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  • How New York Quietly Ended Its Street Drug War

    February 01, 2021 |

    Vice |

    Text |

    Over 3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, New York, New York

    From 2009 through 2019, street arrests for drug possession and sales fell by 80% in New York City, sparing hundreds of thousands of people harsh incarceration terms while defying warnings that more lenient enforcement of low-level drug crimes would wreak havoc on the city. The reforms came about because of persistent advocacy by groups opposed to racially disparate enforcement and its social harms, as well as legislative and court-imposed limits on punishment and stop-and-frisk policing. Now ticketing rather than arrest is used far more often for all types of drugs.

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  • Cops, crisis calls and conflict over who should help

    January 28, 2021 |

    Crosscut |

    Podcast |

    Over 15 Minutes

    Response Location: United States, Seattle, Washington

    Seattle Police Department's crisis response team answers some of the city's many 911 calls for people in distress, pairing police trained in handling such calls with mental health professionals. The aim is to counter the default policing approach to problems that usually involve mental illness or substance abuse, which is to control people. It doesn't always work, due to the complexity of the calls, the nature of policing, and the department's limited resources devoted to the program. But, when it works, it can help rather than escalate situations, and avoid the ultimate failure, the use of excessive force.

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  • An Oregon city's decades-old alternative to police

    January 28, 2021 |

    Crosscut |

    Podcast |

    Over 15 Minutes

    Response Location: United States, Eugene, Oregon

    Like many cities, Seattle is looking to Eugene, Oregon, for a model to shift resources from police to unarmed crisis responders handling 911 calls about mental health, addiction, family conflict, and other non-criminal problems. Eugene's CAHOOTS program has been doing such work for half a century, and since 1989 sending medic-and-counselor teams on calls. In 2019 it saved $8 million in police costs and $14 million for ambulances and emergency room visits. But, while taking police out of situations where they might cause more problems than they solve, it's only as good as its region's social services.

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  • More Than 1,000 Open Prostitution Cases In Brooklyn Are Going To Be Wiped From The Files

    January 28, 2021 |

    Buzzfeed |

    Text |

    1500-3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, New York, New York

    The Brooklyn district attorney is prosecuting few prostitution cases and has dismissed 262 cases that he and sex worker advocates say are a byproduct of law enforcement unfairly targeting trans women and women of color. The DA is working toward dismissing more than 1,000 cases and declining to prosecute all new cases. While legislative action is needed to achieve full decriminalization and to void the 25,000 criminal records that date to 1975 in Brooklyn, the DA exercised his discretion based on the harm done by arresting women for sex work and on related loitering charges.

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  • SC law enforcement agencies are supposed to report info on traffic stops, but most are not

    January 28, 2021 |

    The Greenville News |

    Text |

    1500-3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, South Carolina

    After the South Carolina legislature in 2005 began requiring police to enforce a seat-belt law with traffic stops, it imposed on all police departments a duty to track and report traffic-stop data on drivers' race. The law was meant as a way to prevent biased policing, through public disclosure of disparities. But only about one-third of the state's law enforcement agencies have consistently complied with the law, and some never have. Some blame ignorance of how the system should work. But another explanation is the state has done little or nothing to enforce the law.

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  • Seattle Cut Its Police Budget. Now the Public Will Decide How To Spend the Money.

    January 28, 2021 |

    The Appeal |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Seattle, Washington

    Since 2017, Seattle residents have had a direct say in how some city money is spent on neighborhood projects. It's a form of "participatory budgeting" that has been spreading from Brazil through many U.S. cities. After the 2020 racial justice protests, King County Equity Now, Decriminalize Seattle, and other groups spent several months calling for a budget that takes money from policing and invests in "true public health and safety" projects. After eight weeks of hearings, the city agreed to put $30 million – $12 million cut from police – into a citizen-controlled safety budget.

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  • Still Can't Breathe: How NYPD Officers Continue to Use Chokeholds on Civilians

    January 21, 2021 |

    The City |

    Text |

    Over 3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, New York, New York

    New York Police Department banned chokeholds in 1993, to prevent unnecessary injury and death. The practice has been scrutinized especially closely since the 2014 death of Eric Garner. But despite hundreds of complaints alleging the forbidden use of chokeholds, no NYPD officer has been fired for using a chokehold since 2014, nor have any complaints yielded more than some lost vacation time as a penalty. The failure of the policy stems from many causes, including ambiguity in the policy and its enforcement and lack of respect for investigative findings of the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

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  • Newark cops, with reform, didn't fire a single shot in 2020

    January 10, 2021 |

    NJ Advance Media |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Newark, New Jersey

    In 2020, six years after the Justice Department imposed a series of reforms on the Newark Police Department, Newark police officers have reduced their use of force so much that they didn't fire their guns at all in 2020, nor did the city pay any brutality-lawsuit settlements. Reforms in training, including de-escalation tactics, all backed by supportive leadership and extensive community outreach, turned a "rogue department" of brutality and racism into a more trusted, effective force.

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  • New laws lead some Washington prosecutors to rethink three-strike life sentences

    January 03, 2021 |

    The Seattle Times |

    Text |

    1500-3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, Washington

    Nearly three decades after Washington voters made their state the first to enact a three-strikes law, imposing life imprisonment for repeated, serious offenses, some prosecutors have found ways to avoid the law's effects that are seen as unduly harsh or racially biased. Some have interpreted a law authorizing resentencing to apply to three-strikes cases. Others have pushed the governor to grant clemency more often. This new willingness to question the law's effects is not universal among prosecutors, and the state Supreme Court soon will weigh in on the issue.

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  • Five Days Without Cops: Could Brooklyn Policing Experiment be a ‘Model for the Future'?

    January 03, 2021 |

    The City |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, New York, New York

    For 50 hours over five days, police and community members collaborated on the Brownsville Safety Alliance pilot project, which kept police officers away from a longtime crime hotspot so that community members could provide for police-free public safety. During the experiment, no one in the neighborhood called 911 to report a serious crime. Criminologists caution that the test does not prove that police can step away permanently. But residents say that after longstanding friction over policing, they and the police struck a new tone of cooperation in community-led crime prevention that they hope can continue.

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