police
Taking Victims Seriously
Published September 29, 2009 @ 05:06AM PT
The Philadelphia Inquirer today praised the Philadelphia Police Department for improving the way it treats victims of sexual assault, marking a complete turnaround from ten years ago. It's rare the a media outlet will praise a police department when it does something right, so kudos to the Inquirer for sending kudos to the cops.
Ten years ago, the Inquirer hammered the police for allowing investigations of sexual assaults to slide, for treating victims callously and for generally not taking rapes seriously. It led to a harsh national spotlight and sweeping reforms, including another look at hundreds of cold cases. The reforms are ongoing, but today's story shows that a lot has changed:
Watching Philadelphia Police Capt. John Darby talk to reporters last month about the rape of a jogger near Forbidden Drive, Carol Tracy sat before the television, slack-jawed.
She couldn't believe how sensitive he seemed.
Police had no suspect. The victim had been unwilling to sit with detectives.
"He said he understood how traumatic this event was for the victim, and that he hoped she would be in a place where she would be able to speak to police in a short time," recalled Tracy, who directs the Women's Law Project. "He understood the trauma of the event was having a devastating impact on her."
An Arrest in Rocky Mount
Published September 03, 2009 @ 05:57AM PT
I wrote in August about the six women found strangled over the last four years near Rocky Mount, NC -- believed to be the victims of a serial killer. All six victims were black women, and most of them were sex workers with drug addictions. Three more women are missing. These murders began in 2005, and for years this group of marginalized, poor victims wasn’t getting a lot of attention. Finally, when the sixth victim was found this summer, the national media started to notice. (And I’m no better than the MSM; I didn’t write about until after the Anderson Cooper show had swooped down on rural Rocky Mount).
So the Silver Fox makes an appearance and suddenly we have a suspect. Antwan Maurice Pittman was charged yesterday in the murder of Taraha Nicholson, who was found strangled to death in March. The cops aren’t saying whether Pittman is tied to any of the other crimes, or even what evidence connects him to this crime. I don’t know what broke the case. I do believe the victims’ families, however, when they say the response wasn’t exactly all-hands-on-deck after the first few victims were found dead. Now we have to watch closely to make sure the police have the right guy.
Q & A: Cops Against the Drug War
Published August 26, 2009 @ 03:46AM PT
A week ago at Netroots Nation, I sat down with two members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition to discuss the group’s efforts to support drug legalization. Jack Cole (right), the organization's Executive Director, spoke about the group’s work advocating against drug prohibition and David Bratzer (left), an active police officer in Victoria, British Columbia, talked about the challenges of advocating against the drug war while serving as an officer.
Here are some excerpts from our conversation:
Q: Can you tell me about your path that brought you to work with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition?
Jack Cole: I was in the New Jersey State Police for 26 years, and I was undercover in narcotics. When I went into narcotics, I thought drugs were the scourge of the earth and I was going to save the world. But after about three years of living on the street with those folks, I came to the realization that the only thing different between them and me is that they wanted to put something in their bodies that I didn’t want to put in mine.
Everything else was the same, they had the same wishes, they wanted to make a living, raise a family, get respect from other people in the world. And it made me think that all these things I’d been learning in my whole my life were lies about, about this stuff.
…If there was an epiphany, I think, one of the biggest shocks was about three years into the undercover work. I realized that I liked some of the people that I worked on, better than some of the people I worked for. Something’s wrong with this picture. But I stayed in law enforcement for another 11 years, after I had decided that the war on drugs was wrong and the only way to reduce drug abuse would be to legalize drugs, I decided that in 1973, but I stayed in narcotics for another 11 years.
Q: David, is it rare for a serving officer like yourself to speak out publicly on this issue?
David Bratzer: Yes, it’s rare. Gradually it’s changing, though. The difficulty is, as a serving officer, it brings up some issues that a retired officer might not have. People ask: ‘Are you still going to enforce drug laws while on duty?’ My answer to that is: ‘Of course I will.’ I took an oath to uphold all laws, not to just pick and choose…But, when I first came out with this position, a lot of people at my department were concerned about that.
Q: Are there officers and departments that choose not to enforce drug laws in order to focus on other crime?
DB: Certainly in Canada, and I would expect in the U.S. as well. There are officers who make broad use of their discretion, and also as you go up the chain throughout senior management, and that’s a good thing. And the trick is, how do you find those officers and speak with them and convince them to speak out publicly about it.
JC: There is discretion. Some officers will stop somebody with suspected marijuana on them and subject this vegetation to the wind test. If it passes the wind test, they get arrested. Of course, most things fail the wind test. The wind test is that if it blows away when you shake it out, it’s not marijuana.
White Drivers Have More Contraband
Published July 27, 2009 @ 07:45PM PT
A study of police traffic stops and car searches in Illinois has shown that minority drivers are more likely to be stopped by police and more likely to be asked permission to search the car - but much less likely than white drivers to have illegal items like guns and drugs in their cars.
President Barack Obama worked on starting this annual state study of race and traffic stops when he was a state senator, and he alluded to the study in his first round of remarks about GatesGate July 22. The racial numbers have been consistent since the study launched in 2004, but at least the number of times officers ask drivers for consent to search is declining overall. Some data from the 2008 study, via the Chicago Tribune:
- When a vehicle of a white driver was "consent-searched," officers statewide found contraband 24.7 percent of the time.
- When a vehicle driven by a minority was searched, officers found contraband 15.4 percent of the time.
- Minority drivers statewide were about twice as likely as whites to be asked for consent to search their vehicle.
- In Chicago, minority drivers were four times more likely to get searched, down from five times more likely in the last study.
- Statewide, minority drivers were 13 percent more likely than white drivers to be stopped.
- Overall, consent searches are down 30 percent since 2004.
"The fact is every single year we see these same numbers," said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the ACLU of Illinois. "There is just a predisposition to believe minorities have contraband. ... The data and the indisputable nature of this is exactly what the president was talking about the other night."
Broken Windows in Indianapolis
Published June 22, 2009 @ 04:38PM PT
By cracking down on small crimes, the Indianapolis Police Department in making a big mistake.
In an effort to clean up the city's most crime-ridden neighborhoods, Indianapolis police are looking to the "broken windows theory" - hoping that by strictly enforcing laws against minor crimes like jaywalking, littering and not wearing a seat belt, they can create an environment that is less friendly to more serious infractions and violence.
There are serious problems with this approach. First, it accentuates the double-standard for the (often poor) residents living in high-crime neighborhoods. Jaywalking is illegal for them but overlooked elsewhere in the city. This effort doesn't build trust between a community and its police officers, either. Rather than feeling protected by police, residents begin to look over their shoulder to make sure they aren't "trespassing" in a friend's housing project or driving without their seat belt.
Most importantly, the statistics are unclear on whether Broken Windows works. I've written previously about the confusion between correlation and causation when it comes to police experiments like this one.
Police, Race and Friendly Fire
Published May 31, 2009 @ 11:04AM PT
The tragic shooting death of 25-year-old New York City police officer Omar Edwards on Thursday has raised anew questions of racial profiling and the use of deadly force by police officers. Edwards was off duty and drew his gun while chasing a suspect, his fellow officers saw the gun and shot. The investigation is ongoing and there's no way to say whether anyone is at fault in this horrible scenario. When officers see someone with a gun in their hand, they often must act quickly. Perhaps they acted too quickly, perhaps they had no choice. It's too early to say, and may be unproductive to place blame amid such terrible circumstances.
But there's no getting around it - this case treads in racially charged territory. Edwards was black and the officer who shot him was white. Whether it was a factor in this case or not, racial profiling is alive and well in our county. I would argue that an African-American police officer has a greater chance of being shot in circumstances like this than a white officer. And that's something we need to change.
