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Today In Criminal Justice
Major U.S. Police Groups Agree on De-Escalation Policy
Why Do We Criminalize Young Victims of Sex Trafficking?
Chicago Upgrades Police Training on Mental Illness
Is Crime Up Where Police Practices Eroded Respect?
26% of Gun Homicides in Areas With 1.5% of U.S. Population
FBI Arrests Wife of Orlando Nightclub Shooter
With Execution Moratorium, WA Death Row Down to 8
Can Trump Halt Terror Threat on U.S.-Mexican Border?
22 U.S. Domestic Terror Attacks Last Year, Up from 16
Will Obama Advise Trump On a Clemency Process?
Who Will Pay for Texas Criminal Justice Reform?
AZ Gov. Ducey Tries Vivitrol to Reduce Recidivism
MA State Police Use of Force Nearly Doubles
Appeals Court Hears Challenge to CO Recreational Pot
Top Story
Major U.S. Police Groups Agree on De-Escalation PolicyThe nation’s leading law enforcement organizations today issued what they called a consensus policy on police use of force that emphasizes de-escalation. The groups said the policy “takes into account and reflects the broad views and experience of the field – ranging from a line officer to an executive.” The groups agreed that, “An officer shall use de-escalation techniques and other alternatives to higher levels of force consistent with his or her training whenever possible and appropriate before resorting to force and to reduce the need for force.”
The groups added that, “Whenever possible and when such delay will not compromise the safety of the officer or another and will not result in the destruction of evidence, escape of a suspect, or commission of a crime, an officer shall allow an individual time and opportunity to submit to verbal commands before force is used.” Because each of the nation’s estimated 18,000 law enforcement agencies uses its own policies on use of force, the new consensus will not be imposed on individual police departments. Still, it is expected to be consulted widely as police agencies review their policies and practices. The Crime Report Why Do We Criminalize Young Victims of Sex Trafficking?A California law effective this month bars prosecutors from charging minors with prostitution writes Kimberly Mehlman-Orozco in a commentary for TCR. But the practice of bringing juveniles who have been victims of commercial sexual exploitation into court happens more often than we would expect in many parts of the country. The Crime Report Chicago Upgrades Police Training on Mental IllnessChicago is bolstering its response to emergencies involving people suffering from mental illness to address glaring deficiencies laid bare by the Justice Department, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. An eight-hour course developed in partnership with EMS System Hospitals will allow paramedics, 911 personnel, police officers, and mental health providers to engage in live, “scenario-based” simulations. The morning class covers psychiatric and behavioral emergencies, signs and symptoms. and recommended treatment. The afternoon covers “simulation scenarios,” with talking mannequins and actors posing as patients.
A simulation yesterday featured a woman in a bar who was disoriented after failing to take her medication. Alexa James of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Chicago said the eight-hour course is different from the 40-hour Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) certification because it’s “inter-agency” and “scenario-based.” “If an officer responds to a scene and so does the fire department, do people know who is supposed to take this person and what they’re supposed to do? This is learning what everybody is supposed to do,” James said. Last year, the police shootings of Quintonio LeGrier and Bettie Jones prompted Mayor Rahm Emanuel to announce a 50 percent increase in crisis intervention training for police officers and at least one CIT officer in every district on every watch. Chicago Sun-Times
Is Crime Up Where Police Practices Eroded Respect?
Whether it’s Baltimore, Cleveland, Ferguson and St. Louis County, or now Chicago, cities in which violent crime remains aberrantly high are also served by police departments with long histories of institutional abuse, bigotry and/or corruption, and where transparency and real accountability are close to nonexistent, writes Radley Balko in the Washington Post. We’ve heard a lot about the “Ferguson effect.” The idea is that cops have stopped responding to altercations or stopped proactive policing, because they’re scared of anti-police violence, because public criticism of police has diminished morale, and/or because they’re afraid that if they do need to use force, they’ll be subjected to internal investigations, criminal charges, a lawsuit, or some other sort of discipline.
There also isn’t much data to back up the idea, Balko maintains. In most parts of the country, discipline of police officers is rare to nonexistent. Criminal charges are almost unheard of. Of the 600,000 or so police on the beat in the U.S., typically fewer than 10 per year face criminal charges related to use of force while on the job. What is true is that the cities where there have been recent, high-profile protests against police brutality have also seen much higher rates of violent crime. Perhaps that is indeed because, in response to protests and criticism, the police in those cities have stopped doing their jobs. That’s an awfully cynical view of police. Perhaps it’s because the people who protest police are also just generally lawless and unhinged. That’s an awfully cynical view of people. Here’s another explanation: Perhaps crime is up in some of these cities because police practices have eroded residents’ respect for the police, the courts and the rule of law, Balko says. Washington Post 26% of Gun Homicides in Areas With 1.5% of U.S. PopulationFrom a distance, the United States can look like a nation of broad civilian gun ownership, frequent shootings, and stubborn resistance to stricter gun control laws. In reality, many places, even parts of cities that struggle with gun violence, like Chicago, Oakland, and Baltimore, are almost completely safe. The devastation of gun violence is clustered in particular areas, often racially segregated neighborhoods that have been shut out from a wide range of different resources, from good schools to grocery stores, The Guardian reports.
The nonprofit Gun Violence Archive, which began tracking shootings and gun deaths using media reports, began to collect geolocation data for each incident – allowing, for the first time, a nationwide look at the precise geographic concentration of gun homicides. The Guardian analyzed the Archive’s 2015 data – matching the locations of more than 13,000 gun homicide incidents to the demographic data of particular census tracts, and analyzing the patterns of violence from single streets to neighborhoods to cities to the country as a whole. Half of U.S. gun homicide victims died in just 127 cities that represent less than a quarter of the nation’s population. Within those cities, gun homicides were further concentrated in tiny neighborhood census tracts that had seen multiple gun homicide incidents. Nationwide, neighborhoods that contained just 1.5 percent of the U.S. population saw 26 percent of the total gun homicides. The Guardian FBI Arrests Wife of Orlando Nightclub ShooterThe wife of Omar Mateen, the gunman who killed 49 people in an attack at an Orlando nightclub in June, is due in court today after her arrest by FBI near San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The charges include obstruction of justice and providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. The FBI has been looking into whether Noor Zahi Salman was involved in the rampage at the Pulse nightclub. Mateen died in a shootout with police during the massacre.
Salman told the FBI that she had driven her husband to the Pulse at some point before the night of the attack and had been with him when he bought ammunition two days earlier. Salman lived near San Francisco with her mother and sister before marrying Mateen in 2013. Orlando Police Chief John Mina said, “Federal authorities have been working tirelessly on this case for more than seven months, and we are grateful that they have seen to it that some measure of justice will be served in this act of terror that has affected our community so deeply,” the Orlando Sentinel reports. San Francisco Chronicle With Execution Moratorium, WA Death Row Down to 8Twenty years ago, Dwayne Anthony Woods was convicted of murdering two women, sentenced to die and sent to Washington state’s death row. Claiming he was innocent, he launched a series of appeals that kept him alive and denied the victims’ families the justice they wanted. The appeals came to an end this month when Woods, 46, died of a heart attack. It was the only death on death row since Gov. Jay Inslee issued a moratorium on executions in 2014. If Inslee has his way, the eight who remain will also die of disease or old age, the Los Angeles Times reports.
In the broadening fight against capital punishment, his strategy for clearing death row now plays a key role, with similar moratoriums in place in Oregon, Colorado, and Pennsylvania. Opposition to the death penalty has grown amid concerns over whether some innocent people have been put to death, discrimination against African Americans in sentencing, the costs of appeals, and the methods states use to carry out The number of executions has fallen dramatically, from a peak of 98 in 1999 to 20 last year. There are about 2,900 people on death rows across the country, down from a peak of nearly 3,600 in 2000. Over the last decade, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, New Mexico, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware have abolished capital punishment, placing them among the 18 states, along with the District of Columbia, where the most severe punishment is life in prison without the possibility of parole. Moratoriums are a way for governors to halt executions without putting the issue directly to voters or to state legislatures. Los Angeles Times Can Trump Halt Terror Threat on U.S.-Mexican Border?Islamic militants purchase a nuclear device from a sympathetic official in Pakistan and ship the weapon on a drug trafficking route through West Africa to South America. Next, the package is smuggled north to the United States-Mexico border. Although this sounds like the plot line of a spy thriller, it is a scenario laid out in an online magazine produced by the Islamic State, the apocalyptic Syria-based terror group also known as ISIS, the Christian Science Monitor reports “From there it’s just a quick hop through a smuggling tunnel and … presto, they’re mingling with another 12 million ‘illegal’ aliens in America with a nuclear bomb in the trunk of their car,” the 2015 ISIS article says.
The debate over security along the U.S.-Mexico border isn’t just about the millions of unauthorized migrants who have crossed the international boundary seeking work and better lives. It isn’t just about the drug smugglers and assorted other criminals who routinely use the border as an easy back door into the U.S. Conservatives have long warned that terror groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda might try to exploit drug and migrant smuggling routes from Mexico to sneak into the US undetected. From November 2013 to July 2014, officials apprehended 143 individuals listed on the U.S. terror watch list trying to cross the Mexico border and enter the U.S. illegally, said a confidential Texas Department of Public Safety report obtained by the Houston Chronicle. Donald Trump made border security a cornerstone of his campaign for the White House. He says securing the border will be one of his first and highest priorities, including fulfilling his pledge to build a wall on the US-Mexico border. Christian Science Monitor 22 U.S. Domestic Terror Attacks Last Year, Up from 16The greatest terrorism threat facing New Jersey is likely already there, says an annual counter-terrorism report that found domestic attacks across the U.S. were on the rise. The 2017 “threat assessment” from the state Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness ranks homegrown violent extremists as the single-highest threat to the New Jersey, months after the state saw its first major terror attack since 9/11 with bombings allegedly carried out by an Elizabeth, N.J., resident, reports NJ Advance Media.
Chris Rodriguez, the office’s director, said that incident shows “the public is really on the front lines” in an era of lone wolf assaults. The report found homegrown violent extremists — defined as those inspired by foreign extremist groups but radicalized in the countries where they live — were the only category presenting a “high” threat level to the state. Data show the number of attacks nationally is on the rise. There were 22 domestic terror attacks and 17 plots, threats of violence, and instances of weapons stockpiling in 2016. The previous year, the office counted just 16 instances in each category. NJ Advance Media Will Obama Advise Trump On a Clemency Process?With President Obama planning to give clemency to hundreds more federal inmates before he leaves office on Friday, the Washington Post commends him in an editorial for having commuted the sentences of 1,176 people, including 231 on a single day in December. He has also granted 148 pardons, “and thankfully avoided any embarrassing forgiveness for high-profile donors or cronies,” the Post says. the newspaper says Obama “devoted far too little attention” to the issue in his first term, when he granted mercy to only a handful of people.
An Obama clemency initiative in 2014 has been followed by a surge of applications. At year’s end, there were 13,568 requests for commutation and 2,154 for pardon. Had Obama moved earlier to establish a regular process for executive clemency, many of these might have been dealt with in a more timely fashion, the Post says. The outlook for clemency in a Donald Trump presidency is not very promising, given the president-elect’s law-and-order campaign rhetoric. The Post says Obama should urge Trump to “set up a process for clemency decisions early on, and stick with it.” Washington Post Who Will Pay for Texas Criminal Justice Reform?After Sandra Bland’s suicide in a Waller County, Tx., jail cell, several state legislators promised criminal justice reforms to help improve the way county jails help inmates with mental health issues. Now a big question looms ahead of the session: Who is going to pay for those reforms in a tight budget year? asks the Texas Tribune. In a wrongful death settlement, a Waller County judge agreed to eek reform legislation in Bland’s name. State Rep. Garnet Coleman promised to introduce the Sandra Bland Act to address several of the issues around her death.
In addition to requiring more police training in de-escalation, Coleman wants to improve the way Texas jails deal with mental illness. Tom Rhodes, the Bland family’s attorney, says the state needs to improve medical care and inmate monitoring. That could include everything from expanding requirements for nurses in jails, making telemedicine available, and using a card swipe systems to monitor how frequently inmates are checked up on. Jackson County Sheriff A. J. “Andy” Louderback is worried that jails will end up paying for these reforms without state funding. “Most of our jails, here in Texas, don’t have the type of resources that are necessary to take care of all the criminal justice reforms that are being asked about and talked about and printed about right now,” he says. Lawmakers have significantly less cash to work with this year. Texas Tribune AZ Gov. Ducey Tries Vivitrol to Reduce RecidivismArizona Gov. Doug Ducey is bringing vivitrol to Arizona prisons as a way to try to reduce recidivism and save public money, reports the Arizona Republic. In his State of the State address, the Republican governor announced he had signed an executive order that allows certain prisoners to be treated with the blocker before they leave prison “to maximize their success of never, ever going back.” The medication blocks receptors in the brain and prevents the feeling of euphoria from opioids and alcohol. Said one former jail inmate: “I didn’t think it would work because nothing else had. But I have not had the desire to use drugs since I’ve been released. For me, being a chronic relapser, this was the only thing that works.”
Vivitrol is an injectable form of naltrexone, a drug that has been around for decades and comes in pill form to treat alcohol and opioid dependence. Vivitrol can last for 30 days and is emerging as a powerful tool for states, counties and cities to combat opioid dependency, health officials, addiction experts and state officials said. Recidivism has been an issue that the governor has been focused on. He also has said he wants to make sure that when prisoners are released their second chance is a true second chance. Of the state's 42,300 prisoners, an estimated 2,500 have reported using opioids. The system's recidivism rate is about 40 percent. Arizona Republic
MA State Police Use of Force Nearly Doubles
The use of force by Massachusetts State Police officers nearly doubled in 2016, driven by troopers’ widespread use of Tasers for the first time last year, reports the Boston Globe. There were 402 incidents, a 93 percent increase over the 2015 total of 208. Some of the increase appeared to be accounted for by the way the use of the new electronic weapons was logged. More than 100 of the incidents in 2016 were warnings associated with Taser use, not actual strikes.
The use of several types of force rose over 2015 levels, including by police dogs, and 44 injuries suffered by suspects during incidents in which State Police officers used force, up from 33. The reports were obtained through a public records request and posted to muckrock.com. Tasers were carried only by some special units before 2016, and not deployed at all in 2015; the State Police began distributing the weapons more widely in April. Law enforcement’s use of Tasers has proved controversial with civil rights groups. Though considered less-than-lethal, their use has led to fatalities. Instead of replacing the use of lethal force — typically firearms — critics fear they instead substitute for nonviolent deescalation tactics. Boston Globe Appeals Court Hears Challenge to CO Recreational PotA bid to stamp out Colorado’s recreational marijuana industry is scheduled to go before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit today, reports the Denver Post. The court will hear oral arguments in a case arguing that Colorado’s recreational cannabis laws fly in the face of federal controlled substances and racketeering laws. The case, a consolidation of appeals backed by national anti-legalization groups, was joined last year by the Nebraska and Oklahoma, which were coming off a loss after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear their case. The two argued neighboring Colorado violated the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and “created a dangerous gap in the federal drug control system.”
The states’ anti-legalization effort dates from 2014, when Colorado was nearly one year into a first-of-a-kind effort to regulate the sales of cannabis for adult use. The states argued that Colorado’s allowance of legal marijuana sales caused negative spillover effects across its border and that they had to shell out more money because of a spike in arrests, vehicle impoundments, drug seizures, and prisoner transfers. “This contraband has been heavily trafficked into our state,” said Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning at the time. “While Colorado reaps millions from the production and sale of pot, Nebraska taxpayers have to bear the cost.” Denver Post | |
| | On every business day, The Crime Report (TCR) and Criminal Justice Journalists (CJJ) provide a summary of the nation's top crime and justice news stories with Internet links commentary, and New & Notable research in the field. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the Langeloth Foundation and the Urban Institute. Today's report was prepared by Ted Gest and Alice Popovici. Please send comments or questions to alice@thecrimereport.org. | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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