Austin press coverage of police contract still sucks, and other stories

Here are a few odds and ends that deserve readers' attention even if I haven't had time to turn them into full, independent blog posts:

Austin press coverage of police contract still sucks
The Austin press continues its one-sided coverage of the City Council's rejection of the police-union contract, larding their articles with quotes from contract supporters and minimizing the views of critics without fully explaining them. In an Austin Chronicle story published yesterday, for example, contract supporters were given a platform for predicting doom while contract critics were dismissed as know-nothings (e.g., my wife was dubbed a "gadfly"). According to reporter Nina Hernandez, council members who voted against the contract (all of them) "hadn't exactly considered the consequences of their decision," though there's no sourcing, much less factual basis offered for that opinion. Later, appearing to contradict herself, she complained that the council was "suffering information overload," which hardly jibes with her earlier calumny that they hadn't sufficiently studied the topic.

The truth is, MSM reporters in Austin appear as a class to have misunderstood and misreported this entire debate from the get go. Ms. Hernandez now says she recognizes that, as one council member instructed her, "the Council's vote was more about the money" than the oversight piece (which means the press were the only ones in the room that night who didn't understand what they were watching). But no one in the local media is yet reporting on the most important implications of the scuttled contract: Freeing up around $10 million that the city council can spend in the current fiscal year over and above their current budget. How and when to spend that money is where the actual debate has moved at city hall, as well as among the activist players involved. But the press continues to flail, having missed the story and spun false narratives for so long that they don't now know how to begin to catch up. It's as though there's an almost willful decision by the local Austin press corps not to publicly report on what these debates are actually about.

Texas law mandates bad bodycam policies
Note to reporters who want to localize a story about police bodycams based on the Leadership Conference/Upturn recommendations, like this recent SA Express News story: Texas' law is the source of the most important bad practices, like letting officers accused of misconduct review video before they're questioned, or erecting barriers to accessing video under open records. Increasingly more departments, most recently Arlington and Plano, are purchasing body cameras for their officers. MORE: Here's a new academic piece on body cameras from Seth Stoughton for the to-read pile.

Private prison company gets rep on Windham task force
One of the governor's new appointees to Texas' task force on "Academic Credit and Industry Recognition" at the Windham School District (which operates educational programming at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice) works for a private prison company, reported the Longview News Journal.

Maybe time to tone down the 'war on cops' meme
The number of police officers killed in the line of duty in 2017 was the second lowest total in 50 years. While every death of an officer is a tragedy, this low total doesn't comport with the "war on cops" meme that's been prevalent for the last couple of years. Suicides and traffic deaths remain the more significant killers of sworn police officers.

Analyzing 2017 shootings by police
The new report from Mapping Police Violence is a must-read. By their count, 1,129 people were killed by police in America in 2017. MPV researchers "were able to identify officers in 534 cases. At least 43 had shot or killed someone before. 12 had multiple prior shootings." Also, "Most killings began with police responding to suspected non-violent offenses or cases where no crime was reported. 87 people were killed after police stopped them for a traffic violation." The number of those killed who were unarmed was 147. Notably, "Police recruits spend 7x as many hours training to shoot than they do training to de-escalate situations." FWIW, the Washington Post came up with a slightly lower number for Americans killed by police; Grits doesn't yet understand why the difference. It's remarkable that the number of people shot and killed by the government isn't tracked more closely than this in an official capacity. This should be a number we know.

Why long sentences matter
Too much of 2016 and 2017 was spent debating Prof. John Pfaff's position that long sentences weren't a significant driver of mass incarceration. He was wrong. This 17-minute podcast from the Urban Institute lays out the problem of too-long sentences and shows why reducing them is key to ending mass incarceration.

Healthcare spending reduces crime, violence
In the big picture, the observation from the Brookings Institute that health care spending prevents crime makes loads of sense. That's particularly true where health and crime specifically intersect - like drug abuse and mental illness, where treatment and related social-service supports can prevent crime both directly and indirectly. One study they cited "found that an increase in the number of treatment facilities causes a reduction in both violent and financially-motivated crime. This is likely due to a combination of forces: reducing drug abuse can reduce violent behavior that is caused by particular drugs, as well as property crimes like theft committed to fund an addiction. Reducing demand for illegal drugs might also reduce violence associated with the illegal drug trade."

Trump DOJ rescinds anti-debtors prison guidelines
The decision by the Trump DOJ to rescind guidance on minimizing debtors-prison practices was ill-conceived and a disappointment. But it was only ever guidance, and rescinding it in and of itself changes nothing. What has always mattered more is what state and particularly local actors choose to do on the ground, and that remains an open question. Texas legislators in 2017 took long-awaited first steps toward confronting the problem of arresting poor people over fines, but there's much more to be done. It remains to be seen whether - much like the push to reform asset forfeiture laws - movement conservatives continue to push for reform in spite of the Trump Administration staking out a more regressive agenda.