Choker!, (Mis)Understanding Probable Cause, and other stories

Let's clear a few browser tabs and pass along some interesting tidbits that merit Grits readers attention:

TFW you find a box of guns and bloody money at the courthouse
Keri Blakinger did a wonderful job attempting to fill in the backstory on this amazing discovery.

They're all isolated incidents, we promise
A small-town Texas police chief (Olney) forced two men to perform a sex act at gun point and attempted to coerce the wife of a sex offender into becoming his "slave." That's quite a sense of entitlement this gentleman felt, don't you think?

No TCLE credit for Tom Green County sheriff training on jihadi threat
The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement retracted accreditation for a police training in San Angelo focused on the "jihadi threat," preaching to law enforcement that Muslims harbor secret aims to colonize America and impose Sharia law. Good for Kim Vickers, doing his job.

Bad things happening in jail
Grits can find no related press coverage, but a petition on Change.org alleges that a woman in the McLennan County Jail on a detention hold was sexually assaulted while being held on an immigration detainer for more than two years. She's a 30-year county resident and local businesswoman with four US-citizen children. I hate these stories. Heart wrenching.

Choker! 
A fired Waco cop who'd choked a handcuffed defendant and claimed he'd acted in self defense is on trial for two misdemeanor counts - assault and official oppression - reported the Tribune-Herald. A police trainer told jurors the officer had been specifically trained not to grab a defendant by the throat in that manner. Further, "Trial testimony showed that while the other officers there that night said they were shocked by Neville’s actions, they did not report it to their supervisors or note the incident in their reports." At least he's off the force.

Needless death thanks to outdated force policy
In Austin, a mentally disturbed 18-year old woman wielding a knife was shot dead by police. As Grits has described before, American cops are too quick to shoot knife wielding suspects. Both the Police Executive Research Forum and best practices from other countries have identified much better ways to handle these situations.

Analyzing unsolved murders
The Washington Post compiled clearance rates for murders over the last decade in the 50 largest US cities. Above 50 percent looks pretty good. Further, unsolved murders tend to be geographically clustered, they found.

Traffic stops are a crappy investigative tool
Frank Baumgartner, who authored a book analyzing racial profiling data from millions of traffic stops in North Carolina, told CityLab interviewer Tanvi Misra that "using the traffic code and the vehicle code as a way to investigate people more broadly has not given very great benefits in terms of crime reduction, but it's had an unintended and unnoticed consequence: It has made people feel like they don't have full citizenship. They walk down the street and they're suspects."

(Mis)Understanding probable cause
This analysis found that the public doesn't understand "probable cause" the same way lawyers and the government do, and the confusion causes community distrust. The authors "discuss the implications of these findings for the perceived fairness of police procedures and its impact on police–community relations."