Poetry Is More Important Than Police Accountability

Some might remember that I was deeply concerned about how to keep this project going when I found out the NPMSRP didn’t get funding from the Open Society Institute’s Justice Fellowship program that offers funds for individuals like myself who try to do work on projects like this.

Then, I was even more worried [...]

Arguing The Case For Police Accountability - Part 1

In the years that I’ve been monitoring and researching the issue of police misconduct I’ve noticed some prevalent, and quite successful, arguments used by those who feel there is no need for improved police accountability and transparency and that police misconduct isn’t a problem worthy of attention.

However, the statistics generated by the NPMSRP [...]

HR Bill 413 - A National Police Unaccountability Bill

URGENT UPDATE! -04/13/10 21:36PST

Folks, congress is apparently trying to push this one through on a fast track. Last night Senator Harry Reid introduced Senate bill 3194 that has nearly identical wording as S.1611 and HR 413 in a way that will force it to the Senate floor for a vote tomorrow which [...]

Trust Us, Or Else

The King County Washington Sheriff’s Office announced yesterday that they want to create a specialized multi-agency task force to identify and track people they suspect of showing risky or threatening tendencies towards law enforcement and is seeking federal funding to use this as a pilot project for law enforcement agencies across the US.

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Of Human Rights Reports and Police Misconduct

On March 11, the US State Department released it’s global 2009 Report on Human Rights. As usual, one day later, China responded by noting that there was a nation conspicuously absent from that report and obliged by producing one for that missing nation, titled “The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009“. [...]

Secrecy In The Name of Officer Safety

Washington state suffered a larger number of police officer deaths in 2009 due to two highly publicized shooting incidents where police officers were randomly targeted by individuals with a grudge. In response to this, the Washington state legislature and governor have been working hard to find ways to show that they care about law [...]

Police Accountability Policy Watch – January 2010

I thought I would try something new this month and devote an article to various reports that covered police accountability/transparency policy issues for the month. These reports generally don’t go into the statistical reports, but they do affect those statistics so I thought it would be a good idea to go over those reports [...]

Criminal Justice In The Age of New Professionalism

In 2006, US Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia rendered an opinion in Hudson v Michigan concerning a Fourth Amendment violation case in which he heralded a previously unannounced age of “New Professionalism” for US law enforcement. This new age cited reforms in accountability that would remove the need for civil rights protections as police [...]

Who Wants To Know?

One of the things I try to keep aware of in the course of this project is that what I’m doing is not popular. So, while disappointing, it shouldn’t have been surprising that the NPMSRP was turned down for funding by the Open Society Institute’s Justice Fellowship and that the OSI has never awarded [...]

Can Accreditation Affect Police Misconduct Rates?

In case you didn’t know, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office in Florida received a “Flagship Agency” certification from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies during one of their “tri-annual re-accreditation ceremonies in Salt Lake City, Utah this month. The Lake Wales News reports that this is the sixth time the agency was [...]