Go to qualitypolicing.com

Search results for: “label/right wing lies”

  • Right-Wing Lies (X): Obama has never honored cops

    Right-Wing Lies (X): Obama has never honored cops

    This is the tenth (or so) in my occasional series of “Right-Wing Lies.” Now I know there are some left-wing lies, too. (It’s not true that 1 in 5 college women are raped, for instance. Nor is it true that black teens are 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than white teens.) But among my friends, I find there are many more simply false statements coming from my dear conservative brethren.

    One of the recently forwarded picture/meme involving Obama’s supposed disrespect for police officers.

     “794 law enforcement officers have fallen in the line of duty since
    B.H. Obama took office, with no special recognition from the White
    House. A man robs a convenience store and assaults a cop; the White House sends three representatives to his memorial service.”

    (Never seen this before? Then you, my liberal friend, really need to have a more diverse group of friends.)

    Of course the above is not true. At least not the part of Obama never offering recognition to fallen police officers. From politifact you can get six quick links to special proclamations. Obama has said things like this:

    Every American who wears the badge knows the burdens that come with it
    — the long hours and the stress; the knowledge that just about any
    moment could be a matter of life or death.  You carry these burdens so
    the rest of us don’t have to….

    The rest of us can never fully understand what you go through. But
    please know that we hold you in our hearts — not just today, but
    always. We are forever in your debt. And it is on behalf of all of us,
    the entire American people, that I offer my thoughts, my prayers, and my
    thanks. May God shine a light upon the fallen and comfort the mourning. May he protect the peacemakers who protect us every day.

    It’s kind of touching, to be honest. Politifact goes on to conclude, in part: “Archived information about these events was easily available to the
    public on the White House website, meaning that the meme’s creator was
    reckless in not taking them into account. We rate the claim Pants on
    Fire.”

    But… if you believed the lies when you first read them, my bet you will continue to believe them, facts be damned. Because well, if you hate Obama, then something like this just should be true. Even if it’s not.

    (Also, the number 794 isn’t right either, but whatever.)

  • Right-Wing Lies: The welfare of Larmondo “Flair” Allen

    Right-Wing Lies: The welfare of Larmondo “Flair” Allen

    Am I really the only person who is skeptical enough to check the basic truth of emails before forwarding them to my 140 closest friends? I mean, it doesn’t take too long to go to Snopes

    The thing about mass-forwarded right-wing emails is that they are almost always never true. They’re like the headlines in the supermarket tabloid Weekly World News. There might be a grain of truth. But the basic theme, the ultimate point, is a lie.

    [Now liberals forward some lies too, but not as much. Certainly not as much since people stopped forwarding that damned “Save Sesame Street” email five years ago.]

    What here’s what bothers me deep down. I don’t know if conservatives really care about the truth. It seems that for too many “faith” and “belief” and “firm conviction” are more valued attributes that the truth. I always think, “Gee, I might be wrong.” Does that make me a wishy-washy French-loving lefty? Maybe. But if your faith and beliefs are built on lies, shouldn’t that matter?

    For the record: Obama was born in the U.S., Saddam Hussein was not behind September 11th, and the ACLU never tried to ban crosses from cemeteries. Just because you get an email or hear somebody who say something on talk radio doesn’t make it true! Not evenif they’re spittle-flying mad when they say it!

    So here’s the latest, an obit about one Larmondo “Flair” Allen. Now this is indeed a gem (and there’s nothing on Snopes).

    This apparently murderous drug dealer is called “an entrepreneur.” He was 25. He left eight brothers, five sisters, and ninechildren. Three of his daughters are named Larmondhall, Lamonshea, Larmomdriel.

    So I snicker at all this. I have a sense of humor. So do most liberals (despite what many conservatives think).

    But here’s the text with the email. As usual with right-wing email, it’s large and in many colors:

    Entrepreneur?????

    It took me a couple of minutes to get it, but imagine,

    He’s 25 and has 3 sons and 6 daughters

    NINE welfare recipients collecting $1500 each…..

    That equals $13,500 a month !!! Now add food stamps,

    Free medical, free school lunches, on and on and on.

    Now that, to me, is a real Entrepreneur.

    Do the math, that’s over $156,000.00 a year.

    Anybody out there sittin’ on their a** while reading

    This message making that kind of money?

    YOUR TAX $$$$ AT WORK??

    So the message isn’t just to laugh at the obit and this loser (and I wouldn’t be surprised if the writer of this obit was fully aware of the humor in using the word “entrepreneur”), but to blame the entire Obama communist liberal welfare state for everything that is wrong with America.

    First of all (and I only went online for a few minutes to find this out–so I can’t vouch with certainly that this is all true), the obit is from 2004. OK, but it’s still true, I suppose.

    But who the hell thinks that an able bodied man (much less one with “flair”) gets $1,500 a month per child? That’s what set off my B.S. alarm.

    I mean, this is America. We don’t have such a welfare system. And yet I firmly believe that opposition to this non-existent welfare system is what drives the world view of so many conservative Americans.

    And don’t get me wrong. I know there is much abuse of disability and what little welfare system we have. But you can’t help the “deserving poor” (my wife grew up on food stamps some of the time) without some abuse from those trying to milk the system. So friggin’ what? It’s not like we’re talking big bucks.

    In all of 10 minutes online, I couldn’t find details about the welfare benefits (now called TANF) in Louisiana. But let’s take Texas simply because I could find it on line. This is federal aid. In Texas, a family of eight with one or two parents gets less than $500 a month. Total. For each additional person, add… $60. [see the update below for Louisiana stats.]

    $1,500 or $60 per kid? It kind of matters.

    There might be some people out there who might have a kid for an extra $60 a month. But there can’t be too many. But in addition to TANF, there are also food stamps and sometimes some city and state aid is well. Still, it doesn’t add up to much. And if “Flair” had a legitimate job (ha!), he could get some earned income tax credit, something I have received for more than one year of my working life.

    But the straight-up federal welfare for you and your Texas family of nine kids? $6,636 a year. Live large, baby. Live large.

    Update, August, 2011. This is from a reader’s comment:

    In Louisiana, this (now) single mother with 9 children would receive $512/month with a lifetime limit of collecting this for 5 years. She’d be able to get another $500/mo roughly in food stamps and probably get some housing assistance as well.

    Now as far as Survivor Benefits from Social Security for the children, it depends on whether or not Larmondo had a regular job and paid into Social Security for at least 18 months. If he did, then they’ll qualify for benefits. If not, no soup for the kids. Being generous and saying Larmondo spent some time workin’ at McDonald’s to get his 18 months in… his partner may be able to collect the one time payment of $255 for his death and 7 of the kids would be eligible for continuing payments until 18. Those payments would be kind of small though, a total of less than $500/mo. combined.

    Shameless Promotion: This post has been viewed almost 30,000 times. If you found this post interesting, even if you don’t agree with it, please consider buying one of my books! Cop in the Hood is about my days as police officer in Baltimore. Published Weeklycalled this award winning book , “An adrenaline-accelerating night ride that reveals the stark realities of law enforcement.” Colonel (ret.) Margaret Patton of the Baltimore City Police Department said, “Cop in the Hood should be made mandatory reading for every recruit in the Balto. City Police Academy. … I am so proud that you were a Baltimore Police Officer and a good one.” By the end, you too may learn what police already know (but won’t tell you): the federal war on drugs is doomed to failure.

    Or maybe In Defense of Flogging is more up your alley. It’s been called a Swiftian satire, except I’m serious. I say we whip the motherf*ckers. Or at least offer the choice: five years or ten lashes — what’ll it be? In Defense of Flogging is a short and fun book that makes a great Father’s Day present in June. (Is it December? Then I mean Christmas. Hanukkah, too!)

    In Defense of Flogging has been talked about on everything from Fox TV to NPR. Even The Blaze liked it. Atlantic Magazinelisted me as one of the “Brave Thinkers” of 2011. It’s a short book, a fun read, and, as Fat Albert used to say, “you might learn something before we’re done.”

  • Quality Policing Podcast: Interview With Jeff Asher

    Quality Policing Podcast: Interview With Jeff Asher

    There’s another quality policing podcast in which I talk to data analyst Jeff Asher about the Brennan Center’s latest report on crime. Asher had posted this thread about methodological problems in their data and analysis.

    Brennan has a new report out showing murder down 2.5% nationally, but there are some major issues with that finding.

    1) The figures cited aren’t year-to-date, they’re projected year end numbers based on around midyear counts.

    2) Murder tends to pick up over the second half of the year, and any projection using midyear numbers will almost certainly be wrong.

    3) They found murder -2.5% but included San Fran’s 2016 count in that. There was no count for 2017. Removing SF makes murder -1.5%.

    4) Detroit is estimated to be -27%, but that’s based on Detroit’s open data site.

    5) That’s problematic because the open data site is slow to add murders, so any year-to-date count will be wrong.

    6) Detroit had over 130 murders as of late June according to the Detroit Police Department, and the 220 murders they project would be the fewest there since 1966.

    7) Taking Detroit’s inaccurate count out takes murder in their sample from -1.5% to +0.7% overall. So Detroit’s inaccuracy explains the drop

    8) The Phoenix count is similarly wrong. Phoenix had about 150 murders in 2016 but this report says they had 80 and project 60 for 2017.

    9) The Phoenix figure was reached by using MCCA midyear data and doubling it, but Phoenix only reported Q1 data to the MCCA.

    10) As of May Phoenix had 58 murders year-to-date in 2017 and 56 in 2016. Take away Phoenix and Detroit and suddenly murder is up 1.2% in the sample.

    11) Which is to say nothing of the methodological issue of projecting midyear for 30 cities to a full year and calling it a national trend.

    12) For what it’s worth, my midyear piece for @FiveThirtyEight shows murder up a few % but rising slower than previous years.

    13) Also worth reading is @Jerry_Ratcliffe on why doing year-to-date analysis isn’t a great idea

    14) Larger point is that measuring murder nationally is tough, drawing sweeping conclusions from badly incomplete data is a huge mistake in my opinion

    This isn’t the first time the Brennan Center has released faulty and misleading reports on the rise in homicide. In July, after the last one, I finally made an attempt to talk to one of the report’s authors. Once I laid out my concerns, the correspondence ended. Today I asked the other author (via twitter) if he wished to be interviewed or engage in a civil discussion of methods. No dice, apparently he’s “alright, thanks.” It’s still an open invitation.

    There are numerous problems with their analysis, but the most irksome to me is the straight-up misleading statement. I asked:

    Is this statement [from your report] true? “Notably, 55.6% of murder increase 2014 to 2017 is attributable to two cities — Chicago and Baltimore.”

    Because I know it’s not true, since about 14 percent of the murder increase from 2014 to 2017 is attributable to Chicago and Baltimore. He replied:

    Yes. It’s true for the 30 largest cities (our cohort), not nationally.

    This not an explanation as much as a confession because they don’t say “for the 30 largest cities (our cohort), not nationally” in their report.

    I understand how they got their numbers; on my calculator, I can replicate their methods. That’s good, but not good enough. Their methods are faulty.

    Here are some of my remaining unanswered questions I posted on twitter.

    Since 2013, what is the change in homicides in those 30 cities? I get a decrease in 3 cities and an increase in 27. Is this correct?

    Do you understand problems in saying a “percentage of increase in sample“? Substantively meaningless & statistically absurd.

    If you have three years of data, why do 2017 tables only compare with last year, 2016?

    It may turn out to be true, but still seems a odd choice that only mention of (20%!) 2-year homicide increase is as “short-term fluctuation”

    If twitter can’t do this justice, I’d be happy to interview you for @QualityPolicing podcast.

    I asked if we could “continue w/ a civil discussion of your methods?” Alas, the reply was: “I’m alright, thanks.”

    For two main reasons, I’m not OK. I’d like the Left to stay committed to the truth. The generally decent Brennan Center should be above Heritage-Foundation-style BS.

    But more importantly: when you say murder is down when murder is up, it’s not just an issue of truth. It’s also an attempt to make the murder victims — disproportionately poor young black men — disappear from our consciousness. As if they never existed. Do their lives not matter, too?

  • Stop & Frisk: They Had It Coming

    Stop & Frisk: They Had It Coming

    A (cop) friend in Baltimore asked me with regard to stop and frisk: “What the hell is going on?” I emailed back:

    You know, leaving aside the decision was entirely predicable based on the judge not exactly being a friend of police, her decision is actually kind of mild. All she f*cking asks is for cops to stop making illegal stops. It’s really not too much to ask for.

    The idea that cops can stop and search (because we both know how frisks can turn into searches) somebody and not even have/be able to articulate reasonable suspicion is absurd (because we both know how easy it is to articulate reasonable suspicion). They have these stupid forms in NYC (called UF-250s) and all the officer has to do is check a box — no writing required, because the forms were made to be idiot proof, which helps turn some cops into idiots — saying “furtive gesture” or something. It is a little absurd.

    A few months ago she instructed politely, and the police department ignored her. The NYPD got what they were asking for. They refuse to rational engage/debate even with people who don’t hate cops. So now they get some smart-ass judge telling them what to do. Kelly had it coming.

    I think the NYPD could reduce stop and frisks by 75% without any impact on crime — because probably 75% are quota driven and not based on valid suspicion, but instead are based on the end of the work period, not having 5 UF-250s that month, and worried that the sgt will chew you a new asshole. So you stop the first young guy in baggy jeans that walks by (who happens to be black).

    What worries me is what will happen if the cops stop doing that last 25%, the stop and frisks that are actually based on reasonable suspicion. Then shootings will go up.

    I still haven’t gotten my head around the federal monitor, however. And I’m kind of excited about the pilot camera program. I can’t imagine it will work well, but if it does it should help police tremendously, despite what police fear. Ten years ago I was against cameras (I think), but technology has moved forward. Cameras are there whether cops like or not. So it’s good to have a camera with a police POV.

    [Update: this is worth reading, by John Timoney. On the plus side (though he presents it as a negative) look at all the overtime cops are likely to get!]

    Related, there’s an excellent piece in Salon by Brian Beutler, “What I learned from getting shot.” Walking down the street in D.C., Beutler was held up by two black guys in hoodies and then shot three times. He was very lucky to live:

    I didn’t buy a gun, though several well-wishers seemed to think that night would’ve ended better if I’d been armed and had initiated a saloon-style shootout in the middle of the street. Other well-wishers wondered — let’s not sugarcoat it — if the experience had turned me into a racist.

    Those emails were easy to respond to.

    [Kal] Penn got in trouble for touting the supposed merits of New York’s stop-and-frisk policy. To the objection that the policy disproportionately targets blacks and Latinos, he responded, “And who, sadly, commits & are victims of the most crimes?”

    But that’s a non sequitur. A false rationale. Take people’s fear out of the equation and the logical artifice collapses. Canadians are highly overrepresented in the field of professional ice hockey, but it would be ridiculous for anyone to walk around Alberta presumptively asking strangers on the street for autographs. When you treat everyone as a suspect, you get a lot of false positives. That’s why above and beyond the obvious injustice of it, stop and frisk isn’t wise policy. Minorities might commit most of the crime in U.S. cities, and be the likeliest victims of it, and that’s a problem with a lot of causes that should be addressed in a lot of ways. But crime is pretty rare. Not rare like being a professional hockey player is rare. But rare. Most people, white or minority, don’t do it at all.

    …

    Everyone who’s ever shot me was black and wearing a hoodie. There just aren’t any reasonable inferences to draw from that fact.

    And file this under Right Wing Lies (VIII). There’s an ad in the Greek-American paper, the National Herald, for John Catsimatidis. He’s a Republican running for mayor. The ad shouts: “DON’T BLINDFOLD OUR POLICE!” And there’s even a picture of a ranking officer violating rules by mis-wearing a uniform for a political ad (those are two separate violations). The ad is about The Community Safety Act, a not very significant anti-profiling bill passed by the New York City Council. Catsimatidis says, and it’s presented as a quote:

    The Community Safety Act is nuts

    and should be called the Community UNSAFETY Act.

    If somebody robs a bank in your neighborhood,

    You can’t say if the suspect is ASIAN, BLACK, WHITE, or HISPANIC.

    You can’t say if the person is MALE or FEMALE.

    You can’t say if the person is 20 OR 60 YEARS OLD.

    THIS MAKES NO COMMON SENSE.

    Leave Law Enforcement up to COMMISSIONER RAY KELLY

    and the professionals of the NYPD

    The problem, and I bet you can see where I’m going with this, is that those statements are bald-faced lies. The law is about police profiling. Of course you can describe a suspect. Shame on Cats, the lying Greek.

    But I can picture Greek grandmother in my neighborhood. She always suspected those Democrats loved crime and supported criminals. And now she knows it to be true because she read Yannis say it in the Herald.

More posts