Posted 9/21/20

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.

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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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But is it Really Satan?     Don’t Divest - Invest!     Loopholes are Lethal (II)

Two Sides of the Same Coin     Guilty Until Proven Innocent     A Matter of Life and Death     Gun Crazy

Special section: Neighborhoods

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.

UPDATES

9/22/20  In a sharply worded memorandum, the Department of Justice threatened to withhold funds from New York City and Portland, which severely cut their police budgets despite sharp increases in violence, and Seattle, which established a month-long police-free “safe zone.” Each city was also criticized for rejecting assistance from Federal law enforcement agencies.

9/4/20  Cleveland police detective James Skernivitz, a 22-year veteran, was shot and killed while working with an Operation Legend task force. He was in a vehicle with an drug informant, who was also killed. Three suspects were detained.

8/19/20  A.G. William Barr cited examples of casework in eight Operation Legend cities. So far most of the Federal arrests are for felons illegally acquiring or possessing firearms, and for the possession or usie of firearms in furtherance of a Federal drug offense or crime of violence.

8/14/20  Indianapolis, where homicide has reportedly increased by 51 percent, joined DOJ’s “Operation Legend.” The roster now includes Albuquerque, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Memphis, Milwaukee and St. Louis. Operation Legend commits the ATF, FBI, DEA, and U.S. Marshals Service “to help state and local officials fight high levels of violent crime, particularly gun violence.”

8/13/20  A 22-year old man who allegedly harbored a grudge against the family of LeGend Tallifero and had made recent threats was arrested in the child’s killing. He faces murder and weapons charges.

8/12/20  Twenty major cities report a surge in homicides. Kansas City has been especially hard hit. Many of its killings are unexplainable. Some result from “random, angry” conflicts between citizens who aren’t believed to be currently involved in crime but may be struggling to accept the lockdowns.

8/6/20  DOJ announced that Memphis and St. Louis are joining Operation Legend. Among other grants, Memphis is getting $9.8 million to hire 50 officers, and $1 million is going to St. Louis to help with investigations and gunfire alert (“shot spotter”) technology.

8/5/20  Chicago police are quickly turning over felons caught with guns to ATF agents brought in under “Operation Legend.” Federal penalties feature longer terms, and release requires that at least 85 percent of a term be served, avoiding what some consider the state’s “revolving door.”

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Special topics: Neighborhoods     Stop-and-Frisk

Turning Cops Into Liars     Place Matters     But is it Really Satan?

Repeat After Us: City is Meaningless     Mission Impossible?

Driven to Fail     Scapegoat II    A Lost Cause      Location, Location, Location

What Can Cops Really Do?     Crime-Fighting on a Budget     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?

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

UPDATES

9/22/20  In a sharply worded memorandum, the Department of Justice threatened to withhold funds from New York City and Portland, which severely cut their police budgets despite sharp increases in violence, and Seattle, which established a month-long police-free “safe zone.” Each city was also criticized for rejecting assistance from Federal law enforcement agencies.

8/12/20  Twenty major cities report a surge in homicides. Kansas City has been especially hard hit. Many of its killings are unexplainable. Some result from “random, angry” conflicts between citizens who aren’t believed to be currently involved in crime but may be struggling to accept the lockdowns.

8/11/20  Seattle police chief Carmen Best “abruptly” announced her retirement. Her decision, she said, was influenced by the City Council’s move, without her input, to promptly cut 100 officers from the agency. Staff salaries are also being slashed, and a fifty-percent reduction in funding is being considered. AG William Barr issued a statement regretting her departure: “In the face of mob violence, she drew the line in the sand and said, "Enough!", working tirelessly to save lives, protect her officers, and restore stability to Seattle.” He was apparently referring to the resumption of policing in the Capitol Hill area, where police coverage was discontinued at the Mayor’s direction until violence forced cops to return.

8/10/20  In Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood officers shot and wounded an armed man whom they say fired at them. That led to an overnight cascade of looting, broken windows, fires and shootings in the city’s downtown. Thirteen officers suffered injuries and more than one-hundred arrests were made. Merchants criticize authorities for lacking “an effective strategy” to counter the repeated unrest.

8/9/20  Twenty were wounded and a 17-year old was killed when disputants opened fire at a large social gathering in Washington D.C.’s poverty-stricken Greenway neighborhood. Among the wounded was an off-duty police officer, who was left in critical condition. As of 8/7 D.C has had 115 homicides, a 17 percent increase from last year, itself reportedly a decade high.

7/28/20  LAPD’s “Community Safety Partnership,” an intensive community-building effort that fields 100 officers in nine inner-city neighborhoods, is being expanded into an agency-wide bureau with its own deputy chief. Its move is being criticized by protest groups as insufficient and fundamentally misdirected:  “This is not a program that needs to be operated by armed, sworn police officers.”

7/24/20  “Operation Legend,” a DOJ initiative, is sending dozens of Federal investigators from various agencies to help police in violence-besieged Chicago, Kansas City and Albuquerque combat “gangs, narcotics traffickers, violent offenders, and firearms traffickers.” Funds are also being provided to hire  officers in Kansas City and Albuquerque and to compensate Chicago for police overtime and other costs.

In Chicago, fifteen persons gathered outside a youth’s funeral in the violence-stricken Gresham neighborhood were wounded in a gang drive-by. Some of those in attendance fired back.

7/13/20  President Trump sent a sneering letter to the Mayor of Chicago and the Governor of Illinois criticizing their failure to bring down the violence despite the “millions” of Federal dollars spent each year to help police Chicago. According to the Chicago Tribune, he threatened during a White House session “to go in and take over” if the shootings, which he called “worse than a war zone,” continue.

It was “another violent weekend” in Chicago, with sixty shot, of whom “at least” ten died. Among those killed was a 15-year old boy who fell near the place where his brother was shot dead three months ago, and a woman attending an outdoor memorial for a man killed two years earlier. A special police unit was recently formed to deal with these “flareups.” Addressing concerns about past abuses, Chief Brown said it was modeled on a community-minded unit used in Dallas, where he was the chief.

Shootings in New York City are way up, with 585 as of July 5th. compared with 381 during the same period in 2019. Among the most recent victims are a one-year old, shot dead during a late-evening Brooklyn cookout by “two gunmen, dressed all in black.” Three adults were also left wounded.

7/9/20  Despite coronavirus, violence in crime-plagued Kansas City is up. As of July 7, there have been 100 murders, forty percent more than at this time last year. The Department of Justice is responding with “Operation Legend,” a multi-agency targeted approach.

7/6/20  Last year Chicago’s gun violence toll over the Fourth of July weekend was six dead and 63 wounded. This year “at least 80” were shot, of whom “at least” 17 died. One of the fatalities was a 7-year old girl who was celebrating the holiday with her family in the Austin neighborhood. Other victims include a 14-year old shot dead and an 11-year old and a 15-year old wounded, all in the Englewood area.

6/29/20  Through June 21 there have been 295 murders and 1,250 shootings in Chicago, compared with 235 and 902 in 2019. These incidents are mostly happening in the city’s crime-scarred districts, including Harrison, Austin, Ogden and Lawndale. A recent weekend’s toll was at least 106 shot and 14 killed. On “a bloody Saturday,” June 27, eight were shot and killed including three children. One, twenty months old, was struck by a bullet as his mother drove in the Englewood neighborhood.

6/21/20  During the late evening/early morning hours of June 19-20, shootings in Chicago left twenty-four wounded and two dead. That was followed by seven killings and “at least twenty” woundings during the next day and evening. Among the dead were four children, ages three to seventeen. The three-year old was shot while in a car being driven by his father, whom officers know and consider the target.

5/27/20  Twenty-eight additional Chicagoans were shot, including at least five killed, on the day after Memorial day. Gangs and drug sales again seemed to be involved, but the victims included a 5-year old girl who was struck in the leg while standing outside a home.

5/26/20  Fifty fell to gunfire in Chicago, ten fatally, during the Memorial Day weekend, considerably surpassing last year’s toll and nearly matching 2015’s appalling count, when twelve were shot dead. That led Mayor Lightfoot to “scold” her new chief, David Brown: “...what I said to the superintendent this morning is this was a fail...And whatever the strategy is, it didn’t work.” Chief Brown attributed the violence to gang rivalries and disputes over drug sales. He conceded that staffing levels had been lower than in 2019, when 1,000 extra officers were deployed.

5/16/20  Chicago has had 175 homicides this year compared with 156 during the same period in 2019. Shootings have increased from 596 to 717. Chief David Brown said a “summer mobile unit” will be dealing with violence in the city’s crime-besieged South and West areas. He is also considering a city-wide “community” unit. “They could work on a Habitat for Humanity home. They could deliver meals one day a week to the seniors in the city. They could do some work with young people in the schools.”

5/4/20  Recalling the 2002 gun killing of a 17-year old, and the rituals in its aftermath, Chicago Tribune columnist Dahleen Glanton writes that for many of the city’s youths the coronavirus is no match for “the virus of violence, which has consumed their neighborhoods and threatens to wipe out their entire generation.”

5/3/20  Teens gathered for an early-morning outdoor party in Chicago’s violence-stricken Lawndale neighborhood. About 3:30 am a car drove by. According to a ShotSpotter, it sprayed “at least 14 rounds.” Five teens, ages 15-19, were wounded and are hospitalized in fair condition.

4/25/20  To combat persistently high levels of violence even during the pandemic, Chicago Chief Brown has reassigned “dozens” of officers to patrol the Harrison, Gresham, Englewood and Deering neighborhoods. Harrison, for example, has had 90 shootings this year, twenty more than at this time in 2019. COVID-19 dispersal orders have also been issued far more frequently in these predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods, stirring concerns about discriminatory policing.

4/21/20  LAPD Chief Michel Moore said that due to budgetary constraints brought on by the pandemic, the agency’s crime analysts were discontinuing use of PredPol software. Instead, their work will now be  driven by the community-oriented SARA approach. But agency critics championed the move as a victory in their battle against the unfair targeting of minority communities.

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