Tuesday, March 07, 2023

Jeff Blackburn Memorial Comments

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On Saturday, per his request, I spoke at Jeff Blackburn's memorial service about our work together in the aftermath of the Tulia drug st...
5 comments:
Friday, October 14, 2022

Texas prison baseball league was shockingly well-developed

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While I've been away from the blog recently, much of my time has been spent on a side project researching negro-league baseball in Texas...
5 comments:
Tuesday, July 26, 2022

Reimagining History at the Austin Police Academy

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For the past year, Austin has deployed a group of community folks and city staff to analyze the curriculum at the police academy and suggest...
5 comments:
Monday, July 04, 2022

#CJreform Movement Poorly Positioned to Confront Re-Criminalized Abortion

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During my three decades working on criminal-justice reform, when abortion came up, your correspondent always took the attitude, "That...
10 comments:
Saturday, March 26, 2022

Custodians of History: Old prosecutor files include marginalized voices usually excluded from public media and discourse

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Conversations about crime data and police and prosecutor files most frequently pertain to the news of the moment: Did bail reform cause crim...
3 comments:
Sunday, January 23, 2022

In 1950s, Austin removed lights and sirens from police cars: Result was award winning traffic safety record

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Speeding with light and sirens is among the most dangerous things police officers do on the job, and about as likely to get officers or civi...
9 comments:
Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Not that anyone cares, but "violent victimizations" were actually down last year

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Your correspondent has not been writing here recently because I'm in the process of evaluating the continued effectiveness of making fac...
16 comments:
Wednesday, September 22, 2021

More police won't help with Austin's biggest public-safety threats

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Let's talk for a moment about public safety in Austin. The argument for Prop A - the GOP-backed initiative to force the city of Austin t...
7 comments:
Friday, September 03, 2021

Politics explains oddities and strange bedfellows in Harris County bail debate

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Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg issued a 56-page report disputing the findings of federal bail monitors overseeing the settlement...
10 comments:
Thursday, September 02, 2021

Prosecuting crimes of poverty isn't the same as combating a "crime wave"

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The following is a guest blog post co-authored by Elizabeth Rossi of Civil Rights Corps and Amanda Woog of the Texas Fair Defense Project. T...
3 comments:
Wednesday, September 01, 2021

Time for the Texas #cjreform movement to get back to basics

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Your correspondent hasn't been writing on Grits during the latest special session because it wasn't a time when Texas state leaders ...
8 comments:
Thursday, August 19, 2021

#SandraBland Act data used to identify Texas' most aggressive, small-town speed traps

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Everybody hates speed traps. There are few things more annoying than driving along a state highway at 70 mph then having it ratchet down to ...
39 comments:
Thursday, August 12, 2021

Bring on Austin's police staffing debate: Proposal to hire 400-800 new cops would require budget tradeoffs the public won't support

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In Austin, the Republican-led group that ran a successful ballot initiative criminalizing homelessness has put another one on the ballot for...
Monday, August 02, 2021

In what world are mask mandates too draconian but COVID justifies massive law enforcement deployments and new detention camps for migrants? Oh yeah: Greg Abbott's Texas

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I was lookin' for a job when I found this one. Don't need the work like you need the work done.                                     ...
12 comments:
Friday, July 30, 2021

Austin PD teaches cadets US Constitution using material from John-Birch-Society shill

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Your correspondent appears to have lost the capacity for surprise or outrage, or this might affect me more. Instead, it mostly makes me feel...
7 comments:
Wednesday, July 28, 2021

What if any changes to police deployment patterns might reduce violent crime? Hotspot policing vs. ↑ resources for detectives

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A friend emailed to ask my opinion of "hotspot" policing tactics being promoted by Houston PD. Here's how I responded: There a...
13 comments: