City Of Dallas Shuts Down Business Of Man Who Called Cops Over 100 Times In 20 Months To Deal With Criminals Near His Car Wash

from the damned-if-you-call,-damned-if-you-don't dept

Let's talk about nuisance abatement laws. These are laws cities can use to shut down businesses that appear to draw more than their fair share of the criminal element.

If you're a fan of asset forfeiture, you'll love nuisance laws. By abdicating their law enforcement responsibilities, cities can have their lower cost cake and eat your property too. It's win-win for cities, who love to use laws like this to effectively seize property from citizens who have the misfortune to operate legitimate businesses in high crime areas.

Here's how it works in Dallas, Texas. The city says business owners must pay for their own security devices and personnel to keep their businesses free of criminals. No business will be compensated for these additional costs. All cops need to do is throw a couple of placards at the business and the city takes it from there. Criminal activity in the area is now the responsibility of businesses in the area. Can't get criminals to get off your property? Too bad. It's the city's property now.

The Dallas police chief has a new tool in her arsenal to force home and business owners to address crime on or near their properties: shame.

On Wednesday, the Dallas City Council passed a "nuisance abatement" ordinance allowing Police Chief U. Renee Hall to identify properties that tolerate criminal activity and try to get the owners to address it.

The new ordinance allows city officials to slap a sign on properties identified as sites of "habitual criminal activity."

The first efforts involve shaming the business owners for things they likely cannot control. This isn't the only step taken, though. The placards are the beginning. If the city feels the business owner isn't doing enough to control crime in the area (surely that's a law enforcement job?), it can shut the business down and keep fining it for anything and everything it can think of until the business owner is insolvent and has to sell the property.

A South Dallas car wash owner has been fighting the city on and off for most of three decades over its application of nuisance laws. The city has already shut down Dale Davenport's car wash. City council members claim Davenport is to blame for the crime that surrounds his business. It also claims he's done next to nothing to solve a problem he didn't create.

Davenport fought back. He demanded the city turn over 911 call records linked to his business in order to show the problem isn't his, but the Dallas Police Department's. After several months of being stonewalled, he has finally obtained the documents he needs to show the city it's not doing all it can to combat crime. Jim Schutze of the Dallas Observer has been following this fight for years and has the details.

After a two-year tooth-and-nail battle with the city, Davenport’s lawyer, Warren Norred, recently forced City Hall to cough up the official record of 911 calls Davenport has been making all along, begging police to come to his place of business.

It's not just a few calls scattered over several months. Davenport called the cops constantly, asking them to come deal with the criminal element that seemed to feel it could just hang out at his place of business. The city says crime is Davenport's fault. The record(s) [PDF] show this is a failure of city agencies, most notably the Dallas PD.

On and on the 911 reports go for 414 single-spaced pages... And that covers only 20 months from 1/5/18 to 9/25/19. Dale Davenport and his father, Freddy Davenport, have been calling the cops to their property for 27 years.

Davenport is suing the city and the hundreds of pages of 911 calls are vital to his litigation. The city wants to take his property, claiming he hasn't fulfilled his obligations as a citizen and business owner. 414 pages of 911 calls says otherwise. Davenport (and his father before him) have been pleading for the city to clean up a crime-infested area filled with drug houses and the criminal element drawn to this area by the (apparently) unchecked drug trade.

The PD's newly-formed Nuisance Abatement Team doesn't appear to have made any impact here, other than posting placards on businesses it believes aren't doing enough to fight the crime the Dallas PD should be fighting. Paying taxes should entitle you to city services, but only thing Dallas wants to give Davenport in exchange for his involuntary contributions is all the blame for the crime that surrounds him.

Fourteen years ago, a state committee investigation [PDF] found Dallas' nuisance laws had been abused severely and regularly.

Sworn testimony before the house committee described specific cases of misuse of the statute by city officials such as:

• Targeting of a few, select businesses in high-crime areas, while ignoring more serious crimes occurring on surrounding properties;
• Directing businesses to hire certain security personnel with the clear suggestion that hiring these select individuals would diminish the city's threatened enforcement of nuisance abatement;
• Parking a large number of police cars in the parking lot of a business owner as a retaliatory act toward that owner, who had challenged the city's nuisance action against him and had testified in court on behalf of an individual who was acquitted of charges for resisting arrest while on the business' property;
• Using calls to police requesting assistance by the business as marks against that business in the city's criteria for evidence of nuisance abatement violations;
• Directing a hotel property owner to run criminal history checks on all guests, which is a possible violation of the guests' civil rights and could potentially subject the business to legal liability; and
• Sanctioning a local car wash owner because marihuana was found in the pants pocket of a person working on the property. It was suggested by the city legal department that the owner needed to conduct random pat-down searches of persons working on the property on a regular basis -- an act prohibited by law even for law enforcement officers.

To sum up:

[T]he committees are gravely concerned that the problems stemming from Dallas' use of the nuisance laws are the result of a unique and incorrect interpretation of those laws by city officials -- wrongly taking the laws to mean that fighting crime is no longer the city's responsibility but has instead now become primarily the responsibility of private citizens and businesses; and that private citizens can be held strictly liable for crimes that take place on or near their property even when they are not involved in that crime, have taken affirmative steps to prevent the crime, are themselves victims of that crime, and have reported the crime, requesting the assistance of law enforcement agencies. Furthermore, the body of evidence available to the committees also strongly suggests that the city uses the nuisance laws to intimidate, promote cronyism, and inappropriately use law enforcement personnel, specifically uniformed police and code enforcement officers, to deliver not-too-subtle messages of coercion and retaliation to legitimate businesses and property owners who refuse to submit to such tactics.

It's 2020. Nothing has changed. The city continues to shrug off its responsibilities and put private business owners in the impossible position of clearing out nearby crime without relying on the law enforcement services the city is supposed to provide to taxpayers. I guess the city believes it's only obligation to business owners like Davenport is to staff 911 call centers. Other than that, they're on their own until the city shuts them down.

Filed Under: crime, dale davenport, dallas, law enforcement, nuisance abatement

No Shirt, No Shoes, No Facescan, No Service: Welcome To 21st Century Convenience Store Shopping

from the say-cheese-snacks dept

Developers of facial recognition software and their customers are finding new and uninventive ways to use unproven tech to keep people out of places. Law enforcement just wants to watch everyone who's out in the open and strays too close to the right cameras. Security agencies just want to watch everyone leaving or entering the country.

Private businesses, on the other hand, want to limit their interactions with certain people. Landlords are replacing keys/locks with cameras and phone apps. Retailers are implementing facial recognition tech to create digital barriers to entry. Given the tech's error rate, the chance of misidentifying someone as a shoplifter is omnipresent, leaving would-be shoppers in the awkward position of attempting to prove a negative just for the opportunity to give a retailer money.

Large retailers have already played around with the tech, but it's now finding a new home at the smaller end of the retail spectrum. The Seattle Times reports a convenience store chain is kicking the facerec tires.

Jacksons Food Store customer Denise Diharce was surprised to learn that the Tacoma location she frequents for odds and ends is testing a high-tech system that, prior to entry, will compare her to images of previous crime suspects.

Before patrons can enter the basic convenience store at the corner of South 38th Street and Pacific Avenue, a camera under a red awning will take a picture and use artificial intelligence (AI) to decide whether the image matches any in a database of known robbers and shoplifters at that location.

This was during the chain's test run. But it's moving forward with full deployment, seeking to have the systems run during night hours to keep criminals out of its stores. When the system is on, customers will be informed of the system's use -- something they will have a hard time not noticing when a speaker asks them to stand still and point their faces in the direction of the camera.

The system used by the convenience store chain is very much DIY, which probably keeps it at an affordable price point. There's no link to existing criminal databases. Every undesirable member of the public must be hand-flagged by store staff to be added to the database. Limiting the number of faces in the database should help decrease both false positives and false negatives -- something that's a commonly-observed problem with larger deployments linked to much bigger databases composed of both criminal and non-criminal face photos.

In isolation, this use may seem justified. Convenience stores tend to get robbed more frequently than other retailers and anything that adds a bit of safety for employees is probably a good thing. But it can't be viewed in isolation -- not when government agencies at all levels are snapping up facial recognition software from a handful of vendors who are creating massive databases of photos for use by almost anyone -- public or private -- that can afford to purchase the tech.

The steady creep of surveillance tech makes people more accepting of even more serious encroachments on their privacy -- or just their ability to move around in public without being "noticed" by dozens of cameras linked to dozens of databases.

Filed Under: convenience stores, crime, facial recognition, law enforcement, privacy, shoplifting

Study Shows Asset Forfeiture Doesn't Fight Crime Or Reduce Drug Use

from the drug-war-what-is-it-good-for dept

The lies law enforcement tells about civil asset forfeiture are just that: lies. They may not be intentional lies in some cases. Many law enforcement officials may actually believe the bullshit they spill in defense of taking property from people without convicting them of crimes. But that doesn't change the fact that it's bullshit.

If law enforcement was serious about crippling drug cartels, they wouldn't be watching the roads leading out of their jurisdictions for drivers to pull over and shake down for cash. They'd be watching roads leading into the state to seize the drugs before they can be sold. But that's not how it's done. Drug busts are rare. Cash seizures -- especially small ones -- happen all the time.

When a Nashville television news team followed police officers working I-40 as part of a highway interdiction task force not unlike South Carolina’s Rolling Thunder, it found officers did not work the east- and westbound lanes equally. Rather, they seemed to prefer the westbound side even though they were more likely to find drugs on the eastbound side, as smugglers transported them to Nashville and other cities to the east. A possible explanation for this observation is that officers knew they were more likely to find drug money on the westbound side, as smugglers transported it back to Mexico or the West Coast. Records confirmed officers made 10 times as many stops on the westbound side as they did on the eastbound.

You'll notice law enforcement never brings stats to the discussion. All officials bring are talking points. Most states don't require any level of reporting on seizures and the law enforcement spending that flows from these. The opacity has allowed a law enforcement tool to become an unaudited revenue stream, providing agencies with all the incentive they need to turn traffic stops into lucrative fishing expeditions.

Fortunately, those opposed to the abusive practice will have even more facts to work with, thanks to a new study [PDF] by Dr. Brian D. Kelly of the Institute for Justice. Millions of dollars flow into law enforcement agencies every year from forfeiture, but this has yet to provide the public with any return on the forced investment.

More equitable sharing funds do not translate into more crimes solved. This suggests that despite claims forfeiture turns criminals’ cash into more resources for law enforcement, the additional revenue is not improving overall police effectiveness in crime fighting.

More equitable sharing funds also do not mean less drug use, even though proponents argue forfeiture helps rid the streets of drugs by financially crippling drug dealers and cartels.

When local economies suffer, equitable sharing activity increases, suggesting police make greater use of forfeiture when local budgets are tight. A 1 percentage point increase in local unemployment—a standard proxy for fiscal stress—is associated with a statistically significant 9 percentage point increase in equitable sharing seizures.

That's two popular arguments directly disproven. The first one -- that forfeiture allows agencies to purchase the tech and tools they need to fight crime successfully -- is disproven by the lack of results. Sure, agencies are loading up on equipment and spy gear, but clearance rates on criminal investigations aren't tracking with the increased cash flow. Using law enforcement data, the IJ can't find any link between asset forfeiture and law enforcement efficiency.

Results suggest forfeiture does not help police solve more crime. The results of these analyses were statistically insignificant at conventional levels, suggesting additional forfeiture revenue does not translate into more crimes solved. But even if the results were significant, the relationship between forfeiture and crime clearance would be vanishingly small. For example, the LEMAS [Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics] data for municipal police suggest a $1,000 increase in equitable sharing funds per officer would mean solving just 2.4 more crimes per 1,000 reported offenses. So if an agency’s clearance rate were, say, 270 per 1,000 offenses, receiving $1,000 more in equitable sharing funds per officer would mean increasing the clearance rate to just 272.4. A $1,000 increase in funds per officer would be substantial—total equitable sharing averages less than half of this—yet such a windfall would make only a minor difference. Moreover, such tiny improvements in clearance rates would diminish as forfeiture revenue increases; for example, the first $500 per officer in a given year would have a greater impact than the second $500 per officer. These results suggest claims about forfeiture’s crime-fighting importance are, at best, overstated.

The second talking point -- that forfeiture cripples drug dealers and cartels -- also has no factual basis. Again, the numbers contradict the claims. Using the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) carried out by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the IJ found no correlation between asset forfeiture and reductions in drug use, suggesting drugs are still just as easy to obtain.

From 2002 through 2014, the survey underwent no major relevant changes, making it possible to directly compare results over time. This feature allowed me to explore whether increases in equitable sharing proceeds received by agencies within a particular NSDUH region were associated with reductions in drug use in those same regions. I controlled for police agency staffing, which could affect police effectiveness, as well as for demographic and economic factors sometimes associated with drug use: the proportion of the population age 15–24, the minority proportion of the population and the unemployment rate. The four NSDUH drug use measures I used were (1) use of any illicit drug in the previous year, (2) marijuana use in the previous year, (3) nonmedical use of prescription pain relievers in the previous year and (4) cocaine use in the previous year.

For none of these illicit drug use measures did I find increases in equitable sharing proceeds led to subsequent reductions in use. In short, to the extent forfeiture advocates hope increasing enforcement through forfeiture will reduce drug use, this does not appear to be happening.

What the report did find is something unexpected: the more financially-stressed an area is, the more likely it is law enforcement will make it worse. Forfeitures increase as unemployment increases, suggesting financially-strapped agencies are stepping up forfeiture efforts to make up for budget shortfalls.

In every case, I found that higher unemployment predicted more equitable sharing activity. For equitable sharing overall as well as for both joint operations and adoptions, the link between unemployment and both value of assets forfeited and number of assets seized was statistically significant. With respect to equitable sharing overall, a 1 percentage point increase in unemployment was associated with an 8.5 percentage point increase in the value of forfeited assets and a 9.5 percentage point increase in the number of assets seized…

The study confirms what's always been suspected: asset forfeiture directly enriches law enforcement agencies but provides zero benefit to the communities the agencies serve. That's the very definition of abuse. Cops are using citizens as ATMs while drug cartels thrive. The data clearly shows the only negative impact of serious asset forfeiture reforms will be an increase in complaints from law enforcement officials.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, crime, drugs, legalized theft

Judge Refuses To Hand The Government Biker Gang's Trademark

from the mongolian-beef dept

If we were ever to hand out some kind of award for a trademark dispute due to both its insanity and longevity, surely that award would go the US Government's attempt to strip the Mongols, a motorcycle gang, of its trademark. This whole thing actually started way back in 2008, with the government arresting several Mongols members for all manner of crimes ranging from extortion to murder. On top of prosecuting these cases and the gang, it requested it be allowed to seize the Mongols trademark on its logo, reasoning that this would allow them to simply strip any members of any biker gear that displayed the logo, even though that isn't what trademark allows one to do. This somehow continued several years later, when the remaining members of the gang claimed the group collectively owned the trademark in question, meaning that the government couldn't simply take control of it.

And, amazingly, this whole thing continues to today. It looked for all the world that this case was finally going to wrap up with the trademark being handed over to the US Government. In a jury verdict, the jury had ordered exactly that to happen. To the suprise of many, however, the judge overseeing the case stepped in and disregarded that part of the judgement, arguing that it would violate the First Amendment.

Denying Mongol members the ability to display the logo on their leather riding jackets and elsewhere would overstep the right to free expression embedded in the 1st Amendment, as well as the 8th Amendment’s ban on excessive penalties, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter found.

“There is a realistic danger that the transfer of the rights associated with the symbol to the government will have a chilling effect,” Carter wrote.

The government's request relied on likening the trademark the Mongols had on its iconography as property of the same kind as its guns and contraband, suggesting that the logo was a chief tool of a criminal enterprise. Forfeiture laws are not typically used in this way, and it was quite clear that the government was attempting to stretch all kinds of definitions as a way to cripple every last bit of a biker gang that is indeed quite infamous. Still, the judge rightly notes that the bar with regard to the First Amendment is quite high, and allowing the government to essentially strip speech in this way would be both unconstitutional and would create a chilling effect on speech more generally.

The judge said 1st Amendment issues were undeniably at play because the type of trademarks the Mongols own, called collective membership marks, don’t serve any commercial purpose but only help members to identify themselves as part of a group.

And because the jury had found the logo was tied directly to the conspiracy charge but not the murders and other violent crimes with which the club was accused of participating, Carter concluded forfeiting the trademarks would violate the Constitution’s 8th Amendment, which forbids the government from imposing excessive punishments.

Denying members control over the logo would be an “unjustified and grossly disproportionate” punishment, he wrote.

And, so, the gang gets to keep its logo, though the government has announced it may appeal this specific decision. It really shouldn't, though. Already the biker gang has been convicted of multiple crimes, from rackateering to murder. Going after the trademark again, even after all of these years, is pretty clear overreach.

Filed Under: biker gang, crime, doj, logos, mongols, trademark

NYC Prosecutors Accidentally Admit They Use Bail To Deprive Presumably-Innocent People Of Their Freedom

from the gov't-getting-sick-of-whatever-justice-actually-remains-in-the-justice-syste dept

New York City's prosecutors just admitted they use the bail system to punish people for being accused of criminal acts. It's not there to serve its intended purpose: to ensure the return of charged individuals to court, where they're presumed innocent until proven guilty.

The bail system isn't supposed to keep people locked up. But that's the way it's been used for years. Prosecutors often ask for excessive bail amounts. Judges often grant them. The argument made for high bail amounts -- which ensure only the most well-to-do can remain free while awaiting trial -- is that arrested people are flight risks and/or more inherently dangerous than all the people the police haven't gotten around to arresting yet.

The stats don't back up the parade of horribles offered by prosecutors at bail hearings. People have done the math. And this excellent article by the Boston Review compiles the damning numbers.

Statistical studies have continually shown that these concerns are exaggerated; the vast majority of people who are arrested and then make bail do not commit violent crimes while their cases are pending. In fact, according to a study by New York City's Criminal Justice Agency, only 3 percent of “at risk” defendants who make bail are even arrested (let alone convicted) for a violent crime while their initial cases are pending. Similarly, a recent study by the Vera Institute of Justice tracked more than fifty people who were released from court in New York City without having to pay their entire bail—only two were rearrested on a new violent felony charge over the following year.

There goes the "public safety" argument. High bails are supposedly needed because presumptively innocent people are inveterate criminals prone to committing crime after crime until their return to court.

And here comes the "public safety" argument, inadvertently highlighting prosecutors' bail-based bullshit. Grassroot groups, led by RFK Human Rights, are posting bail for hundreds of incarcerated suspects. Money has been raised to post bail for "every woman, sixteen- and seventeen- year-old" currently housed in a NYC jail. The parade of horribles is back and it shows the government isn't interested in allowing the bail system to, you know, work.

[W]hat the reaction to the Mass Bailout shows, in stark contrast, is that the DAs use bail money for very different purposes than it was designed for. They request these bails ostensibly to ensure the accused show up to court; yet now that they are actually being posted, the DAs are crying foul and warning that freeing the accused will endanger “public safety.” They are therefore admitting what so many in affected communities already know to be true: that money bail routinely—and illegally—is set too high for poor defendants to afford, solely for the improper purpose of keeping them in jail before trial.

This isn't just bad optics by the DAs. This is also illegal. The sole purpose of bail, according to New York law, is to ensure the return of the accused to court. It cannot be used to lock accused suspects up for "public safety" reasons. But this reaction by city prosecutors makes it clear they believe they can use the system the way the law says they can't. And this reaction -- as bad and as unlawful as it is -- will probably be replicated anywhere bail relief efforts/bail reforms are deployed.

This just drives the point home that one-half of the justice system gives zero fucks about justice, due process, or any other safeguards erected against government power over the years. All they want is to lock people up and keep them locked up, even if they've never received their day in court.

Filed Under: bail, crime, new york city, nyc, prosecutors

FBI's Latest Crime Stats Continue To Undermine AG Sessions' Criminal Apocalypse Fantasies

from the WE'RE-ALL-GONNA-DIE!-EVENTUALLY.-OF-NATURAL-CAUSES,-MOST-LIKELY... dept

Crime rates continue to remain at historic lows. We're safer than we've been since the mid-1960s. We should be celebrating this. Law enforcement should be celebrating this. But there's no celebration. Certainly not at the federal level. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made remarks at a number of law enforcement events in recent months. And they've all been loaded with doom, gloom, and questionable citations.

Here's Sessions on September 19, 2018:

Colossal mistakes have been made by politicians and leaders that have had particular catastrophic consequences for the people of cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and St. Louis.

From 1991 to 2014, we saw an historic nationwide decline in violent crime. Murder dropped by half. Violent crime overall dropped by half.

Rape decreased by more than a third, and robbery plummeted by nearly two-thirds.

But nationally in the last two years of the previous administration, the trends ominously reversed.

From 2014 to 2016, the violent crime rate went up by nearly seven percent. Assaults and rape went up nearly 10 percent. Murder shot up by more than 20 percent.

Here's Sessions a week later:

Big mistakes were made, some saw police as the problem. And as a result, in the last two years of the previous administration, the violent crime rate went up by nearly seven percent. Assaults went up nearly 10 percent. Rape went up by nearly 11 percent. Murder shot up by more than 20 percent. That’s what was happening when he took office.

This was especially shocking because from 1991 to 2014, violent crime had dropped by half. Murder dropped by half. So did aggravated assault. Rape decreased by more than a third, and robbery plummeted by nearly two-thirds.

From a month earlier:

We know whose side we’re on. We’re on the side of the good people, public safety, law, faith, and community. We defend our people and our values against outlaws.

You know the challenges we face. From 2014 to 2016, the violent crime rate stopped declining and went up by nearly seven percent. Robberies went up. Assaults went up nearly 10 percent. Rape went up by nearly 11 percent. The murder rate increased by more than 20 percent.

These numbers are shocking. They cannot continue.

But the numbers aren't shocking. There have been increases over the last couple of years, but violent crime rates are still lower than they were a decade ago and have decreased considerably over the last 20 years. The population of the US grew by 55 million over that period. Despite that, 300,000 fewer violent crimes were reported in 2018 than in 1998.

Sessions wants Americans to believe a couple of years of increases in isolated areas represents an irreversible trend brought on by a collective lack of respect for law enforcement and interference by groups that defend the public's rights, like the ACLU.

The FBI's latest crime stats have been released. They show the categories Sessions is hot and bothered about have reversed their two-year "trend."

Compared with last year, the national rate for property crime has declined by 3.6 percent, the violent crime rate is down by 1 percent, and the homicide rate has decreased by 1.9 percent.

What will the administration do with crime rates that won't conform with the narrative? Will Trump and co. take credit for the reduction, citing their full-blooded support of anything law enforcement-related? Or will it simply be glossed over to take potshots at activists for somehow ruining policing with their insistence on Constitutional law enforcement activities?

The messages AG Sessions delivers won't change. As the head of the DOJ, he has something to sell. It isn't justice, despite the name over the door. It's prosecution, which is only part of the justice equation. All crime news is bad news, even as crime rates continue to decline. Welcome to America, where the crime rates are at historic lows but everyone thinks each successive year is the worst it's ever been.

Filed Under: crime, doj, jeff sessions, stats

Jeff Sessions Says If You Want More Shootings And Death, Listen To The ACLU And Black Lives Matter

from the on-the-plus-side,-Trump-seems-to-want-him-gone dept

Jeff Sessions is still quoting a bad study to score points with law enforcement officials. Earlier this year -- while speaking to the National Association of Police Organizations -- he cited a study by two Chicago lawprofs that supposedly drew a connection between violent crime spikes in Chicago and a settlement with the ACLU, reached after years of police misconduct and abuse.

The Attorney General's point was clear: misconduct and abuse are what's keeping criminal activity at bay. Constitutionally-sound police work lets the criminals win. The problem with Sessions' assertions -- and the law profs' conclusions -- is several cities with consent decrees or settlements in place have seen violent crime rates continue to go down, indicating there's really no provable connection between violent crime rates and so-called "limitations" on police activity.

Nevertheless, he persists. Speaking to the VALOR Survive and Thrive Conference, Sessions chose to quote the same faulty study again. (Quick sidebar: VALOR stands for "Preventing Violence Against Law Enforcement Officers and Ensuring Officer Resilience and Survivability."Really.) [h/t Ryan Reilly]

More people were murdered in Chicago in 2016 than in New York and Los Angeles combined—even though Chicago has one-fifth of the population of those two cities.

The situation was so bad that nearly a quarter of the nationwide increase in homicide that year happened in Chicago alone.

This did not need to happen. In 2015 and 2016, Chicago had the same police on patrol and the same prosecutors in court, but dramatically different results.

So what happened?

According to a study by two professors from the University of Utah—one of whom is a former federal judge—the consent decree mandated a major change in Chicago’s community-based policing—including Terry stops—that allowed this bloodshed to take place.

The professors found that the increased crime cost a staggering $1.5 billion and noted that 78 percent of its victims were African-American and 16 percent were Latino. Ninety-four percent of the victims were minorities.

What happened is officers refused to do their jobs. Some saw the agreement as a trap. Others just didn't feel like making an effort.

The ACLU consent decree required police officers to submit a detailed report to the ACLU, a former federal judge, and a publicly available database after every single Terry stop.

John’s predecessor as United States Attorney, Zachary Fardon, said in an open letter to the City that the ACLU agreement “[told] cops if you go talk to those kids on the corner, you’re going to have to take 40 minutes to fill out a form, and you’re going to have to give them a receipt with your badge number on it.”

And he noted that as a result, by January 2016, “the city was on fire” because “the rule of law, law enforcement, had been delegitimized.” That is a devastating analysis.

Reporting by the Chicago Sun Times confirms this, stating in January 2016, that Chicago officers say that “they fear getting in trouble for stops later deemed to be illegal and the new [required forms] take too much time to complete.”

Roughly the same thing happened in New York City, but there were no increases in violent crime. Officers were supposed to justify stops and produce documentation. The difference is NYPD officers continued to make stops, rather than abandon their duties. There are still unanswered questions about the legitimacy of some NYPD stops, thanks to missing mandatory paperwork, but the court-ordered overhaul of the department's stop-and-frisk program did not result in the apocalypse promised by the outgoing mayor.

Simply put, Chicago police officers don't want to engage in Constitutional policing -- not if it means spending a bit more time filling out paperwork. The supposed "gotcha" moments will never occur if stops align with the Constitution, the agreement, and include the required paperwork. Abdicating your responsibilities has unpleasant outcomes, especially if you're in the business of law enforcement. A spike in violent crime is one conceivable result. But don't blame the agreement. Blame the officers for their lack of interest in respecting the rights of others.

Sessions goes even further in these remarks, though. He blows past the so-called "ACLU effect" the Chicago law profs claimed to have pinpointed in their study to blame the ACLU (and others) directly for spikes in violent crime.

There's a clear lesson here: if you want more shootings and more death, then listen to the ACLU, Black Lives Matter, or Antifa. If you want public safety, then listen to the police professionals who have been studying this for 35 years.

This is the sort of thing high-ranking officials shouldn't be seriously thinking, much less saying out loud in front of other public officials in law enforcement. This is Sessions saying the ends justify the means and groups seeking accountability from their public servants have the blood of crime victims on their hands just because they want officers to respect the Constitution.

Then he contradicts this assertion by citing falling crime rates in Los Angeles and New York -- both of which have been hit with settlements and consent decrees that altered how officers go about their daily business. Somehow he feels this doesn't undermine his "ACLU effect" comments or his willingness to saddle ACLU and BLM with the end result of police officers refusing to do their jobs.

And if it isn't the ACLU killing citizens, it's everyone who doesn't immediately stand and salute the Thin Blue Line flag.

The proof is in. It can no longer be denied: disrespect and lack of support for police officers has real world consequences.

Leaders must understand and affirm the important and dangerous work of our officers. Failure to support our professionals undermines the pro-active policing that has been shown to save lives.

The proof isn't in. The study he cites decides correlation is causation. The examples he gives about other major US cities undermine the vaunted "ACLU effect" conjured up by Chicago law profs. All Sessions has is some anecdotes and a deep disdain for anyone that isn't a cop or a prosecutor. American citizens are apparently whiny children who wouldn't know good policing if it stopped them on the street, threw them to the ground, and stood on their necks.

Respect is earned. Sessions -- and those echoing his sentiments -- believe it's something certain people are owed. And the more he tries to collect on their behalf, the more likely he is to diminish the respect the American public has for him.

Filed Under: black lives matter, crime, doj, jeff sessions, police, police violence
Companies: aclu

FBI Says It Can't Get Into 6,900 Encrypted Phones. So What?

from the doing-less-with-more dept

The new director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, has apparently decided to take up James Comey's anti-encryption fight. He's been mostly quiet on the issue since assuming the position, but the DOJ's recent calls for "responsible encryption" has emboldened the new FBI boss to speak up on the subject.

And speak up he has. Although the FBI still hasn't released the text of his remarks to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, more than a few sites are reporting it was the usual "go team law enforcement" boosterism, but with the added zest of phone encryption complaints.

He also spoke about roadblocks in dealing with cellphone encryption technology, saying that in first 11 months of the fiscal year, the FBI has been unable to access content from 6,900 mobile devices despite having the proper legal authority to do so.

"It's going to be a lot worse than that in just a couple of years if we don't come up with some responsible solution," he lamented. "I'm open to all ideas."

All ideas, maybe. But certainly not all viewpoints. The Deputy Attorney General has made it clear in multiple speeches he views phone encryption as the end result of tech companies' low-minded pursuit of revenue. DAG Rosenstein repeatedly emphasized US law enforcement measures success by a different standard -- a standard mercenary phone manufacturers couldn't even begin to approach.

Of course, the FBI head also nodded towards the importance of device security.

"I get it, there's a balance that needs to be struck between encryption and the importance of giving us the tools we need to keep the public safe."

But does he actually "get it?" What if the status quo is the ending "balance?" Would that satisfy Wray? Doubtful. He wants law enforcement-friendly security holes and he wants tech companies to provide them voluntarily.

The number of locked devices means nothing. The "6,900 mobile devices" will be 8,000 or 10,000 by early next year -- sound-and-fury totals signifying nothing. It was 6,000 phones when Comey trotted out numbers earlier this year. It will always increase and it will always grab eyeballs but it won't ever mean anything unless the FBI is willing to provide a lot more context.

Is the FBI just spectacularly bad at cracking cell phones? We're not hearing these complaints from local law enforcement agencies with less expertise and lower budgets. Is the FBI just not even trying? Is it not using everything it has available -- including a number of judicial forgiveness plans for rights violations -- to get into these phones? It's inconceivable the nation's top law enforcement agency is experiencing nearly a 50% failure rate when it comes to locked phones.

All Wray says is there are 6,900 phones the FBI hasn't gotten into. Yet. What's never discussed is how many investigations resumed unimpeded by cellphone encryption. Phones are not the sole repository of criminal evidence in any investigation. The FBI has options even if the seized phone seems impermeable. The FBI insinuates it's being stopped, but never specifies how many of these phones have resulted in terminated investigations.

It's just a number, divorced from context, but one the FBI can ensure will always be larger than last time it was mentioned.

Filed Under: chris wray, context, crime, encryption, fbi, going dark, phones

Emails Show ICE Couldn't Find Enough Dangerous Immigrants To Fulfill The Adminstration's Fantasies

from the Operation-Goalpost-Relocation dept

When you've got an official narrative to deliver, you need everyone to pitch in to keep it from falling apart. No one can say ICE didn't try. The Trump administration -- bolstered by supporting statements conjecture from DOJ and DHS officials -- has portrayed undocumented immigrants as little more than nomadic thugs. Unfortunately, there's hardly any evidence available to back up the assertion that people here illegally are more likely to commit serious criminal acts.

Back in February, shortly after Trump handed down immigration-focused executive orders, ICE went all in on arresting undocumented visitors and immigrants. Included in this push was a focus on so-called "sanctuary cities" like Austin, Texas, which had vowed to push back against Trump's anti-immigrant actions.

Emails obtained by The Intercept show ICE doing all it can to prop up Trump's "dangerous criminal" stereotyping. Unfortunately, despite all of its efforts, ICE failed to come across many dangerous criminals during its February sweeps.

On February 10, as the raids kicked off, an ICE executive in Washington sent an “URGENT” directive to the agency’s chiefs of staff around the country. “Please put together a white paper covering the three most egregious cases,” for each location, the acting chief of staff of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations wrote in the email.

It's a good starting point, especially if the administration is relying on you to back up its assertions. ICE was willing to go the extra mile to do just that, apparently.

“If a location has only one egregious case — then include an extra egregious case from another city.”

This is an interesting ploy: cannibalizing nearby cities' reporting in order to present some semblance of an "egregious case" immigrant nightmare --one that would need to be stripped of redundancy before final presentation.

Unfortunately for ICE agents, you can't make something out nothing. Three cases per city proved to be almost impossible. Many raids failed to uncover even one egregious case. With the clock ticking down, some ICE offices decided to grab "egregious cases" completely unrelated to the current operation.

In February 11, an official responded to a colleague’s list of egregious cases by pointing out that they were unrelated to the ongoing operation. “The arrest dates are before any operation and even before the EO’s. What is up with these cases?” the official wrote.

What's up with those cases is there were almost zero new cases to report to the man upstairs. Hundreds of arrests were made, but many involved people with no prior criminal record. In the remaining arrests, most of the priors found were minor violations, with the worst being drunk driving.

Not exactly the "public safety threat" the Trump administration had promised. When it became clear the "egregious case" reports might total only a handful of serious criminal offenses from hundreds of arrests nationwide, ICE quickly applied its own spin.

As criticism escalated, ICE shifted to downplaying the operation as “no different than the routine,” telling reporters that the raids were the same “targeted arrests carried out by ICE’s Fugitive Operations Teams on a daily basis,” and suggesting off the record that claims to the opposite were “false, dangerous, and irresponsible.” As it became clear that dozens of individuals with no criminal history had been apprehended, ICE shifted gears and told reporters that in addition to targeting safety threats, the raids were always meant to target those whose only crimes were immigration-related, like re-entering the U.S. after deportation…

By spinning it this way, ICE can pay needed lip service to the administration's "dangerous immigrants" narrative and portray the lack of egregious cases as the result of the banal day-to-day work of immigration enforcement. But in doing so, it undercuts the narrative it's trying to serve. If there are so many dangerous criminals out there, why isn't ICE focused on them, rather than dozens of people whose only criminal act is a lack of documentation? ICE can't have it both ways. Neither can the White House.

Filed Under: crime, dhs, doj, exaggerations, ice, immigrants