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. While the authors state that the effects of BWVC are neutral, Nick stated that they’re not, they’re just not neutral in the areas that are actually effected by body worn video – hint: it’s not oversight and transparency.
A police officer in Glendale, AZ, was involved earlier this year in a shooting of a man who fired at Cano (http://www.azfamily.com/story/36324433/glendale-police-dept-releases-body-cam-video-of-officer-involved-shooting), and Peter and Nick discuss how it’s nice to have video of a cop doing what we would hope cops would do: he fires back at the motorist who fired a handgun at the officer, injuring the motorist.
Nick promoted his field report, a QPP Extra: Divert To Where? Mental Health Policing, which opens with the story of a Texas cop who talked to a handgun-wielding suicidal man for almost 15 minutes, and the man finally agreed to get help.
When a witness in a murder case was murdered (http://time.com/4996638/alabama-murder-outside-courthouse-jacquees-boone/) right after he testified, the judge declared a mistrial. Peter wondered about the racial components to the old phrase that “snitches get stitches.”
Finally, the release by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office of some really fragmented datasets (https://www.cookcountystatesattorney.org/data) that might make it seem to the lazy analyst that one need only race, date, and location, and crime charged to draw conclusions about race and arrests.