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Today In Criminal Justice
The Last Vestige of 'Jim Crow' Justice
Do Federal Consent Decrees Reduce Police Misconduct?
Local Prosecutors Assail Sessions Drug Case Rules
Gun Background Check System Faces Big Challenges Police Shortage Hampers New Orleans Anti-Crime Fight
Immigration Courts Backlogged After Obama, Trump Actions
With Homicides Rising, Tijuana Groups Call for Military
Chicago Police Head Says Secret Watch List Works
Boston Steps Up Effort To Seize Guns From Teens
Judges Taking Action Against No-Show Jurors
Cosby Jury Selection to Begin Far From Trial Site
Hotels Give Maids ‘Panic Buttons’ to Fight Sex Abuse
Clarke Violated Plagiarism Rules in Thesis, CNN Reports
Iowa Man Gets Life Without Parole for Killing Officers Top Story
The Last Vestige of 'Jim Crow' JusticeLouisiana leads the nation in incarceration rates, with most of those who are imprisoned African Americans. One reason is the state’s post-Civil War practice of allowing non-unanimous jury verdicts—but some reformers are pressing for change. The Crime Report Do Federal Consent Decrees Reduce Police Misconduct?A study by three researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas offers cautious support to arguments that federal consent decrees prod police departments into reducing racial basis. The Crime Report Local Prosecutors Assail Sessions Drug Case RulesReacting to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s order that federal prosecutors “charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense” and follow mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, a bipartisan group of prosecutors at the state and local level is expressing concern, the Washington Post reports. Thirty current and former state and local prosecutors issued a letter that was released by a group called Fair and Just Prosecution, a national network working with newly elected prosecutors. The prosecutors say Sessions’s directive “marks an unnecessary and unfortunate return to past ‘tough on crime’ practices” that will do more harm than good in their communities.
“What you’re seeing in this letter is a different wind of change that’s blowing through the criminal justice field,” said Miriam Krinsky, a former federal prosecutor and director of Fair and Just Prosecution. Krinsky said that at a local level, some believe “there are costs that flow from prosecuting and sentencing and incarcerating anyone and everyone who crosses the line of the law, and we need to be more selective and smarter in how we promote both the safety and the health of our communities.” The letter says Sessions “has reinvigorated the failed ‘war on drugs,’ which is why groups ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Cato Institute to Right on Crime have all criticized the newly announced policy.” Signers include Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. Washington Post Gun Background Check System Faces Big ChallengesSince it launched in 1998, the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), has completed almost 262 million checks. The system screens buyers in all gun purchases and transfers at federally licensed stores, as well as applicants for concealed-carry permits. In several key ways, it is not doing the job its creators intended, reports The Trace. The system still uses incomplete databases of criminal and mental health records. It is understaffed and works much slower than it once did. People who are wrongly denied a sale may be out of luck, as the appeals system is way behind.
Those are three top challenges facing the system that await the successor to James Comey as FBI director. FBI examiners must rely on cities, states, and other federal agencies to submit records that disqualify people from gun ownership. Many agencies do not report records to NICS, sometimes with deadly consequences. NICS has employed 230 examiners since at least 2012. That year, examiners processed 16.5 million background checks. The same number of employees completed 27.5 million checks in 2016. As examiners’ workloads increase without relief, the conditions are ripe for errors or incomplete checks; in some cases, individuals are denied a gun purchase when they shouldn’t be. In 2015, NICS denied 106,556 background checks. In 3,625 cases, a denial was overturned on appeal. In October 2015, citing manpower shortages, NICS stopped accepting appeals altogether. The FBI didn’t restore the function until February of this year; examiners are still working on appeals submitted almost two years ago. The Trace Police Shortage Hampers New Orleans Anti-Crime FightDespite working more collaboratively and efficiently, New Orleans’ police and prosecutors are making little headway against a rising tide of felony violence because of city government decisions that have hobbled their performance and endangered the community, the Metropolitan Crime Commission said today, reports the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “Police and prosecutors are applying their resources more efficiently and effectively, but community safety has not improved,” the non-profit watchdog organization said. “The critical shortage of [police] officers has not improved over the past four years. … The department lacks the manpower to timely respond to calls for service and adequately address the high rate of crime.”
The report traces the city’s crime predicament to the desk of Mayor Mitch Landrieu, first elected in 2010. Landrieu’s two-year police hiring freeze, along with timid recruitment efforts in the two years that followed, allowed the department’s manpower to wither by 25 percent, from 1,546 officers in 2009 to 1,165 last year. “The misguided decision in 2010 to freeze police hiring for years created the critical … manpower shortage that continues to adversely impact public safety,” the report said. One of the most startling statistics in the crime commission report is that the number of arrests plummeted 44 percent between 2013 and 2016, as the effects of the department’s manpower shortage and the federal consent decree became more pronounced. In the same period, the percentage of arrests made for serious felony allegations climbed from 19 percent in 2013 to 28 percent last year. Times-Picayune Immigration Courts Backlogged After Obama, Trump ActionsA drunk-driving charge sent a man who was in the U.S. illegally into the labyrinth of Chicago Immigration Court, where he joined thousands of others trying to navigate a system that has newfound momentum to remove them from the country, the Chicago Tribune reports. Scores of people here illegally are being processed through a court network that has become heavily backlogged as it reckons with the new priorities of the President Trump, who rode a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment to the White House. As recently as 2010, the immigration court in Chicago had fewer than 13,000 pending cases. By the end of March, that figure had risen to 24,844, says the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review.
The crunch is partly the result of Obama administration policy changes to handle cases that involved children and recent border crossers quickly in the face of an influx of immigrants coming into the U.S. illegally from Central America around 2014. The Trump administration has contributed to the crunch, emphasizing the deportation of detainees who have had contact with the criminal justice system, though even those without records have been caught up in the efforts. Last week, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency reported that in the first 100 days since Trump signed executive orders on immigration policy, arrests nationally have increased more than 37 percent over last year. Since Trump took office, the number of people detained in the Chicago area has more than doubled compared with the same period in 2016, from 412 to 940 people. The number without criminal records rose from 271 to 407 over the same period. Chicago Tribune With Homicides Rising, Tijuana Groups Call for MilitaryWith homicides on the rise, Tijuana business and civic leaders are calling for Mexico’s military to once again head up Baja California’s efforts against organized crime, reports the San Diego Union-Tribune. Members of the Consejo Coordinador Empresarial in Tijuana, an influential business umbrella group, and the city’s Citizens Council for Pubic Safety are urging the passage of a new federal “law of internal security” that would allow Mexican soldiers to carry out civilian public safety duties. “We don’t want to go back to the past, to the situation of 2007 and 2008,” said the council’s Juan Manuel Hernández, describing a period of high-impact violence, including gruesome beheadings, public shootouts, and kidnappings.
The call for an expanded military role has come as more than 530 homicides have been registered in Tijuana this year. If the killings continue at the current pace, this year’s total will exceed last year’s record 916 homicides. State homicide investigators have attributed much of the violence to turf battles among low-level street drug dealers rather than an all-out war among the dominant drug organizations that held the city in its grip a decade ago. The Business Coordinating Councils for Baja California’s five municipalities said that this explanation fails to take into account the effects of crime on the general population. “Enough of saying that it’s just criminals killing each other, and that the law-abiding Tijuanenses are living in peace,” the statement said, noting that crimes such as street robberies, residential and business burglaries, and car thefts are also on the rise. San Diego Union-Tribune Chicago Police Head Says Secret Watch List WorksChicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson defended the department’s use of a secret watch list to track people deemed likely to get caught up in violence, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Johnson said the list is working because some people on it have accepted offers of social services after being approached by police and outreach workers. Johnson backed away from previous department statements that the list is used for “enforcement.” He added, “It’s not a list of target people.. It’s just a list that lets us know who would be more prone to gun violence — either by being a victim or a perpetrator. The individuals identified with the algorithm — we simply use it to go provide them and offer other pathways to get out of that lifestyle.” Johnson said the list is working because some people on it have accepted offers of social services after being approached by police and outreach workers.
Johnson has said that the list contained 1,400 people who were driving the violence in the city and that the department was “targeting” them. Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the list doesn’t give officers a reason to arrest anyone. “There needs to be a violation of the law,” he said. Instead, the list is used as a tool to figure out where cops should be deployed in certain neighborhoods, he said. The Sun-Times has reported that the database includes nearly 400,000 people, a far more extensive list than what the police previously described. Chicago Sun-Times Boston Steps Up Effort To Seize Guns From TeensThe Boston Police Department’s Youth Violence Task Force took loaded guns out of the hands of four juveniles last week as cops bracing for an anticipated summertime spike in street violence continue to focus on preventing the next deadly shooting before it happens, the Boston Herald reports. “It’s a huge initiative for us,” said Boston police spokeswoman Rachel McGuire. Though there’s a heightened focus ahead of the summer months, which historically brings a surge of street violence, McGuire said it’s a “year-round effort.” She said, “This is a part of community policing. “We want to get in touch with these kids and let them know they don’t need to carry guns. We want to get to the root of the problem and show them they have other options other than the street life.”
Last week’s arrests came after the Herald found the number of juvenile firearm-related arrests in Boston had more than doubled for the first quarter of 2017 over the same period last year. The more than 19 juvenile firearm related arrests — on charges ranging from possession of an illegal firearm to warrants for prior gun-related offenses — were up more than 100 percent over the nine such arrests in the first three months of 2016. The startling number bucks an overall downward trend of crime in the city. Boston Herald Judges Taking Action Against No-Show JurorsU.S. District Judge Michael Mosman in Portland, Or., ordered Elsie Mathews to court to tell him why she brushed off jury duty in early April. She faced a potential contempt of court citation, The Oregonian reports. The rare summons marked the court’s frustration with people who ignore the call to jury duty. This year, U.S. District Judge Anna Brown had questionnaires sent to 1,000 prospective jurors for the second trial in the takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, but about 200 questionnaires never came back.
No-show jurors are a growing national trend and affect the function of both federal and state courts, said law Prof. Andrew Ferguson of the University of the District of Columbia, author of “Why Jury Duty Matters: A Citizen’s Guide to Constitutional Action.” Many people look at jury duty as a burden that interferes with their work schedules or other commitments, Ferguson said. They’ve forgotten that it’s crucial to the functioning of the nation’s court system and a part of the country’s “constitutional identity” that gives them a voice in the administration of justice, he said. The average failure-to-appear rate for jurors in state courts is 9 percent nationwide, but some courts have no-show rates as high as 50 percent. The number of people who show up for federal jury selection has dropped annually since 2012, from 237,411 to 194,211 in 2016 nationwide. It’s not clear if that’s tied to fewer trials held or more people ignoring jury duty. “What we’re finding now is that judges are starting to be more aggressive on the problem,” said Jeffrey Frederick of the National Legal Research Group, a legal research firm. The Oregonian Cosby Jury Selection to Begin Far From Trial SiteBill Cosby will be in Pittsburgh today for jury selection in his sexual assault trial. The 79-year-old entertainer will arrive in a city divided over how he should be received, Philly.com reports. Summonses have gone out to nearly 3,000 potential jurors. The trial itself is scheduled to begin June 5 in Norristown across the state near Philadelphia. It promises to be the most closely watched legal spectacle since O.J. Simpson’s 1995 prosecution. It will be the first public vetting of allegations that mirror claims by dozens of women who have accused Cosby of sexual assault dating back decades.
Cosby supporters abound in Pittsburgh, a city of 300,000, but an eleventh-hour push to rehabilitate his public image through nationally broadcast radio interviews and statements claiming racism at the heart of the case against him has rubbed some the wrong way. “He should not be pimping the civil rights movement for his cause,” said Tim Stevens of the Black Political Empowerment Project in Pittsburgh. State court administrators chose Pittsburgh for jury selection out of concern that overwhelming pretrial publicity may have tainted the jury pool in Norristown. It seems unfathomable that any potential jurors won’t have heard of Cosby’s legal travails, but his defense team hopes to find 12 men and women and six alternates who remain open-minded about allegations from Andrea Constand, who says Cosby drugged and assaulted her at his mansion in 2004. In seeking to move the jury selection, Cosby’s lawyers sought a large urban center with more “diverse and opposing viewpoints.” Philly.com Hotels Give Maids ‘Panic Buttons’ to Fight Sex AbuseJohn Boswell, a millionaire in Washington, D.C., to toast President Trump’s inauguration, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor sexual abuse for rubbing a hotel maid’s buttocks. “This is very nice stuff,” he said. “I like that!” Such incidents are common in an industry where about half of employees say they have been sexually assaulted or harassed by a guest, union surveys have shown, the Washington Post reports. Many go unreported because the housekeepers, often immigrants or women of color, fear losing their jobs. In 2011, the plight of hotel housekeepers became international news when Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then head of the International Monetary Fund, was accused of sexually assaulting a maid at a New York luxury hotel. Criminal charges were dropped, but the incident prompted hotels to provide maids with panic buttons.
Six years later, the devices only now are reaching many other parts of the nation. When pressed, the panic buttons send a maid’s location to hotel security. Hotels pay for the devices and monitoring systems, which generally cost up to $50,000. In November, voters in Seattle approved a measure providing hotel workers with panic buttons and other protections. Chicago’s city council is considering a measure that would require panic buttons. Vanessa Sinders of the American Hotel & Lodging Association said the industry is committed to using technology to keep its employees safe. Washington Post Clarke Violated Plagiarism Rules in Thesis, CNN ReportsControversial Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who has said he will be joining Donald Trump’s administration as assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security, plagiarized sections of his 2013 master’s thesis on U.S. security, reports CNN. Clarke, a visible surrogate for Trump during the campaign known for his incendiary rhetoric, earned a master’s degree in security studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Ca. “Making U.S. security and privacy rights compatible,” Clarke failed to attribute sources properly at least 47 times. Clarke lifts language from sources and credits them with a footnote, but does not indicate with quotation marks that he is taking the words verbatim.
According to guidelines posted on the Naval Postgraduate School’s website, “If a passage is quoted verbatim, it must be set off with quotation marks … and followed by a properly formulated citation. The length of the phrase does not matter. If someone else’s words are sufficiently significant to be worth quoting, then accurate quotation followed by a correct citation is essential, even if only a few words are involved.” Sources Clarke plagiarized include several American Civil Liberties Union reports, and a report from the U.S. General Accounting Office. Clarke told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Only someone with a political agenda would say this is plagiarism.” CNN Iowa Man Gets Life Without Parole for Killing OfficersScott Michael Greene provided little insight into what drove him to kill two Iowa police officers in early morning ambush shootings last year even as he admitted to the crimes on Friday, the Des Moines Register reports. Greene, 46, pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, telling a judge he fired the bullets Nov. 2, 2016, that killed Urbandale officer Justin Martin and Des Moines Sgt. Anthony “Tony” Beminio. The confession capped six months of heartache for three families and two police departments, but left unanswered questions that still swirl around the murders.
Des Moines Police Chief Dana Wingert said, “I don’t feel a sense of relief,” he said. “I know my co-workers don’t. I don’t feel a sense of closure. I’m not at the point of forgiveness.” Judge Karen Romano sentenced Greene to two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, describing the shootings as “nothing short of an execution.” Greene was also ordered to pay a total of $300,000 in restitution to the officers’ families. Des Moines Register | |
| | 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 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 Victoria Mckenzie. Please send comments or questions to victoria@thecrimereport.org. | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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