Quality Policing Podcast

Our friends at 538 have been writing about mass shootings ( https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-matter-how-you-measure-them-mass-shooting-deaths-are-up/) and it appears that they are up across the board. Peter blames Nick for this phenomenon.

Peter and Nick discuss the terror attack in New York City; the fact that, had the terrorist not just killed people with a car, activists would have yelled that the cops shot a man with a “toy” gun. The terror attack did not terrorize New Yorkers.

A move is afoot to allow warning shots by police; a Baltimore officer doesn’t shoot a man armed with a knife and it works out well; a Seattle officer doesn't shoot a guy who stole a six-pack, and…well…

Nick Selby looks at use of force statistics from the Metropolitan Police in the UK, and the episode starts with a segment about use of force statistics in Minneapolis. This year, of 911 calls to Minneapolis PD for domestic abuse in progress in which force was used, 57 suspects (63%) were black. That's not police selection bias - these were 911 calls. This helps us look at the results in context. B...

In this intense, revealing episode, we’ll hear Floyd make an outcry of suicidal ideation while speaking with officers from the Behavioral Intervention Unit of the Hurst, Euless, and Bedford Police Departments in Texas, between Dallas and Fort Worth- which just might be America’s most progressive, proactive mental health unit. There are ten times more people ( http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org...

Nick and Peter discuss Peter’s blog post ( http://www.copinthehood.com/2017/10/cops-in-conservative-cities-seem-to.html) that showed a correlation between the conservativeness of a city, and the number of people shot and killed by police. A large, randomized trial in Washington D.C. to test whether body worn video cameras (BWVC) have an effect on the way people – citizens and cops alike – behave....

This is a longer episode than normal, because of our gun control conversation. The UCRs are out, and they show a 23% increase in homicide in the past two years. Two Chicago Police officers were disciplined for kneeling and showing a Black Power fist salute. Also, we discuss statistics on law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty, after the ambush killing of a Georgia police detective ( h...

An instructor in the police academy said I’d do thousands of car stops in my career. He said the only way to not get complacent was to treat every encounter as an opportunity to practice good officer-safety tactics. If I did that, he said, I’d never get caught out. This isn’t some theoretical challenge — many people know that car stops are dangerous. Somehow, it’s hard to explain exactly why they’...

The D.C. Court of Appeals agreed in a 2 to 1 ruling that police agencies that use cell-site simulators ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/09/21/police-use-of-stingray-cellphone-tracker-requires-search-warrant-appeals-court-rules/?utm_term=.c78695f086a4 ) like Harris Corporation’s StingRay product must obtain a search warrant before use. Police on the campus of Georgia Tech sh...

Based on a substantial corpus of significant evidence, race is not predictive of who will be killed by police, racism is not the driver of police use of deadly force, and this program's conclusions about race and police shootings – like those of reporters from the Washington Post, Guardian, ProPublica – are wrong.

Peter and Nick discuss the acquittal of former St. Louis Police Officer Jason Stockley

On July 11, 2016, Decatur, Illinois, Police Officer Andrew Wittmer shot and wounded Lonnie Mitchell after a shirtless Mitchell reached for a black semi-automatic pistol in his waistband. Wittmer fired one shot. In this honest interview, Andrew opens up about the trauma and stresses he went through during and after the incident, particularly his struggle to deal with the the aftermath of trauma and...

We begin the podcast with a reference to – but not a discussion of – the trial in which St. Louis Circuit Judge Timothy Wilson acquitted Officer Jason Stockley of premeditated murder this week in St. Louis. That is included in a separate podcast.

This episode is dedicated to those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001 and to those who have since passed from injuries suffered as a result of those attacks.

Jeff Asher is a crime analyst and consultant based out of New Orleans. He previously worked as a crime analyst for the City of New Orleans. Jeff runs the NOLA Crime News blog and can be found on twitter @Crimealytics ( https://twitter.com/crimealytics) . The 2017 murder rate is expected to be on par with that of 2009, well at the bottom of the historic post-1990 decline, yet still higher than the...

Nurse Wubbels and Detective Payne; David Clarke; Joe Arpaio; “We only shoot black people;” Sheriff Ed Gonzalez & the Houston response.