Month: April 2024

The students at North Community High School in Minneapolis have seen a lot. Some things, morbid curiosities: a bullet, freshly fired, spinning and melting the rubber on the track surrounding the school’s football field.

Others, much more painful: the murder of Deshaun Hill Jr., shot and killed two years ago just blocks from the school. He was 15 years old, and the quarterback of the football team.

Across the country, millions of young people are enduring this same reality: Firearm injuries are the leading cause of death for children and teens over age 1 nationwide.

The federal government is investing billions of dollars to combat this problem. But on the north side of Minneapolis, some students living under the threat of gun violence say there’s a disconnect between what the government is offering and what they say they need

Full story: Schools create safe spaces amid gun violence, but students want more security : NPR

Three years ago, the county launched a pilot program to replace ill-equipped law enforcement officials with mental health experts for those in crisis.

The effort started small with just a handful of professionals responding to calls in North County. But it quickly expanded. Today, there are nearly four dozen Mobile Crisis Response Teams countywide handling hundreds of calls for nonviolent emergencies each month.

Though still fairly new, county officials say the program is proving to be one of the county’s most promising models in its effort to overhaul the region’s mental health system, especially at a time when California is working to do the same.

MCRTs work around the clock, seven days a week, to help people experiencing a substance use or mental health crisis. Each team has a case manager, mental health clinician and a peer support specialist.

Full story: Thousands of people seeking help did not get a police response. That’s a good thing.

The number of crimes reported by college campuses rebounded to pre-pandemic levels in 2022, government data show.

Crime reported from nearly 6,000 institutions rose about 8% from 2019, even though enrollments dipped during that timeframe. The jump in offenses between 2019 and 2022 coincided with students’ post-pandemic return en masse to campuses. Compared with year-over-year changes before 2019, the recent spike represents the largest increase since post-secondary institutions that receive federal funding began reporting campus safety statistics.

Experts see little reason to worry and say the numbers are largely consistent with what colleges have been experiencing since 2013, according to S. Daniel Carter, president of the consulting firm Safety Advisors for Educational Campuses.

Full story: Crime on campus returns to pre-pandemic levels

Fueled by public outrage over the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and other high-profile incidents of police violence, a seismic shift swept across the United States shortly afterward, with a wave of initiatives aimed at reining in police powers and reimagining criminal-legal systems.

Yet less than half a decade later, political leaders from coast to coast are embracing a return to “tough-on-crime” policies, often undoing the changes of recent years. This resurgence is most palpable in the nation’s major urban centers, traditionally bastions of progressive politics.

Local and state leaders in blue and red states — including California, Georgia, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont — also have looked to toughen their approaches to crime and public safety in a variety of ways. Lawmakers have proposed bills that would stiffen retail theft charges, re-criminalize certain hard street drugs, keep more suspects in jail in lieu of bail, and expand police powers. Many are passing with bipartisan support.

Full story: ‘Tough-on-crime’ policies are back in some places that had reimagined criminal justice • Daily Montanan

Homicides in major U.S. cities are falling at likely “one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded”, a crime analysis has found.

Jeff Asher of AH Datalytics, a New Orleans-based data-analytics company focused on criminal justice, education, and the nonprofit sector, discussed that finding with the Wall Street Journal after combing through quarterly data recently released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In the company’s sample of almost 200 cities with varying population sizes, murder was down by 20.8% from the period beginning in January through the end of March of this year when compared with the same time period in 2023, as Asher wrote in a recent Substack post on the subject.

Full story: Homicides in major US cities falling at ‘one of fastest rates ever’ – report

In the Oregon mountain town of Grants Pass, a fierce fight over park space has become a battleground for a much larger, national debate on homelessness that has reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

The town’s case, set to be heard April 22, has broad implications for how not only Grants Pass, but communities nationwide address homelessness, including whether they can fine or jail people for camping in public.

It has made the town of 40,000 the unlikely face of the nation’s homelessness crisis, and further fueled the debate over how to deal with it.

Full story: Can homeless people be fined for sleeping outside? A rural Oregon city asks the US Supreme Court | AP News

During several years of efforts to refine policing tactics — ranging from mandating body-worn cameras to limiting or banning excessive use of force — many states and law enforcement agencies nationwide imposed more restrictive car chase policies to protect civilians and officers.

Now, state legislators and some local and state agencies are turning back the dial, moving to relax the rules on high-speed vehicular pursuits largely because of concerns about crime, according to news reports and a review of testimony by Stateline.

A handful of jurisdictions have rolled back restrictions over the past year, including Florida, the District of Columbia, San Francisco, and Washington state. On the other side, Michigan restricted chases, and Hawaii also is considering legislation that would set more restrictive statewide pursuit standards. Policing experts suggest that state legislative changes nationwide have been influenced by various factors, such as political pressure or high-profile incidents. They expressed doubt that allowing more high-speed chases would significantly lower crime.

Full story: In reversal, more areas allow high-speed police chases • Stateline

One arrow key can open many mailboxes in a delivery area. They’re so valuable that it’s against federal law for an unauthorized person to be in possession of one. But that hasn’t prevented a nationwide wave of robberies involving arrow keys.

A Scripps News investigation found an increasing number of letter carriers being targeted by criminals on the hunt for arrow keys. In 2021, 132 arrow keys were snatched away from mail carriers. By 2023, that number had more than tripled to 418, according to numbers we obtained from the Postal Inspection Service after filing a public records request.

Full story: US mail theft often begins with a stolen key