Three Stories About Policing

Three things I saw today about policing.

Police are not primarily crime fighters, according to the data (from Reuters):

U.S. police spend much of their time conducting racially biased stops and searches of minority drivers, often without reasonable suspicion, rather than “fighting crime.”

Overall, sheriff patrol officers spend significantly more time on officer-initiated stops – “proactive policing” in law enforcement parlance – than they do responding to community members’ calls for help, according to the report. Research has shown that the practice is a fundamentally ineffective public safety strategy, the report pointed out....

Here's a fine example of exactly that from our local press. Don't let the slightly weird headline fool you: Hennepin County sheriff conceals bodycam footage by calling officers 'undercover.' A 26-year-old Black Minneapolis man was stopped by two Hennepin County sheriffs for no reason. They assaulted him, arrested him, and charged him — even though all of this was witnessed and recorded by other people. The story is about whether their body camera footage should be considered privileged as part of them being undercover (even though they were wearing the word SHERIFF on their vests) but the basics of the story are part of the egregious pattern described in the Reuters report. 

And then there's this: 

American police killings are rising, even as murder rates fall (from The Economist). More aggressive cops are less restrained.