by Bill Otis · Apr 26, 2021 5:52 pm
The answer to the first question appears from the data to be no. The answer to the second is yes. As to whether the first subject or the second is more pressing, you’ll have to make up your own mind, but they’re both extraordinarily important to the policing debate we’re having in this country.
by Amber Westbrook · Apr 26, 2021 3:04 pm
Many police officers are hanging up their hats and some major city police departments are faced with serious understaffing with no real end in sight. CNN has this story on the gross understaffing of the Capitol Police, “Capitol Police Union Chairman Gus Papathanasiou said in a statement Saturday that the Capitol Police is staffed below its authorized level by 233 officers and could face larger staffing shortages as officers retire in the coming years.” The Chairman goes on to explain this understaffing in only exacerbated by the injuries sustained by officers during the January 6th riot. The NY Times published this article about the riot at the Capital that resulted, “In one of the worst days of injuries for law enforcement in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. At least 138 officers —73 from Capitol Police and 65 from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington — were injured.” These are horrifically high numbers, yet there is little discussion about how to proceed in such a manner that our officers who are there to serve and protect our communities are given the tools to succeed; whether that be training, more officers, and/or improved response.
by Kent Scheidegger · Apr 26, 2021 9:39 am
In today’s only decision from the United States Supreme Court, the court reversed a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in which that court had taken an expansive view of its own jurisdiction. The Supreme Court summarily reversed, meaning that it did not see any need to take further briefing or hear oral argument, as it does when there is some doubt of the correct result. The unsigned opinion says the Ninth Circuit “clearly erred.” No dissent is indicated.
This is not the first time the Supreme Court has rebuked the Ninth in this manner on this subject. It is not the second, third, or fourth. I stopped counting years ago.
Why is the Ninth so consistently the “gang that can’t shoot straight” on this particular topic? Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Apr 26, 2021 8:27 am
The U.S. Supreme Court issued an orders list from last Friday’s conference today. No new criminal cases were taken up for full briefing and argument.
Two civil cases of interest were taken up. United States v. Zubaydah, No. 20-827 involves the state secrets privilege and a discovery demand by a terrorist detained in Guantanamo Bay. New York State Rifle v. Corlett, No. 20-843 is a Second Amendment case involving concealed carry licenses. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Apr 23, 2021 2:25 pm
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Quite a lot is in a name, as “Juliet and her Romeo” tragically found out in the end. More on point, George Orwell demonstrated the pernicious exploitation of language for propaganda purposes in his famous dystopian novel 1984.
Some years back, advocates for lenient treatment of adolescents who commit horrible crimes of violence began exploiting an ambiguity in the word “children” as a propaganda tool. In 2012, the United States Supreme Court jumped on this Orwellian bandwagon. Yesterday it jumped off, at least for the time being. Continue reading . . .
by Michael Rushford · Apr 23, 2021 11:42 am
This week’s stupid idea award goes out to New York State Attorney General Letitia James who is calling for an end of police involvement in traffic enforcement. This, of course, is in response to nationally publicized video of Daunte Wright, a black teenager, being accidently shot by a white Minneapolis Police Officer on April 11 as he tried to drive away from a traffic stop. For the galactically ignorant, this incident proves the narrative that white police officers use traffic stops to kill innocent black people. Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald has this piece in today’s Wall Street Journal discussing why this idea wins the award. Instead of having police make traffic stops, “the thinking goes, unarmed civilian traffic agents and speeding cameras should enforce the rules of the road.” She notes that Oakland and Berkeley, CA, Lansing, Mich, and DC are already on board. A 2000 study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that “neighborhoods with the highest rates of fatal accidents also have the highest rates of violent crime.” In Oakland, “nearly 60% of fatalities and serious injuries occur on only 6% of the city’s streets, overwhelmingly in minority neighborhoods….Traffic deaths were up 22% in Oakland in 2020. Most of the victims were black.”
by Kent Scheidegger · Apr 23, 2021 9:41 am
Not a lot of media coverage of the Jones v. Mississippi decision. A lot of other events were happening yesterday. Jessica Gresko has this story for Associated Press:
In a statement, Kymberlee Stapleton of the California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation called the decision a “victory for the families of victims murdered by juveniles.”
by Bill Otis · Apr 22, 2021 11:10 pm
What will reining in the police, refusal to pursue property crime and trespass charges, going easy on “mostly peaceful” hooliganism, and other aspects of criminal justice “reform” bring? That’s a hugely important question, given the increasing number of (one party and hard Left) jurisdictions that are adopting it. Los Angeles is one. Portland, Seattle and Baltimore are others. Minneapolis is certainly in the mix.
One young woman tells her story, “I’ve lived in Minneapolis my entire life. I’m leaving Friday. I no longer recognize my hometown.” For an on-the-ground view of what “reform” means for ordinary people, I found the account revealing and very, very sad.
by Bill Otis · Apr 22, 2021 3:40 pm
I wanted to wait a day or two to sift through the Chauvin verdict. It was a case that saw a good deal of side-switching: Many on the right who normally root for a conviction were ready to find reasons there shouldn’t be one here, while people on the left — ones who reflexively root for the defendant simply to give “the system” its comeuppance — were eager for this particular defendant to get hit with both barrels.
My own view is that choosing sides in that way confounds what the rule of law does and ought to do. But it was also a window into a good deal of thinking that goes on below the surface.
by Bill Otis · Apr 22, 2021 10:32 am
Sometimes ridicule does a better job of destruction than a frontal attack can hope to do. I found that out today as Charles Cooke from the National Review mercilessly lampoons the White House’s idiotic response to a white police officer’s preventing the stabbing death of a black teenage girl by shooting her assailant (which was the only practical alternative he had).
Cooke’s piece is titled, “In Defense of Teenage Knife Fighting,” with the subtitle, “Since when do we need the cops to intervene in the recreational stabbings of our youth?”
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