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Today In Criminal Justice
Clinton, Trump Clash on Stop-and-Frisk, Agree on Gun Issue
U.S. Murder Total Rose at Fastest Pace Since 1990
Poor Chicago Police Morale Cited in Surging Gun Violence
Low Support for Police Found in High-Crime, Minority Areas
Maine Gov’s Notebook Doesn’t Support Minority-Drug Link
WA Man Admits Mall Killings, Had Mental Issues
Houston Lawyer Shoots Nine Commuters, Is Killed by Police
Charlotte Officer Didn’t Turn on Body Cam Until After Shooting
Critics Call for Charlotte Chief’s Resignation
Ryan May Push Criminal Justice Reform in Lame-Duck Session
DOJ Gives Police Departments Another $20M for Body Cams
U.S. Funds Studies on Solitary, Other Prison Issues
W.Va. City In 'Overwhelming Situation' on Opioids
60% of Deportees Since 2014 Had No Criminal Record
Top Story
Clinton, Trump Clash on Stop-and-Frisk, Agree on Gun IssuePresidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton clashed again on criminal justice issues in last night’s first presidential debate, with Trump touting police stop-and-frisk tactics as part of his “law and order” campaign and Clinton favoring a broader approach to criminal justice reform. Trump asserted that stop-and-frisk helped bring the New York City annual murder total down from 2,200 to 500. “It had a very big impact,” he said. Studies by scholars at Columbia University and elsewhere say the widespread use of stop-and-frisk resulted in relatively few arrests or illegal gun recoveries, NPR reports. New York’s homicide numbers remain very low, at 352 in 2015 and a projected 359 this year, says the Brennan Center for Justice.
One the starkest differences on policy between Clinton and Trump involves what limitations there should be on gun ownership and the role of Congress and the courts in establishing clear guidelines. It was striking that the candidates seemed to agree on at least one gun policy last night, reports the Los Angeles Times. Clinton, in a tense exchange over criminal justice issues, reiterated her support for what Democrats and gun control advocates have called a “no fly, no buy” policy to restrict individuals on the airline terrorist watch list from being able to purchase guns. Trump’s response: “We have to look very strongly at no-fly lists. … I tend to agree with that.” He went on to reiterate his pro-gun bona fides, citing his endorsement from the National Rifle Association. The Crime Report U.S. Murder Total Rose at Fastest Pace Since 1990Murder totals rose across the U.S. last year at the fastest pace since 1990, according to data released by the FBI yesterday. There were an estimated 15,696 murders in 2015, 1,532 more than in 2014 and the most recorded in a calendar year since 2008, reports FiveThirtyEight. The report provides the first reliable, nationwide figures on an issue that has emerged as a major topic in this year’s presidential campaign. The rate of other forms of crime, including violent crime, remained near the historic lows achieved in 2013.
The increase in murder was remarkably widespread. Of the 82 cities with populations over 250,000 in 2014 or 2015, 52 experienced a rise in murder last year; murder fell in only 26. (Four cities stayed the same.) Murder rose by double digits in 29 big cities last year while dropping by double digits in just four of them. Three cities (Indianapolis, Louisville, and Omaha) more murders in 2015 than in any of the last 40 years. Murder rose in cities run by both political parties. Murder rose in 63 percent of the big cities with a Democratic mayor (33 of 52) and 85 percent of those led by a Republican (17 of 20); the two sets of cities saw murders rise at roughly the same pace. The increase pushed the murder rate — the number of killings per 100,000 people — up to 4.9, from 4.4 in 2014. That came after nearly two decades of continuous decline in the national murder rate; 2014’s murder rate was the lowest since the FBI began keeping the statistic in 1960. FiveThirtyEight
Yesterday's email report included an erroneous figure for the homicide percentage increase reported by the FBI for 2015; it is 10.8%. Poor Chicago Police Morale Cited in Surging Gun ViolenceA drag on police morale stemming from Chicago’s Laquan McDonald police shooting scandal is partly to blame for the surging gun violence in the city this year, U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon said yesterday, the Chicago Tribune reports. Fardon said fallout over the release of dashboard camera video of a white police officer fatally shooting 17-year-old McDonald exacerbated what was already an unacceptable level of bloodshed. Within weeks of the video’s release last November, police Superintendent Garry McCarthy was fired, the U.S. Justice Department said it would conduct a sweeping investigation of the department’s use of force policies, and a new order required officers to fill out lengthy forms when making street stops of suspected gang members. All three events moved the needle on police morale, Fardon said.
“I believe there was a hit on [police department] morale and a drag on officers’ willingness to conduct stops,” Fardon said. “Some gang members apparently felt that they could get away with more, so more bullets started flying.” Fardon’s comments in a speech about the role played by his office in investigating accusations of police wrongdoing as well as trying to quell the city’s unrelenting gun violence , an issue that has brought unflattering national attention to Chicago and has become a part of the presidential race. Fardon said he has been meeting with leaders of nonprofit groups in hard-hit communities who have complained they’re not working together closely enough because of competition over funding. The civil rights investigation of the police department that began in December has grown into the largest such probe ever undertaken by the feds and is proceeding at a “record pace,” Fardon said. Chicago Tribune Low Support for Police Found in High-Crime, Minority AreasFar fewer than half of those living in high-crime, low-income parts of six cities in a federally-sponsored project believe that police officers are responsive to community concerns and are held accountable for misconduct, say results of a new survey. The data were collected in the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice, which is sponsored by the U.S. Justice Department in Birmingham, Al., Ft. Worth, Gary, In., Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and Stockton, Ca. Communities where the data were gathered are primarily minority areas where police presence is high. City-by-city data were not released but on average, under 30 percent of respondents agreed that police were either responsive of held accountable for misdeeds.
More than half of those surveyed agreed that officers judge local residents “based on personal biases or prejudices” and that they treat people differently based on their race or ethnicity. At the same time, more than 60 percent of respondents said they would report crimes or suspicious activities to police and about half said they would attend community meetings to discuss local crime. In general, despite a high degree of mistrust of police, many residents still want to be active partners in crime prevention. The surveys were taken before the project got under way. Public opinion will be measured again after reforms are instituted such as training officers to guard against implicit bias. The findings were scheduled to be discussed today by Nancy La Vigne of the Urban Institute, which is conducting the research, at a briefing on Capitol Hill sponsored by George Mason University’s Center for Evidence-Based Crime Plicy and WestEd’s Justice and Prevention Research Center. The Crime Report Maine Gov’s Notebook Doesn’t Support Minority-Drug LinkMaine Gov. Paul LePage has been keeping a binder of photos that he said shows “90-plus percent” of the drug dealers arrested in Maine are black or Hispanic, but people of those races accounted for only 40 percent of those pictured in the notebook when it was released to the public yesterday, reports the Portland Press Herald. The 148-page document includes press releases, newspaper clippings, and jail booking and courtroom photos of people charged with trafficking heroin, methamphetamine, crack, and other drugs in Maine since January. The photos in the binder show men and women of several races, and some of the pages include handwritten notes by LePage.
The governor’s office released the contents in response to public records requests from the media and other organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine. Neither LePage nor his staff has explained why it’s important to identify the race of a drug dealer. Of the 93 people pictured in the binder, 37 appear to be either black or Hispanic, or about 40 percent of all the photos, while 56, or about 60 percent, appear to be white. The photos do not support LePage’s statement that “90-plus percent of those pictures” in the binder are of black or Hispanic drug dealers from Connecticut and New York. Portland Press Herald WA Man Admits Mall Killings, Had Mental IssuesArcan Cetin admitted committing five killings in a Burlington, Wa., Macy’s department store last Friday night. He used a Ruger .22-caliber rifle with a 25-round magazine, reports the Seattle Times. His stepfather, David Marshall, said Cetin has battled mental-health issues. Skagit County Prosecuting Attorney Rich Weyrich said he did not know a motive for the shootings.
After nearly a year of increasingly troubling and inexplicable behavior, Cetin offered his family a glimmer of hope in April when a counselor wrote: “Arcan is in the Preparation stage of change, he now realizes that he has a problem and wants to make a change.” The counselor noted that Cetin had two jobs, worked out regularly at a gym and claimed he had not used alcohol or marijuana in three months. “Arcan is living alone at this time and needs support,” the counselor wrote. Seattle Times Houston Lawyer Shoots Nine Commuters, Is Killed by PoliceA lawyer who opened fire on commuters for no apparent reason during yesterday’s predawn rush hour in a Houston neighborhood, wounding nine people, was wearing a vintage military uniform and had Nazi emblems on him,reports the Houston Chronicle. The rampage on a quiet street began in the predawn darkness and lasted 20 minutes before the gunman, who police identified as Nathan DeSai, 46, was shot and killed by officers.
Six of the wounded were transported to area hospitals. The other three were treated at the scene and released. Acting Houston Police Chief Martha Montalvo said police did not yet know what caused DeSai, described as a lawyer struggling to keep his small law practice alive, to do what he did. Police said DeSai used a .45-caliber handgun during the assault and they later found 2,600 rounds of ammunition and a Thompson submachine gun in his car. DeSai lived in a condominium complex near the scene of the shooting. Houston Chronicle Charlotte Officer Didn’t Turn on Body Cam Until After ShootingCharlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., police did not capture key video footage of last week’s fatal shooting of Keith Lamont Scott because a responding officer didn’t turn on his body camera until after police had already shot the victim, a violation of department policy, the Charlotte Observer reports. Portions of video footage showed the moments immediately before and after the Sept. 20 shooting. The first half-minute of body-camera footage includes no sound. Body cameras worn by patrol officers don’t begin recording audio until officers activate them. The cameras do silently capture video for a short period before they’re activated. In last week’s shooting, the silent portion of the body cam video shows an officer next to Scott’s SUV with his gun drawn, pointing toward the front seat. It also shows the officer who is wearing the camera striking a baton against a passenger-side window.
No sound is recorded until Scott is already lying on the pavement after the shooting. Officers are supposed to activate their body cameras before interactions with citizens that involve traffic stops, suspicious vehicles, “voluntary investigative contact” and arrests. “Voluntary investigative contact” is defined as what police do when they suspect criminal activity, as they did when they approached Scott after reportedly seeing marijuana and a gun in his car. Susanna Birdsong of the American Civil Liberties Union said it’s clear that the officer wearing the body camera violated policy by not activating the device sooner. “A body camera policy is not worth the paper it’s written on if officers aren’t abiding by the standards and protocols we expect them to be using,” Birdsong said. Had the officer activated the camera earlier, she said, it might have provided more insight into whether police had made efforts to deescalate the situation and why they felt a need to use deadly force. Charlotte Observer Critics Call for Charlotte Chief’s ResignationKerr Putney, who 15 months ago was sworn in as Charlotte’s second black police chief, has spoken openly of his own lingering, lifelong distrust of the police. He has invoked the “racist bigoted history” in U.S. policing. He has publicly stated that he believes his father’s death was an unacknowledged murder, one poorly investigated by officials in his hometown, Roanoke Rapids, N.C., because the police there “didn’t care about the value of a black life,”reports the New York Times. Little in his life has led naturally to this moment when he has become the prime target of protesters, who gathered in a church yesterday to demand his resignation and to claim that he was protecting his officers at the expense of the family seeking justice for the death of Keith Lamont Scott, the black man killed by an officer last Tuesday.
Putney got withering nationwide criticism for his refusal to release videos of the shooting, only to relent after days of protest. The Times says his “predicament demonstrates the immense challenges facing even the most progressive-minded police chiefs trying to keep the trust of their officers and also of minority communities in an age of growing rage over police shootings of black men.” “This past week has completely dissolved whatever trust we were attempting to build between [the chief, the police department, and] the community, and so for that reason he needs to resign,” said Bree Newsome, who spoke at the church, “Because he is not in a position at all to build trust or to lead.” The New York Times Ryan May Push Criminal Justice Reform in Lame-Duck SessionHouse Speaker Paul Ryan is facing a major obstacle in his quest to pass criminal justice reform: unenthused House Republicans still skittish about looking soft on crime, Politico reports. The Wisconsin Republican for weeks has repeated his desire to pass a bipartisan package that would include allowing well-behaved nonviolent prisoners to be eligible for early release and easing some drug-related sentencing requirements. The odds are decidedly long. With Donald Trump advocating controversial policies like systematic “stop and frisk,” and the protests in Charlotte against police-involved shootings causing racial tensions to flare, Ryan’s colleagues are not eager to vote on the matter. An internal GOP leadership survey last week taking House Republicans’ temperature on the issue showed that most members were lukewarm at best.
The politics of criminal justice reform have soured for conservative supporters. Trump has warned repeatedly of dangerous, crime-ridden cities. Though crime rates are still low by recent historical standards, it’s enough to make law-and-order Republican lawmakers nervous. Some Republican lawmakers worry that law enforcement could come out against the pitch, though many national police groups haven’t taken a position. Even if Ryan managed to get a bill through the House, the Senate and its 60-vote threshold could stop it in its tracks. Hawkish Republicans, including Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, have been sounding the alarm against criminal justice reform. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has shied from the matter because it divides his conference. Democrats by and large support the reform proposals. While he wasn’t able to pass the criminal justice package this month as he originally hoped, Ryan is now eyeing the lame-duck session, by which time tensions might have eased. Politico DOJ Gives Police Departments Another $20M for Body CamsThe U.S. Department of Justice yesterday awarded more than 100 police departments money to help pay for body cameras. The award totals $20 million, and is an effort to restore the public’s trust in law enforcement after high-profile instances of black men being shot by police. The winning agencies are in 32 states, Puerto Rico, and include some Native American tribal departments, reports The Atlantic.
Body cameras have been cited as a solution to growing mistrust of officers in some communities. An increasing number of videos show questionable tactics used by police to subdue people, often black men. The fight for transparency and what police say is the need to maintain integrity in their investigations often puts the public and police departments at odds. This was clear in the case of Chicago’s Laquan McDonald, who was killed in 2014. Police fought the release of the video for more than a year, but when the video finally became public it led to murder charges against the officer who killed McDonald. The Atlantic U.S. Funds Studies on Solitary, Other Prison IssuesThe Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) announced 10 awards totaling more than $6.3 million to fund research on parental incarceration, restrictive prisoner housing such as solitary confinement, reentry, and correctional officer suicide. BJA director Denise O’Donnell announced the restrictive housing awards at the Safe Alternatives to Segregation (SAS) Advisory Council meeting in New York. The council will provide input and guidance as the five SAS Initiative sites—the corrections departments in Middlesex County, N.J., Nebraska, New York City,North Carolina, and Oregon take steps to implement recommendations for reform from the Vera Institute of Justice.
Vera will receive more than $1.4 million to assess the use of step-down programs and the impact of working in restrictive housing on the well-being of correctional officers. The University of Cincinnati will be awarded $452,452 to examine the impact of restrictive housing on inmates, staff, and correctional facilities. Florida State University will receive $730,615 to examine the impact of restrictive housing on inmates’ behavior, mental health and likelihood of recidivism, as well as the views of correctional administrators and personnel on use of restrictive housing and its alternatives. Arizona State University will receive $631,559 to examine the effects of isolation in restrictive housing placements and its impact on the mental health of inmates and staff. Other entities getting grants include New York University, Bowling Green State University, Pennsylvania State University, and Northeastern University. Department of Justice W.Va. City In 'Overwhelming Situation' on OpioidsHuntington, W. Va., where the rate of drug overdose deaths is nearly 10 times the national average, has done more than most to fight the heroin and prescription painkiller epidemic, reports Stateline. Police have been diverting drug users to specialized drug courts for treatment. The city opened a syringe exchange program to reduce the spread of infectious diseases among drug users. Doctors and nurses from a local hospital developed a model facility to care for the hundreds of opioid-dependent infants born to heroin-addicted mothers.
Instead of getting better, Huntington’s opioid problem is getting worse. In just one afternoon last month, 28 people in the city of 50,000 overdosed on heroin. Since January, 773 people have overdosed on opioids (including prescription painkillers and heroin), a 24 percent increase over last year. An estimated 8,000 Huntington residents are addicted, mostly to opioids. “It’s really an overwhelming situation,” said Dr. James Becker, medical director of West Virginia’s Medicaid program and professor of family medicine at Marshall University. “My best friend’s son just died of a heroin overdose. It is absolutely everywhere in the community.” Nationwide, less than half of the 2.2 million people who need treatment for opioid addiction are receiving it, says the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Even in Huntington, the barriers are daunting. A fragmented treatment system, widespread bias against addiction medications and a shortage of trained workers often thwart those seeking help. Stateline 60% of Deportees Since 2014 Had No Criminal RecordIn 2014, President Obama said immigration officials would make it a priority to deport immigrants who had committed serious crimes. “We’re going to keep focusing enforcement resources on actual threats to our security,” Obama said. “Felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids.” Data detailing over 300,000 deportations since Obama’s speech, show that has not been the case, the Marshall Project reports. About 60 percent were of immigrants with no criminal conviction or whose only crime was immigration-related, such as illegal entry or re-entry. Twenty-one percent were convicted of nonviolent crimes other than immigration. Under 20 percent had potentially violent convictions, such as assault, DUI or weapons offenses.
The data were supplied by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. They give a detailed breakdown of 308,088 deportations between November 2014 and April 2016, including each deportee’s most serious criminal conviction. Roughly 11 percent of all the deportations were for drug offenses, totaling nearly 33,000 people since November 2014. Almost a third of those crimes were marijuana-related. The Marshall Project | |
| | 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 Adam Wisnieski. Please send comments or questions to alice@thecrimereport.org. | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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