As a DC police officer one of my biggest frustrations is the lack of feedback from the USAO. They almost never tell you why a case was dropped or why a warrant was rejected. I have asked many times for feedback on what we are doing wrong and how we can improve but they almost never give an answer. How can we fix the problem if they won't tell us exactly what it is?
Do we know (or can we guess or estimate) how much of this decrease is real versus a drop in reporting rates? Or how much of the change is due to covid-induced changes in society vs the change in attitudes towards police that shifted around the same time?
I heavily question whether more arrests is the policy goal, especially traffic, narcotics and other low-level stuff. A higher percentage of good arrests seems like a good goal. A higher clearance rate on gun violence would be great, too.
I definitely agree that improving the "quality" of arrests and clearance rates on gun violence are appropriate goals. Unfortunately there's no direct data on arrest quality (we can only infer from charging decisions) and closure rates data is incredibly lagged.
How many people are really being arrested for minor traffic violations? I suspect the majority of traffic arrests are for the types of dangerous driving that gets people killed, DUIs or driving 30 mph over the limit for example.
I also don't know what to do about narcotics, but when it comes to sales we can at least agree that they cause a great deal of harm to the population of DC. 463 people died from drugs in 2021, the most recent year available, making DC one of the worst urban areas and indeed counties in the entire city. The deaths were especially concentrated in Black males, and every death is a small percentage of the harm caused (nonfatal overdoses, addiction, etc.) So I guess I'm just not sure that a narcotics arrest is by default a low level crime.
As a DC police officer one of my biggest frustrations is the lack of feedback from the USAO. They almost never tell you why a case was dropped or why a warrant was rejected. I have asked many times for feedback on what we are doing wrong and how we can improve but they almost never give an answer. How can we fix the problem if they won't tell us exactly what it is?
"COVID decreased property crime ~17%".
Do we know (or can we guess or estimate) how much of this decrease is real versus a drop in reporting rates? Or how much of the change is due to covid-induced changes in society vs the change in attitudes towards police that shifted around the same time?
I heavily question whether more arrests is the policy goal, especially traffic, narcotics and other low-level stuff. A higher percentage of good arrests seems like a good goal. A higher clearance rate on gun violence would be great, too.
I definitely agree that improving the "quality" of arrests and clearance rates on gun violence are appropriate goals. Unfortunately there's no direct data on arrest quality (we can only infer from charging decisions) and closure rates data is incredibly lagged.
How many people are really being arrested for minor traffic violations? I suspect the majority of traffic arrests are for the types of dangerous driving that gets people killed, DUIs or driving 30 mph over the limit for example.
I also don't know what to do about narcotics, but when it comes to sales we can at least agree that they cause a great deal of harm to the population of DC. 463 people died from drugs in 2021, the most recent year available, making DC one of the worst urban areas and indeed counties in the entire city. The deaths were especially concentrated in Black males, and every death is a small percentage of the harm caused (nonfatal overdoses, addiction, etc.) So I guess I'm just not sure that a narcotics arrest is by default a low level crime.