Civil Rights, Police, Justice, Federal Government

[Legacy]

This seems like a good thread to start.

Here's a starter.

Forced reforms, Mixed results
Federal interventions at troubled police departments across the country drag on for years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. (Washington Post)

Excerpt:

Over the past two decades, the Justice Department has undertaken its deepest interventions at 16 police departments that had patterns of excessive or deadly force, implementing reforms under the watch of independent monitors. More than its predecessors, the Obama administration has aggressively pursued police departments over the *abuses, recently launching probes after individuals died as a result of encounters with police in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo.

The question is whether such interventions work. The Justice Department has not studied the long-term outcomes at the law enforcement agencies it has targeted.

To examine the impact, reporters surveyed the departments, visiting four cities. They interviewed officials, federal monitors and civil rights advocates. They also reviewed use-of-force data, monitoring reports and local budgets.

The reforms have led to modernized policies, new equipment and better training, police chiefs, city leaders, activists and Justice officials agree.

But measured by incidents of use of force, one of Justice’s primary metrics, the outcomes are mixed. In five of the 10 police departments for which sufficient data was provided, use of force by officers increased during and after the agreements. In five others, it stayed the same or declined.

Justice Department found police had committed civil rights violations with subsequent Consent Decrees instituted in the following cities' Police Departments in the last few years:

Cleveland (agreement)
Ferguson (findings) - lawsuit filed
Albuquerque (findings)
Seattle (findings)
New Orleans (findings) - Special Monitor appointed
Portland (agreement)
Pittsburgh (findings)
Newark (agreement)
Oakland
New York
Washington, D.C.
Miami (agreement)
Cincinnati

Detroit (ended)
Los Angeles (ended)

I believe nineteen city police departments are - or have been - under Consent Decrees for human and civil rights violations. (I'll update the list with more research). Add any you know of or any cities whose Consent Decrees have ended.

Under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, passed by Congress in 1994, after the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles, authorized the Justice Department Civil Rights division the ability to pursue police agencies if they demonstrate a “pattern and practice” of violating the Constitutional rights of the people they are sworn to serve and protect—including the use of excessive force, racial profiling, and policing-for-profit schemes.

Justice Department/Civil Rights Division/Special Litigation Section - Conduct of Law Enforcement Agencies (see "Description of the Laws We Enforce")

The Justice Department's process starts with a complaint.
Since 1994,
-- A Preliminary Investigation is triggered by a complaint (325 police departments), then
-- a Formal Investigation may be initiated (38 police departments),
-- Consent Decrees have been instituted in 19 of those 38 police departments, and finally,
- an Independent Monitor was appointed in 9 of those 19 cases.

For example, after nine years of resistance by the Oakland P.D., a federal judge temporarily ordered the department placed under a receiver who had total control over the department. Oakland has paid a total of $57 million during the 2001-2011 timeframe to alleged victims of police abuse.


A 'Pattern or Practice' of Violence in America (Bloomberg)

 

[zelezo vlk]

Oh great, let's get started. What is justice?

 

[Legacy]

From DomerInHappyValley in Dallas Police Shooting thread:

Surprising New Evidence Shows Bias in Police Use of Force but Not in Shootings

A new study confirms that black men and women are treated differently in the hands of law enforcement. They are more likely to be touched, handcuffed, pushed to the ground or pepper-sprayed by a police officer, even after accounting for how, where and when they encounter the police.

But when it comes to the most lethal form of force — police shootings — the study finds no racial bias.

The study did not say whether the most egregious examples — the kind of killings at the heart of the nation’s debate on police shootings — are free of racial bias. Instead, it examined a much larger pool of shootings, including nonfatal ones. It focused on what happens when police encounters occur, not how often they happen. Racial differences in how often police-civilian interactions occur reflect greater structural problems in society.

Results were based on records from ten police departments

He and a group of student researchers spent about 3,000 hours assembling detailed data from police reports in Houston; Austin, Tex.; Dallas; Los Angeles; Orlando, Fla.; Jacksonville, Fla.; and four other counties in Florida.

NYC

And in less extreme uses of force, Mr. Fryer found ample racial differences, which is in accord with the public’s perception and other studies.

In New York City, blacks stopped by the police were about 17 percent more likely to experience use of force, according to stop-and-frisk records kept between 2003 and 2013. (In the later year, a judge ruled that the tactic as employed then was unconstitutional.)

NYC PD - Compliant Citizens
Also, an analysis of the NYC PD records focusing on "Compliant citizens";
"Use of Force in Stops of ‘Compliant’ Citizens in New York City
Suspects who complied with officers’ directions, did not verbally threaten police officers, were not arrested and were not found with weapons or contraband." showed blacks were more likely to have police

use hands 2,165 1,845 17% more likely
push into wall 623 529 18%
use handcuffs* 310 266 16%
draw weapons 155 129 19%
push to ground 136 114 18%
point weapon 54 43 24%
pepper spray or baton 5 4 25%

Adjusted for gender, age, police precinct, the reason for the stop, whether the stop was indoors or outdoors, the time of day, whether the stop took place in a high-crime area or during a high-crime time, whether the officer was in uniform, the type of identification provided, and whether others were stopped. Likelihoods are for at least that level of force.

The study was done by Roland G. Fryer, Jr., a black economist tenured at Harvard, who says at the end of the article:

“Who the hell wants to have a police officer put their hand on them or yell and scream at them? It’s an awful experience,” he said. “I’ve had it multiple, multiple times. Every black man I know has had this experience. Every one of them. It is hard to believe that the world is your oyster if the police can rough you up without punishment. And when I talked to minority youth, almost every single one of them mentions lower level uses of force as the reason why they believe the world is corrupt.”

 

[PLACforever]

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[Legacy]

Fatal police shootings in 2015 approaching 400 nationwide (Washington Post, May 30, 2015)

“These shootings are grossly under*reported,” said Jim Bueermann, a former police chief and president of the Washington-based Police Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving law enforcement. “We are never going to reduce the number of police shootings if we don’t begin to accurately track this information.”

-- About half the victims were white, half minority. But the demographics shifted sharply among the unarmed victims, two-thirds of whom were black or Hispanic. Overall, blacks were killed at three times the rate of whites or other minorities when adjusting by the population of the census tracts where the shootings occurred.

-- The Post analysis also sheds light on the situations that most commonly gave rise to fatal shootings. About half of the time, police were responding to people seeking help with domestic disturbances and other complex social situations: A homeless person behaving erratically. A boyfriend threatening violence. A son trying to kill himself.

-- The other half of shootings involved non-domestic crimes, such as robberies, or the routine duties that occupy patrol officers, such as serving warrants.

-- Although race was a dividing line, those who died by police gunfire often had much in common. Most were poor and had a history of run-ins with law enforcement over mostly small-time crimes, sometimes because they were emotionally troubled.

Ninety-two victims — nearly a quarter of those killed — were identified by police or family members as mentally ill.

-- As a start, criminologists say the federal government should systematically analyze police shootings. Currently, the FBI struggles to gather the most basic data. Reporting is voluntary, and since 2011, less than 3 percent of the nation’s 18,000 state and local police agencies have reported fatal shootings by their officers to the FBI. As a result, FBI records over the past decade show only about 400 police shootings a year — an average of 1.1 deaths per day.

-- According to The Post’s analysis, the daily death toll so far for 2015 is close to 2.6. At that pace, police will have shot and killed nearly 1,000 people by the end of the year.

 

[wizards8507]

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9LRtnBsx3tc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

TL;DR - Interesting observations of what happens when two favored groups of the left come into conflict.

 

[Legacy]

Miami police settlement with Justice Department avoids federal courts, costs (Miami Herald, Feb 24, 2016)

When the U.S. Department of Justice issued a scathing 2013 report rebuking the Miami Police Department, it looked like the federal government was prepared to come down hard on a repeat offender.

The city’s police force, having shot seven black men in a span of eight months, was accused of overzealously engaging in shootings, haphazardly investigating those incidents, and employing poor tactics that endangered officers and the public. Justice said Miami’s problems were systemic and left unresolved by a previous and similar federal investigation, leading to the expectation that the city would be pushed to enact sweeping reforms overseen by a federal judge.