Resources

For this Black History Month, podcast hosts sat down with an African American officer, Lieutenant Sonya Zollicoffer, second vice president of the United Black Police Officers Association, and with a Latino officer Retired Captain Joe Perez, president of the Hispanic National Law Enforcement Association. They talk about why they and over 10 other Officers of Color decided to file a lawsuit against Prince George’s County Police Department challenging the department’s pattern and practice of unconstitutional conduct.

With the rise of violent crime in the 1990s the New York City Police Department (NYPD) turned to proactive policing practices. Perhaps the most known of these practices is Stop, Question, and Frisk, known as Stop and Frisk. The practice had a disparate impact on the black and Hispanic community of New York City as the two groups represent more than 80% of all stops. Results of data analysis in this report lead to the conclusion that Stop and Frisk is an uneven policing practice that carries racial bias.

Everywhere we turn, local media — TV, digital, radio — is constantly telling us about the scourge of crime lurking around every corner. This, of course, is not new. It’s been the basis of the local news business model since the 1970s. But what is new is the rise of surveillance and snitch apps like Amazon’s Ring doorbell systems and geo-local social media like Nextdoor. They are funded by real estate and other gentrifying interests working hand in glove with police to provide a grossly distorted, inflated and hyped-up vision of crime.

Given the profound distrust between Portlanders and their police department and the struggles that Portland has had with historical police repression and contemporary collaboration with violent right winger hate groups, the time seems ripe for a reconsideration of policing in Portland. This is video of a panel discussion to imagine a world beyond policing.

Through the last year and a half, MuckRock and Lucy Parsons Lab have used FOIA to investigate the use of surveillance equipment by the Chicago Police Department (CPD). Through multiple FOIA requests and lawsuits, the team has demonstrated the CPD’s purchase and use of controversial “Stingray” cellphone surveillance devices among other new surveillance technologies. The work has also shown that Chicago Police have been acting in “bad faith” in fulfilling the FOIA requests. This project page gives preliminary data on the issue and asks for assistance in compiling more information.

MTA representatives often claim the “problem” of fare evasion can be policed away. No credible evidence supports this narrative. This report and accompanying data map analyzes subway stations and their surrounding neighborhoods where fare evasion enforcement occurred in 2017-2018. Though this was before the public face of any fare evasion crackdown began, the data shows 24,788 subway fare evasion enforcement actions over this period.

Researchers reevaluate the claim from Bor et al. (2018) that “police killings of unarmed Black Americans have effects on mental health among Black American adults in the general population.” The Mapping Police Violence data used by the authors misclassified 93 incidents and note that correctly recoding these incidents eliminated the reported statistically significant effect of exposure to police killings of unarmed Black individuals on the mental health of Black Americans in the general population.

In this report, researchers examined data on police killings with individual-level data to estimate the impact of police killings of unarmed Black Americans on self-reported mental health of other Black American adults in the US general population. Results support the idea that police killings of unarmed Black Americans have adverse effects on mental health among Black American adults in the general population. Researchers also recommend implementing programs to decrease the frequency of police killings and to mitigate negative mental health effects within communities when such killings occur.

This report presents the results of a landmark research study that examined depictions of the criminal justice system – as well as portrayals of people of color, women and issues of race – in popular American crime TV shows. The study included 26 different scripted series focused on crime from the 2017-2018 season, broadcast on both networks and streaming platforms.