettes back and so he can, so he can go home but he doesn’t want to do that, and he’s sitting on his car cause he is awfully drunk and he’s not in control of himself.

Mr. Wesson suggests that Mr. Floyd met all three conditions of the proposed model. His behavior was not (at first) violent. And assuming that stealing cigarettes is no big deal, neither was there any “serious criminal activity.” As for that “social service need,” the complainant reported that Mr. Floyd was “not in control of himself.” Check, check, check.

     Alas, it’s only after the fact that one often learns “the rest of the story.” As a chronic drug user with a criminal record that includes armed robbery, Mr. Floyd was hardly a good candidate for civilian intervention. Watch the video. His odd, unruly behavior led the first cop with whom he tangled to conclude, probably correctly, that the small-potatoes thief was in the throes of excited delirium. Really, had Mr. Floyd complied instead of fought, that hard-headed senior officer we criticized wouldn’t have entered the picture and things could have ended peaceably.

     No, guns and badges aren’t always necessary. Yet when a shopkeeper calls and complains they’ve just been swindled (Mr. Floyd copped some smokes with a fake twenty) and the suspect’s still around, dispatching civilians, and only civilians, seems a stretch. Gaining compliance from someone who’s been bad isn’t always easy. Even “minor” evildoers might have a substantial criminal record. Or maybe a warrant. Seemingly trivial, non-violent offending is potentially fraught with peril, and as your blogger has personally experienced, situations can morph from “minor” to potentially lethal in an instant. At the bottom of our list (though not necessarily in terms of its importance) 9-1-1 callers might feel slighted should they be denied a uniformed police presence.

     Considering the negatives, one can’t imagine that any law enforcement agency would endorse handing off response to “minor” crimes to civilians. That’s not to say that mental-health teams can’t be useful. LAPD has long fielded SMART teams that include specially-trained police officers and a mental health clinician. They’re used to supplement beat cops in select, highly-charged situations that could easily turn out poorly. Far more often, though, officers tangle with homeless and/or mentally ill persons who don’t require the intense, specialized services of a SMART team but whose shenanigans could tie things up for extended periods. It’s for such situations, we assume, that the chief would welcome a civilian response.

     That’s where Eugene’s “CAHOOTS” initiative comes in. It’s the model the city council recommended for adoption in L.A. Here’s another extract from the analyst’s report:

CAHOOTS…teams consist of a medic (a nurse, paramedic, or EMT) and a crisis worker…Responders are able to provide aid related to crisis counseling, suicide prevention, assessment, intervention, conflict resolution and mediation, grief and loss counseling, substance abuse, housing crisis, first-aid and non-emergency medical care, resource connection and referrals, and transportation to services.

Sounds great, right? But there’s a Devil in the details. Read on (italics ours):

The CAHOOTS response staff are not armed and do not perform any law enforcement duties. If a request for service involves a crime, potentially hostile individual, or potentially dangerous situation, the call is referred to the EPD.

Oops. Here’s how an Oregon CAHOOTS team member described its protocol (italics ours):

The calls that come in to the police non-emergency number and/or through the 911 system, if they have a strong behavioral health component, if there are calls that do not seem to require law enforcement because they don't involve a legal issue or some kind of extreme threat of violence or risk to the person, the individual or others, then they will route those to our team….

     Police-citizen encounters have become grist for a mill of ideologically-driven solutions that overlook the complexities and uncertainties of the police workplace. George Floyd is but one example. Our Use of Force and Conduct and Ethics sections have many others. Say, the tragic case of Rayshard Brooks, the 27-year old Atlanta man who was shot dead after he fired at a cop with the Taser he grabbed from the officer’s partner. That incident, which happened in June, began with a call from a local Wendy’s complaining that a driver was asleep and blocking the drive-through lane. (Incidentally, that’s not even a crime.) The encounter began amicably. But when the seemingly pleasant man failed a field sobriety test and realized he was being arrested for drunk driving he went ballistic and a vicious struggle ensued. (Click here for the videos.)

     It turns out that just like Mr. Floyd, Mr. Brooks had a history of violence and was on felony probation. Oops.

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     Back to L.A., where the Council’s incarnation of CAHOOTS sits on Mayor Eric Garcetti’s desk. Hizzoner once opined that Mr. Floyd was “murdered in cold blood,” so one figures that he also hankers for change. But given the realities of the streets – and the need to keep retailers and 9-1-1 callers happy – we suspect that the mayor will artfully massage things so that cops continue to be dispatched to “minor, non-violent” crimes. That, in any event, was obviously what Police Chief Michel Moore expected when he endorsed Oregon’s version of Cahoots.

     Of course, the City Council would have to swallow its collective pride. Thing is, council members aren’t appointed – they’re elected. Los Angeles is a big place with a complex socioeconomic mix. Lots of residents have expressed a desire for change, and they hold the power of the vote. So we’ll see.

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R.I.P. PROACTIVE POLICING?

Volatile situations and imperfect cops guarantee tragic outcomes

     For Police Issues by Julius (Jay) Wachtel.

Banged on the door, no response. Banged on it again no response. At that point we started announcing ourselves, police, please come to the door. So we kept banging and announcing. It seemed like an eternity.

     That, according to Louisville police sergeant Jonathon Mattingly, is how the infamous March encounter began.  In testimony before a Grand Jury, the supervisor whose bullet (according to the FBI) fatally wounded Breonna Taylor insisted that despite the search warrant’s “no-knock” provisions he and his companions, Detectives Myles Cosgrove and Michael Nobles and former Detective Brett Hankison,  loudly announced their presence and only smashed in because no one promptly came to the door.

     As soon as they entered chaos erupted. Ms. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, whose presence the officers didn’t expect “was standing in the hallway firing through the door.” One of his bullets pierced Sergeant Mattingly in the leg. He and detectives Cosgrove and Hankison returned fire. Walker escaped injury, but bullets fired by Mattingly and Cosgrove fatally wounded Breonna Taylor, the apartment’s occupant of record. Meanwhile Hankison’s barrage went wildly off the mark, peppering another apartment but fortunately striking no one.

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     Kenneth Walker said he thought the officers were criminals breaking in. He was arrested for shooting Sergeant Mattingly but ultimately escaped prosecution. (He blames cops for firing the shot that struck the officer.) In June the police chief fired Detective Hankison, who was disciplined a year earlier for recklessly injuring a citizen. And on September 15 the city announced it was settling a claim filed by Ms. Taylor’s family for $12 million. That’s reportedly one of the largest payouts of its kind, ever.

     Grand jurors returned their findings one week later. Neither Mr. Walker nor the officers who unintentionally killed Ms. Taylor were charged. However, former cop Hankison was indicted for discharging the fusillade that endangered other tenants. He pled not guilty and awaits trial.

     It’s not surprising that Ms. Taylor’s killing has taken on such significance. Compare it with two other recent cases: Mr. George Floyd, who died after being roughly handled by a Minneapolis cop, and Mr. Rayshard Brooks, who was shot dead by an Atlanta police officer during a foot chase. Mr. Floyd and Mr. Brooks fought police; Mr. Brooks went so far as to fire at his pursuer with the Taser he grabbed from another cop. In contrast, Ms. Taylor did absolutely nothing to warrant rough handling. She was in her own apartment, just standing there when officers opened fire. Her killing was clearly a lethal error.

     Law enforcement officers serve search warrants and engage in other high-risk activities every day. Many of these episodes involve dangerous characters, yet most conclude peacefully. However, since most research of police use of force focuses on episodes with bad endings, we know little about the factors that underlie successful outcomes. (That gap, incidentally, is the subject of your writer’s recent essay, “Why Do Officers Succeed?” in Police Chief.)

     Given the extreme circumstances that the officers encountered at Ms. Taylor’s apartment, return fire by Sgt. Mattingly and detective Cosgrove might have been unavoidable. Tragically, their rushed response proved lethally inaccurate. In “Speed Kills” we mentioned that blunders are likely when officers act hastily or impulsively. Consider the July 2018 episode when, after shooting his grandmother, a Los Angeles man led police on a wild vehicular pursuit. It ended at a retail store where the suspect bolted from his car and ran inside as he fired at the officers. They shot back, missing him but fatally wounding an employee.

     Lethal foul-ups also happen when suspects don’t shoot. In February 2019 late-arriving New York cops unleashed a barrage at an armed suspect who was fleeing the store he just robbed. Two plainclothes officers who were already on scene got caught in the middle: one was wounded and the other was killed. The suspect’s handgun turned out to be fake. Seven months later an NYPD officer repeatedly fired at a felon with whom he had physically tangled. That led arriving officers to mistakenly conclude that they were being shot at. So they opened fire, killing both their colleague and the suspect. His unfired revolver lay nearby.

     Police behavior is unavoidably influenced by the well-known risks of the job. And those are indeed substantial. According to the LEOKA more than two-thousand law enforcement officers (2,116) were assaulted with firearms in 2018. About 129 were injured (6.1 percent) and 51 were killed. Unfortunately, the LEOKA doesn’t offer detailed information about the encounters, nor of the outcomes for civilians. Last year the FBI launched an effort to collect data about all police uses of force that either involve their discharge of firearms or which lead to a citizen’s death or serious injury. So far, nothing’s been released. However, the Washington Post has been collecting information about police killings of civilians since January 2, 2015. As of October 1, 2020, their database has 5673 entries, one for each death. We downloaded the dataset. This table lists some of the pertinent findings.

Citizens were “armed” with a wide assortment of items, including cars, shovels and (yes) even pens. We included only guns and cutting instruments. Six percent (358) of those killed were unarmed.

     In 2017 four academics analyzed the Post’s 2015 data. Published in Criminology & Public Policy (Feb. 2017) “A Bird's Eye View of Civilians Killed by Police in 2015 - Further Evidence of Implicit Bias” concluded that race affected officer threat perceptions. “Controlling” for citywide violent crime rates, the authors concluded that non-Whites, and especially Blacks, were nonetheless significantly more likely to be shot. But more specific “places” such as areas or neighborhoods were not taken into account. As we noted in “Scapegoat” Parts I and II proactive policing normally targets areas within cities that are beset by violence, usually poverty-stricken neighborhoods that are disproportionately populated by non-Whites. As our tables in Part II demonstrate, once we “controlled” for location the influence of race and ethnicity on LAPD stops virtually disappeared.

     Of course, one need not attribute outcomes such as Ms. Taylor’s death – or the killings of Dijon Kizzee in Compton, Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta or George Floyd in Minneapolis – to racial animus to brand them as tragic mishaps. Posts in our Compliance and Force and Strategy and Tactics sections have discussed the forces that drive policing astray and suggested correctives. “Working Scared” stressed the role of personality characteristics such as impulsivity and risk tolerance. “Speed Kills” emphasized the advantage of taking one’s time – preferably, from a position of cover. Chaos, a chronic fixture of the police workplace that often leads to poor decisions was the theme of “Routinely Chaotic.”  And when it comes to preventives there’s de-escalation, a promising approach that’s at the top of every chief’s list.

     Back to Ms. Taylor’s death. On March 13, 2020 Louisville police executed search warrants at 2424/5/6 Elliott Ave. (pictured here) and at her apartment, 3003 Springfield Dr. #4 (top photo). According to police, Jamarcus Glover, Ms. Taylor’s one-time boyfriend, and his associate Adrian Walker (no relation to Kenneth Walker) were using the Elliott Ave. locations as “trap houses” (places where drugs are stored and sold.) Both were convicted felons out on bond awaiting trial for drug trafficking and illegal gun possession charges levied in December 2019.

     Here’s a summary of the justification provided in the search warrant:

• Mr. Glover and Mr. A. Walker were pending trial on gun and drug charges.
   
• In January 2020 police stopped Mr. A. Walker as he left the “trap house” and found marijuana and cash in his vehicle. In the same month a pole camera depicted numerous vehicles visiting the trap house during a brief period. There were many recorded and physical observations of suspicious behavior by both suspects in and around the trap house and of visits to a nearby rock pile they apparently used to stash drugs.
   
• In January 2020 the affiant observed Mr. Glover and Mr. A. Walker making “frequent trips” between the trap house and Ms. Taylor’s apartment. Mr. Glover had listed her apartment as his address and was using it to receive packages. [Note: see 12/30/20 update.] On one occasion Mr. Glover was observed taking a package from the residence to a “known drug house.” Ms. Taylor’s vehicle was observed parked at the trap house several times.
   
• In conclusion, the affiant asserted that his training and experience indicated “that Mr. J. Glover may be keeping narcotics and/or proceeds from the sale of narcotics at 3003 Springfield Drive #4 for safe keeping.”

     In late August the Louisville Courier-Journal and Wave3 News published detailed accounts about the alleged connection between Ms. Taylor and Mr. Glover. This story drew from a leaked police report, prepared after Ms. Taylor’s death, that describes the evidence detectives gathered before and after executing the March search warrants. It indicates that drugs, cash, guns and paraphernalia were seized from the trap houses and the suspects’ vehicles. There are also surveillance photographs and detailed transcripts of intercepted jailhouse calls made by Mr. Glover after his arrests in December and March. Here’s an outtake from a January 3, 2020 (pre-warrant) phone call between Mr. Glover and Ms. Taylor:

1123 – J. Glover calls ***-***-**** (Breonna Taylor) from booking:
J. Glover: “Call Doug (Adrian Walker) on Facebook and see where the fuck Doug at. He’s got my fuckin money, riding around in my motherfucking car and he ain’t even where he’s supposed to be at.”
B. Taylor: “You said Doug?”   J. Glover: “Yeah, Big Doug.”
B. Taylor: “I’ll call him…Why can’t I find him on Facebook? What’s his name on here?”
J. Glover: “Meechy Walker.”
1318 – J. Glover calls ***-***-**** (Breonna Taylor) from booking:
J. Glover: “You talk to Doug (Adrian Walker)?”
B. Taylor: “Yeah I did. He said he was already back at the trap… then I talked to him again just a minute ago to see if you had contacted him. They couldn’t post bond till one.”
J. Glover: “Just be on standby so you can come get me… Love you.”
B. Taylor: “Love you too.”

Here’s part of a post-warrant phone conversation between Mr. Glover and a domestic partner who bore his child:

1307 – J. Glover calls ***-***-**** (Kiera Bradley – child’s mother) from his dormitory:
K. Bradley: “So where your money at?”
J. Glover: “Where my money at? Bre had like $8 grand.”
K. Bradley: “Bre had $8 grand of your money?”  J. Glover: “Yeah.”
J. Glover says to an unknown male that joined the call, “Tell cuz, Bre got down like $15 (grand), she had the $8 (grand) I gave her the other day and she picked up another $6 (grand).”
K. Bradley and J. Glover are arguing over him not being honest and him having money at other people’s house. J. Glover says to K. Bradley, “Why are you doing this?”
K. Bradley: “Cuz my feelings are hurt.”
J. Glover: “Why cuz the bread (money) was at her house?”
J. Glover: “…This is what you got to understand, don’t take it wrong but Bre been handling all my money, she been handling my money... She been handling shit for me and cuz, it ain’t just me.”

In a post-warrant call to Mr. Walker, Mr. Glover explains why police searched Ms. Taylor’s residence and why, according to Kenneth Walker (Ms. Taylor’s live-in boyfriend) the officers didn’t find any cash:

1720 – J. Glover calls ***-***-**** (Male – likely Adrian Walker per Accurint) from his dormitory:
J. Glover: “Where you at?”  A. Walker: “You know the spot, “E”.”
J. Glover: “I just watched the news nigga… They tryin act like they had a search warrant for Bre’s house too.”
A. Walker: “I know… The only thing I can figure out is they check that license plate. They been putting an investigation on a motherfucker.”
J. Glover: They checked Bre’s license plate?”
A. Walker: “That’s the only thing I can think of… A motherfucker pull up on the block in the charger, that’s the only thing I can think of.”
J. Glover: “Who at no haters running their mouth?...That nigga (Kenneth Walker) didn’t have no business doing that shit. That nigga got Bre killed nigga.”
A. Walker: “You got to see like the bigger picture to it though you feel me, it’s more to it than what you feelin like right now.”
J. Glover: “I know, I know she was feelin me. At the end of the day everything stolen from me though, I swear I know that.”
J. Glover: “…That man tell me, I watched you leave your baby momma’s house. Alright if you watched me leave my baby momma’s house, why would you execute a warrant at Bre’s house… Bre got that charger and all this shit… Bre’s paper trail makes sense for everything she got though.”
J. Glover: “…I don’t understand how they serve a warrant for Bre’s house when nothing ties me to Bre house at all except these bonds.”
A. Walker: “Bonds and cars and 2016… It’s just ties though… Look at the ties since 2016, ever since Rambo (homicide victim)… and the camera right there, they see a motherfucker pull up.”
J. Glover: “Yeah she (Breonna Taylor) was out there the top of the week before I went to court.”
A. Walker: “They didn’t even have to see her pull up, all they had to do is see that license plate… They done put two and two together… Then on top of that they go over there and find money.”
J. Glover: “No, Bre don’t, Bre don’t, Bre don’t…Bro you know how Bre do… They didn’t find nothing in her house.”
A. Walker: “I thought you said they found some money over there?”
J. Glover: “It was there, it was there, it was there...They didn’t do nothing though that’s the problem... Kenneth said ain’t none of that go on.”
A. Walker: “So they didn’t take none of the money?”
J. Glover: “Kenneth said that none of that go on. He said Homicide came straight on the scene and they went to packaging Bre and they left.”

Mr. A. Walker and Mr. Glover were released pending trial. Mr. Glover has reportedly absconded.

     Go through the report. If genuine – and it certainly seems to be – it depicts Ms. Taylor as a knowing participant of Mr. Glover’s drug-trafficking enterprise. There is really no gentle way to put it.

     As a Fed your blogger obtained and participated in serving many search warrants. In his opinion, the March 2020 search warrant of Ms. Taylor’s residence seems well supported by probable cause. [Note: see 12/30/20 update]. Yet neither this writer, nor anyone he knows, was ever shot at while on the job, let alone had a partner wounded. How would we have reacted under such circumstances? Would we have instantly realized that the shooter “didn’t really mean it?” Could we have safely “de-escalated”? And if not, would we have accurately placed return fire?

     Set warrants aside. Consider a far more common cause of innocent deaths: police pursuits. Instead of getting into specifics, California law requires that agencies establish detailed policies about when and how to chase and train their officers accordingly. (Click here for LAPD’s policy.) Yet pursuits still continue to end poorly.

     Really, when it comes to the more fraught aspects of policing such as pursuits or search warrants the usual preventives – rules, training, supervision – can’t always be counted on to prevent horrific outcomes. Yes, there are other ways. Police occasionally abandon chases. As for search warrants, officers sometimes elect to watch, wait and intercept occupants as they leave. Naturally, doing that is resource-intensive, and should surveillance be detected it could lead to the destruction of evidence. Detaining persons also carries risk.

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     About 17 percent of Louisville’s residents live in poverty. In Ms. Taylor’s ZIP code, 40214, the proportion is about twenty percent. In 40211, where the “trap houses” were located, it’s about thirty-four percent. Jamarcus Glover and Adrian Walker were taking advantage of a deeply troubled neighborhood for their selfish ends. Sadly, Breonna Taylor had apparently lent a hand.

     Search warrants aren’t the first proactive strategy to come under challenge. Most recently, “Should Police Treat the Whole Patient?” discussed the back-and-forth over stop-and-frisk and other geographically targeted enforcement campaigns, whose intrusiveness and tendency to generate “false positives” has badly disrupted police-minority community relations across the U.S.

     Search warrants, though, are supposedly different. They’re based on articulated evidence of criminal wrongdoing and must be approved by a judge before execution. As your blogger discovered while a Fed, they’re the stock-in-trade of serious criminal investigations. Without this tool officers would be hard-pressed to combat major sources of drugs or guns. They’ll undoubtedly play a key role in “Operation Legend,” that new Federal-local partnership we’ve heard so much about. Of course, it’s also essential that police avoid endangering the lives of innocent citizens. Perhaps it’s time to revisit some of our more cautionary essays; say, “First Do No Harm” and “A Delicate Balance.”

     Yet in our ideologically charged, perhaps irreparably fractured climate, turning to the usual remedies (i.e., training, tactics, supervision) may not do. Breonna Taylor’s characterization as an innocent victim of police overreach has added a bucketful of fuel to the fire. We’re talking “defund” on steroids. So by all means let’s quit pretending. Level with the inhabitants of our poorer, crime-stricken places about the risks of even the best-intentioned proactive policing. Give them an opportunity to opt out of, say, drug investigations and such. Of course, be sure to inform them of the likely consequences. Considering what our nation is going through, it seems to be the least we can do.

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EXPLAINING…OR IGNORING?

In a badly fractured land, the ambush of two deputies
unleashes a raft of excuses. And, as usual, no solutions.

     For Police Issues by Julius (Jay) Wachtel.  Economically, Compton is in a lousy place. Nestled in a chronically poor area of Los Angeles, the incorporated community of about 95,000 suffers from a 21.9 percent poverty rate, about twice the national figure. As one might expect, Compton’s reputation crime-wise is also lousy. Its 2018 toll of 1,174 violent crimes and 22 murders yields rates of 1,200.7 and 22.5 per 100,000 pop., far higher than comparable figures for Los Angeles (747.6 and 6.4) and the U.S. overall (368.9 and 5.0).

     Compton’s travails are long-standing. So when killings and such happen, it’s mostly families, friends and sheriff’s deputies  who take notice (the city gave up its police department two decades ago). But when a still-unknown assailant snuck up on two deputies sitting in their patrol car, pulled a pistol and opened fire, the world paid attention. That attack, which took place on September 12, caused serious but thankfully non-fatal injuries and both officers are recovering (see 8/11/21 and 9/29/23 updates).

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     Let’s place this event in context. LEOKA, the FBI’s Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted database, presently categorizes some assaults on officers as “unprovoked,” meaning they did nothing to prompt an armed exchange. Assaults on officers that involve “entrapment and premeditation” are coded as an “ambush.” This table sets out each category’s contribution to the felonious murder of law enforcement officers between 2007-2020 (this year’s data is thru 9/11):

We pored through the LEOKA for equivalent information about firearm assaults on officers, regardless of whether an injury occurred. Best we could do is this table, which breaks out gun “ambushes” since 2014 (we believe that in this dataset “ambush” includes unprovoked attacks):

     Bottom line: about five officers are assaulted with firearms in the U.S. each day. That’s a lot. While “only” four percent – about two per week – are attacked without warning, the threat of being surprised by a murderous gunslinger is real. That vulnerability led the FBI to warn that ambushes and unprovoked attacks had gone up about twenty percent during the course of a decade and urged that police adjust their protocols accordingly.

     Of course, in this gun-besotted, violence-ridden land officers well know they could face gunfire during most any encounter. Here are four examples of ambushes and unprovoked attacks from past posts in our Gun Control section:

April 2009: A mentally disturbed twenty-two year old would-be “White supremacist” gunned down Philadelphia police officers Eric G. Kelly, Stephen J. Mayhle and Paul J. Sciullo and wounded two others. Police responded after his worried mother called 9-1-1 to complain about her son’s erratic behavior.

October 2016: Palm Springs police officers Lesley Zerebny and Jose “Gil” Vega were shot and killed by a rifle-wielding twenty-six year old as they stood outside a home to which they were dispatched on a “simple family disturbance.”

August 2019: California Highway Patrol officer Andre Moye was shot and killed while “filling out paperwork” to impound a traffic violator’s car. His murderer was slain during a wild, protracted shootout with responding officers.

November 2016: Des Moines police Sgt. Anthony Beminio and Urbandale, Iowa officer Justin Martin were murdered by the same killer in ambushes a half-hour apart. Both were found behind the wheel of their cars, still strapped to their seats. Unlike the above examples, neither had been on a call. Their middle-aged assailant, a “loner” with a history of troubled behavior, ultimately surrendered.

     What distinguishes these attacks from the wounding of the L.A. County deputies? In part, their media coverage. The Los Angeles Times posted an initial account shortly after the ambush, then updated it after a news conference held the following morning. Its story mentioned that one of the deputies was thirty-one and was the mother of a six-year old, and that both she and her partner, a male in his early twenties, went through the academy together and had only been on the job slightly more than one year.  Sheriff Alex Villanueva and Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer were both quoted as calling the attack “cowardly.” Here’s what L.A.P.D. Chief Michel Moore had to say:

Tonight we pray for these two guardians to survive. I recognize and acknowledge we live in troubled times. But we must as a community work thru our differences while loudly and resoundly condemn violence. Blessed are the Peacemakers.

     Compton was going through a particularly troubled time. Less than two weeks had passed since deputies had shot and killed Dijon Kizzee. An ex-con with convictions for illegally possessing guns, Mr. Kizzee was reportedly riding a bike on the wrong side of the street and fled on foot when deputies tried to stop him. When they closed in he allegedly punched one in the face, and as they scuffled supposedly dropped the handgun he was carrying. Deputies said they fired when he picked it up.

     Mr. Kizzee’s killing ignited raucous protests, which led to their own arrests. Police-citizen tensions were already at a high pitch, inflamed by the recent killing of a Latino youth, shot dead by deputies who said he was armed, and by deputies’ rough treatment of a suspected looter, an event that a bystander  captured on video. As one might expect, this context affected reporting. Only two days after the ambush an L.A. Times article featured an interview with a “long-time South L.A. activist” who questioned “why such swift calls for justice don’t come when it is the police who cause the injuries.” His comments were followed by a recap of recent alleged abuses, most notably the killing of Mr. Kizzee, and an interview with an academic psychiatrist who insisted that the link some made between “anti-police messaging” and the ambush (e.g., L.A. Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s “words have consequences”) was nothing more than “confirmation bias,” the tendency for people to believe what supports their pre-existing views:

That’s a really, really important thing to point out, because you absolutely will get people who will spin this into meaning that these protests are causing problems.

     Well, we certainly don’t want to fall into that trap. After all, we could get ambushed by, say, Erika Smith! In an extended “opinion” piece published three days after the attack, Ms. Smith, a key member of the Times editorial staff, scorned L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger’s concern that excessive public criticism of the police may have played a role. Here is what Ms. Barger had said:

I support peaceful protests. But what I don’t support are the type of comments, especially the ones made outside a hospital, blocking an emergency room, where two deputies were fighting for their lives, and you had individuals chanting what they were chanting. So I believe that we have slowly crossed that line. And what you’ve seen is what has manifested in the shooting of those two deputies. I do believe that.

Indeed, ABC News and other reputable sources had reported that protesters who marched for Mr. Kizzee gathered outside the hospital where the deputies were being treated and chanted “death to the police” and “kill the police.” While Ms. Smith agreed that this wasn’t a good idea and called the deputies’ wounding “a cruel and callous crime,” she vigorously objected to the “insinuation” that the attack was caused by anti-cop activism. Supporting “the broader movement for racial justice and police reform,” Ms. Smith then launched into a critique of local policing, from the shooting of Mr. Kizzee to the deputy cliques  we wrote about in “Two Sides of the Same Coin.”

     So what “causes” ambushes? Looking on prior examples, Richard Poplawski, the 22-year old white supremacist who murdered the Philadelphia police officers, was a deeply disturbed youth obsessed with guns and violence. John Felix, 26, who killed the Palm Springs officers, was a volatile, deeply troubled former gang member and had served prison time for armed assault. Aaron Luther, the middle-aged man who killed the CHP officer, was an ex-con with a history of violence. And Scott Green, the middle-aged man who killed the Iowa officers, was an emotionally disturbed spouse abuser “whose life was unraveling.” Still, none of these killings served an even remotely “functional” purpose. Our best guess is that they may have reflected a compulsion to assert oneself in the face of societal rejection. But we’re not psychologists.

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     While there was plenty of speculation about their “cause,” no one connected any of those murders to a greater social movement. No one suggested that officers were in effect bringing on their own demise. But times have changed. As the academic who shook off the connection between protests and the ambush well knew, “confirmation bias” can cut both ways. Maybe anti-police sentiment didn’t embolden the ambusher. Maybe it did. Perhaps he had been acquainted with Mr. Kizzee or another alleged victim of police brutality. Maybe he had himself been brutalized.

     Of course, we know nothing about the triggerman. But once we do, where would probing his reasons  take us? Even if we somehow divine the causes of the deputies’ ambush, Compton will remain saddled with the baggage that led City-data.com to place it among the most crime-ridden four percent of U.S. cities. That’s really, really lousy company. To climb out of that hole would take a lot more than protesting police mistreatment. It would call for a frontal assault on poverty and the socioeconomic deforestation that poverty invariably produces. That would require the massive infusion of social and financial capital (“Marshall Plan”) that we ceaselessly harp about in our “Neighborhoods” posts. Want to get started? Click on “But is it Really Satan?” Go to the Bogalusa Daily News and read what Washington Parish (Louisiana) Sheriff Randy Seal had to say.

     Then, get busy!

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SHOULD POLICE TREAT THE WHOLE PATIENT?

Officers deal with the symptoms of social decay.
Can they go further? Should they?

     For Police Issues by Julius (Jay) Wachtel. “A boy walks to a corner store and is shot in the chest.” One can’t conceive of a more devastating headline. Shot dead in an alley, Otis Williams was only fourteen. Many victims of America’s urban violence are kids. They’re also disproportionately Black and, just like Otis, reside in poor areas long beset by crime and violence.

     Otis lived with his mother in Florence, a South Los Angeles neighborhood whose troubles we’ve repeatedly written about. When Los Angeles brags about its crime rate it doesn’t mention Florence. As we mentioned in “Repeat After Us,” aggregate statistics obscure disparities in violence within cities, such as Los Angeles and New York City, that enjoy large pockets of wealth and seem prosperous and safe “overall.” But the recent upswing in violence has drawn notice to both. Los Angeles’ 157 murders through July 18 mark a 13.8 percent increase over the 138 homicides it recorded during the equivalent period last year. Ditto New York City, whose count thru July 19, 212, reflects a 24 percent year-to-date jump. So there’s a lot less to brag about.

     While regrettable, L.A.’s and New York City’s numbers hardly compare to what’s befallen chronically violent places such as Chicago. As of July 19 the Windy City recorded an appalling 414 homicides. That’s fifty percent more than the relatively “measly” 275 murders it endured during the equivalent period last year. To compare, in 2019 New York City had about twice Chicago’s population but suffered about half as many homicides. Chicago also had thirty percent more murders than L.A., a city nearly half again its size in population.

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     We’ve become so inured to the mayhem that it might be useful to look beyond the U.S. In 2019 (the full year) 650 persons were murdered in the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.) Its combined population of about 66,650,000 produced a homicide rate of 0.97 per/100,000, less than half New York City’s and a mere sliver of Chicago’s (look at the below graph. The UK’s bar would hardly show.) If that’s not shocking enough, “A Lost Cause” compared U.S. and U.K. police officer deaths during 2000-2015. While the U.S. has about five times the U.K.’s population, forty times as many U.S. law enforcement officers were feloniously killed. (Not-so-incidentally, the disproportion may have something to do with the means. In the U.K., knives and such were used in fourteen of the 21 officer murders, while in the U.S., guns figured in all but seventy of the 831 killings.)

     A new Federal initiative, “Operation Legend,” intends to deal with the slaughter. Named after LeGend Taliferro, a four-year old Kansas City boy who was shot and killed several weeks ago, the program commits Federal funds and law enforcement personnel from the FBI, Marshals Service, DEA and ATF to help Chicago Albuquerque, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City (Mo.) and Milwaukee battle gun and drug violence. This graph, which compares the homicide rates of “Operation Legend” cities during equivalent periods in 2019 and 2020, confirms that each could use some quality help. (L.A. and NYC are shown for comparison. Gathering the data was a bit tricky, but our numbers should be pretty accurate.)

     Who outside Albuquerque would have thought that it had a murder problem? Its mayor, the Hon. Tim Keller, bemoaned his city’s descent into crime and asked for State help last year. And with 37 homicides so far in 2020 (there were 33 during this period in 2019) the not-so-placid burg of 560,513 has been backsliding. Ditto Milwaukee, which suffered 63 murders through June compared with 51 in 2019. As for the others, their numbers are even more appalling. Cleveland had 60 killings thru July 7, 2019; this year the toll was 89. Detroit recorded 129 murders through June 18 compared with 99 last year. Kansas City went from 79 murders during the first half of 2019 to 107 so far this year.

     We mentioned that aggregate statistics can conceal disparities within communities. That’s why posts in our “Neighborhoods” special section often rely on neighborhood crime rates. We recently placed that magnifying glass on Portland and Minneapolis. As for Operation Legend cities, “Mission: Impossible?” looked within Chicago. So this time we picked on…Albuquerque! KOB Channel 4’s homicide map showed 37 murders in 2020 thru July 30. They took place in nine of the city’s seventeen regular Zip codes. Their population numbers and income figures were collected from United States Zip Codes.org. As expected, the economics of the murder v. no-murder ZIP’s proved starkly different. Mean MHI (median household income) for the nine ZIP’s with at least one murder (actual range was two to seven) was $39,969. Mean MHI for the eight murder-free ZIP’s was $62,668. Those means are clearly different and, statistically speaking, significantly so (p=.015). And check out that graph (“scattergram”). Note how the Zip codes (red dots) distribute along the income and murder rate/100,000 axes. Bottom line: more money: less murder! (That asterisk on the r correlation statistic - it maxes out at 1.0 - means that the association between income and homicide rate is statistically significant. It’s also “negative,” meaning that as one goes up the other goes down.)

     OK, point made. We’ve confirmed what social scientists have known for decades: poverty and crime go together like…well, you know. So back to “Operation Legend.” Feds have sponsored joint task forces for decades. According to DOJ, agents will apply Federal laws and resources to help local police address “offenses involving firearms and violent drug trafficking organizations.” It’s intended to assure that serious criminals who might otherwise escape justice get their day in court. Your blogger participated in similar task forces during his Federal career and his presence generated no controversy. But in this hyper-partisan era, with the brouhaha in Portland framing the moment, it was perhaps inevitable that “Legend” would be disparaged as yet another effort to distract attention from the hardships that have long beset America’s citizens of color. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who invited the Feds in, found it necessary to clarify that the outsiders wouldn’t be wearing fatigues or chase after rock-throwers:

These are not troops. Troops are people who come from the military. That’s not what’s coming to Chicago. I’ve drawn a very firm line against that.

     Mayor Lightfoot isn’t simply waiting for “Legend.” Chicago’s explosive murder rate has led its new police chief, David Brown, to form “Community Safety Teams.” Modeled on the well-known “Hot Spots” approach, their officers will focus on the neighborhoods beset by violence, mostly in the city’s South and West. Agencies throughout the U.S. have used hot-spots, and often with supposedly good results. A recent academic finding that hot spots “is an effective crime prevention strategy” has even led NIJ to bestow its seal of approval. But sending in the cops can be tricky. “A Recipe for Disaster” and other posts in our “Stop-and-frisk” special section have cautioned that the bucketfuls of stops produced by get-tough campaigns inevitably generate “false positives,” and as these accumulate they can severely irritate the inhabitants of neighborhoods police are ostensibly trying to serve. Carelessness, pressures to produce “numbers” and out-and-out lying by cops striving to look good made things even worse. Blow-back from residents and civil libertarians had led Chicago, New York City and Los Angeles to shut down hot-spots programs. Now that unbearable violence is back, each city has dug out that bad old approach, renamed it (“Operation Legend”) and dressed it up in new finery. And so the cycle begins anew.

     Alas, even the most skillfully applied enforcement strategies can’t remedy the root causes of the crime and disorder that bedevil low-income neighborhoods. Getting there would require a skillful and exceedingly well-funded application of “social disorganization” theory. But there seems to be little interest in either Red or Blue political quarters for that “Marshall Plan” we’ve hollered about. Not that there haven’t been some promising moves. “Place Matters” mentioned Birmingham’s (Ala.) comprehensive program. One of its components, the “Promise Initiative,” provides apprenticeships to high-school juniors and seniors and offers tuition help to those bound for college.

     So wait a minute. Is there a role for police here, as well? Can cops help impoverished societies transform? LAPD says yes! Its decade-old “Community Safety Partnership” program (CSP) has placed teams of mostly minority officers in seven of the city’s low-income housing projects. CSP officers work in uniform but don’t typically conduct criminal investigations or make arrests. They interact with residents, participate in group activities, enable the “safe passage” of youths to and from school, and provide one-on-one counseling and referrals. An external evaluation by a UCLA researcher, CSP locations enjoy less crime. As one might expect, the constant presence of police “disrupts” gangs and enhances the ability of residents “to gather and enjoy public spaces, facilities, and programs.” However, another favorable but less glowing review cautioned that despite CSP, “residents generally do not trust the police and expressed concerns about mistreatment, including a lack of anonymity when reporting crimes.”

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    Seizing the moment, LAPD just transformed CSP into its own Bureau under the leadership of a Deputy Chief. But not everyone’s happy. Indeed, the notion that police should increase their sphere of influence has badly divided the Blues. Connie Rice, the well-known Black civil-rights lawyer who helped found CSP,  praised its expansion: “warrior enforcement culture needs to be replaced with this kind of guardian-style approach that rewards problem-solving engagement between officers and the communities they protect.” Her pointedly guarded language didn’t do the trick. No sale, said Paula Minor of “Black Lives Matter L.A.”: “This [CSP] is not a program that needs to be operated by armed, sworn police officers.” Her views were seconded by Hamid Khan. A well-regarded activist who leads the “Stop LAPD Spying Coalition,” he argued that funds should be redirected from the police to community programs such as youth development.

     It’s already happened. On July 1st. the L.A. City Council stripped $150 million from LAPD’s billion-plus budget, sharply cutting overtime and ultimately reducing officer staffing by 231 positions. These funds are now destined for minority communities; one proposed use is a youth summer jobs program. LAPD managers are caught square in the horns of a dilemma. Violence is up, and officers must continue to face the task of cleaning up the “symptoms” of the social disorganization that characterizes low-income neighborhoods. If attempts such as CSP to treat “the whole patient” are to expand, cops must come from somewhere. So far, CSP’s been funded by outside donors. Will that continue? And if so, would those who feel the cure (policing) is worse than the disease (violent crime) tolerate an increased police presence?

     That ending’s still being written.

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Of Hot-Spots and Band-Aids

CAN THE URBAN SHIP BE STEERED?

Seasoned police leadership. Yet the violence continues.

     For Police Issues by Julius (Jay) Wachtel. One can empathize with Charlie Beck. On February 10, only two weeks after announcing a comprehensive reorganization of the perennially troubled agency, Chicago’s interim top cop faced two epidemics. Only one was new: coronavirus (the city’s first case was confirmed two weeks earlier). As for the other, it was really more of the same. According to the Sun-Times, the homicide-beset city had just experienced its “deadliest February weekend in 18 years,” with nine shot dead and fourteen wounded in less than two days.

     As one might expect, Mayor Lori Lightfoot wasn’t pleased. So Chief Beck devised an “intermediate strategy” to promptly “put more resources into the areas most affected.” In other words, more cops patrolling Chicago’s violence-prone inner-city neighborhoods. That, one supposes, is how police responded after that other weekend, August 2-4, 2019, when seven died and fifty-two were wounded in a staggering thirty-two separate shootings.

     Chief Beck can’t be blamed for those. That burden falls on the shoulders of then-chief Garry McCarthy. After rising through NYPD’s ranks, then spending five years as Newark’s chief, McCarthy became Chicago’s top cop in 2011. That’s the good news. The bad is that he was in charge on October 20, 2014. That’s the fateful day when officer Jason Van Dyke barged in on a situation that colleagues seemed to have under control and inexplicably shot and killed Laquan McDonald, a 17-year old youth who was reportedly trying to break into parked cars while waving a knife.

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     McDonald’s killing set off waves of demonstrations. Nothing, though, happened to officer Van Dyke until late 2015, when a dash-cam video that sharply contradicted his and his colleagues’ accounts of the episode was ordered released by a judge. That stunning development led Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who  proudly hired McCarthy, to promptly fire him. It also led to the arrest of officer Van Dyke, who was ultimately convicted convicted of 2nd degree murder and sentenced to nearly seven years imprisonment. And it opened the floodgates to Federal intervention. A damning DOJ report was followed by a consent decree and Federal monitoring, which continues through the present day.

     Former Chief McCarthy missed most of the blowback. That fell, instead, on the shoulders of his replacement, Eddie Johnson, whom Mayor Emanuel appointed in March 2016. A veteran Chicago cop who grew up in Cabrini-Green, widely considered the city’s “most notorious public housing project,” Johnson was considered to be someone who would be respected by cops and citizens alike.

     Chief Johnson knew he had a mountain to climb. His beloved city had reported 478 homicides in 2015. Although its murder rate of 17.5 per 100,000 pop. was far better than Baltimore’s abysmal 55.4 and Detroit’s merely awful 43.8, it was nonetheless more than twice L.A.’s (7.0) and five times the Big Apple’s (3.4). And during the new chief’s first year, things turned worse. Chicago closed out 2016 with an appalling 765 murders (rate 28.1), a one-year leap of sixty percent. (Dallas, a distant runner-up, went from 136 to 171 murders, a 26 percent increase.)

     Why the surge? Some observers attributed it to an officer “slowdown” supposedly spurred by the intense public criticism that followed McDonald’s killing. Thankfully, murder soon began a gratifying descent. By 2019 killings had receded to 492, a four-year plunge of thirty-six percent. Yet in both raw numbers and rate (18.2) Chicago’s homicide problem remained worse than in 2015. Bottom line: however “new and improved,” the Windy City remained much more a “killing field” than either Los Angeles (253 murders in 2019, rate 6.3) or New York City (318 murders, rate 3.8).

     Yes, killing field. Here’s a news update we posted on August 8, 2019:

Seven dead and fifty-two wounded, including seventeen shot in a two-hour period. That was the toll last weekend in Chicago’s infamous West Side, a gang-ridden area “devastated by drugs and violence.”

Chief Johnson was still in charge. Should we blame him? Well, no. As we’ve repeatedly emphasized (see, for example, “Place Matters,” “Repeat After Us” and “Location, Location, Location”) crime’s roots lie in poverty and the social disorganization that accompanies poverty, factors that are ultimately beyond the power of law enforcers to fix. To be sure, passive policing can encourage hooliganism, and forceful responses such as stop-and-frisk might for a time reduce violence. But the imprecision that inevitably accompanies aggressive crime-fighting measures often backfires. Just ask NYPD and LAPD.

     Mayor Lightfoot seems to be of like mind. Poverty was her focus some weeks ago, on February 14, when in a near-40 minute address she beseeched a “standing-room only crowd” at the City Club to help turn their community around. “Poverty is killing us,” she implored. “Literally and figuratively killing us. All of us.” While “epidemic” gun violence was mentioned, her highly detailed prescriptions focused on economic conditions. There were only a few substantive recommendations as to crime and justice, and all but one were economically centered. She touted an ongoing program to forgive unpaid fines and parking tickets so that poor persons didn’t needlessly lose their driver licenses. To help the formerly incarcerated find housing she suggested prohibiting landlords from running criminal checks on potential tenants until after they were otherwise approved. She also called for increased opportunities for the poor to land jobs in emergency services:

When a graduate of one of our police or fire academies walks across the stage they are walking into a middle-class life. That life and all the benefits of middle-class life that those jobs bring must be open to all of us.

And in a passing mention of the opioid crisis, Mayor Lightfoot defined it as primarily a public health issue, not a law enforcement problem.

     In truth, the mayor was likely reluctant to revisit the chronically fraught area of policing. For one thing, only three days had passed since she upbraided Charlie Beck and his staff over that “deadliest February weekend” mentioned above. As for Chief Johnson, she had fired him a couple months earlier for lying about an October 2019 incident in which he apparently fell asleep, while drunk, at the wheel of his car.

     Two months later there was another kid on the block. On April 15 Charlie Beck passed the mantle to Chicago P.D.’s new permanent chief, David Brown. Dallas’ former top cop took the opportunity to praise his predecessor for implementing a massive restructuring that, among other things, supposedly gave patrol commanders additional resources: “The policing mind of Charlie Beck is deep, it’s wide and it’s quick, and I will ensure that what he’s begun to set in place, in motion, here in Chicago, flourishes and reaches its full potential.”

     That’s a tall order, and we hope that after thirty-three years as a Dallas cop, six as its chief, he’s the one to fulfill it. Chief Brown is perhaps best known for what Governing called his “masterful handling” of the murder of five Dallas police officers and the wounding of seven on July 7, 2016 by a sniper who was upset over police killings. Yet over the years his reformist zeal and alleged favoritism in promoting friends reportedly caused morale problems. So much so that in September 2015 a host of police groups including the National Black Police Association took the extraordinary step of publicly calling for his ouster. Well, that didn’t happen. But in late 2016, only weeks after his officers were murdered, Chief Brown retired. Why? Maybe it was the lousy morale. Maybe it was the surge in homicide: 2016 ended with 171 murders, a 26 percent increase over the 136 killings in 2015. Indeed, that depressing statistic drew skepticism over his abilities years later, when he applied for the job in Chicago.

     Who took over Dallas P.D. when Chief Brown left? That would be Reneé Hall, a veteran Detroit officer. And yes, she still leads the Dallas force. As of late, though, her tenure’s proving a bit rocky. In what seems a re-run of what happened three years earlier, Dallas suffered 200 killings in 2019, twenty-nine percent more than the 155 murders recorded in 2018. Calling the surge “patently unacceptable,” Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson complained that Chief Hall’s approach, “increasing the number of investigators working for the Dallas Police Department, adding civilian analysts and establishing a 100-member violent crime reduction team” left him dissatisfied.

     Reneé, meet David.

     It would be impolite to close without making some observations. Our first relates to Chicago Mayor Lightfoot’s desire to employ minorities in policing. We’re fully onboard with that. But her speech lacked suggestions for improving literacy in low-income areas, an essential element for positions such as with the police, where the ability to express oneself on paper is critical.

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     And we’re skeptical about Dallas Mayor Johnson’s wish for “data-driven solutions for communities disproportionately affected by violent crime.” Actually, that sounds like...Compstat! But as “Driven to Fail” and other posts in our “Quantity and Quality” section have pointed out, policing doesn’t happen on an assembly line. Cops and citizens are imperfect, and the environment of the streets can lead both to act in unpredictable, sometimes unfortunate ways. Using numbers, whether they’re from Compstat or old-fashioned pin maps, will inevitably lead to more police activity in high-crime areas. Mistakes (including “false positives”) will happen. And if there’s a lot of policing, there will be lots of mistakes. Perhaps Mayor Johnson could ask LAPD’s new chief, Michel Moore (he took over after Charlie Beck) about the consequences of his agency’s stop-and-frisk campaign. It was motivated by the best of intentions. But then “stuff” happened.

     So what can Chiefs do? Instead of falling prey to managerial rhetoric, why not transform a naughty obstacle – the imprecision of policing – into a positive? While the media, academics and other “outsiders” obsess over mistakes, officers soldier on, making miracles every day. How do they get unpredictable, occasionally hostile citizens to do the right thing without using force? In “Fair but Firm” we mentioned a way, but your writer is a couple decades removed from fieldwork. So, as he recently suggested to a national police organization (he’s waiting to see if they’ll publish his brilliant essay), why not ask cops about how they succeed? (They did! Click here.)

     Well, that’s enough for now. Stay healthy!

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“Woke” up, America!     White on Black     Black on Black     But is it Really Satan?    A Conflicted Mission

Fair But Firm     A Recipe for Disaster     Place Matters     Repeat After Us     Driven to Fail

Scapegoat (I) (II)     A Workplace Without Pity     Speed Kills     Police Slowdowns (I)   Massacre Control

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Role Reversal     Good Guy (I)  (II)     Does Race Matter? (I)

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