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“Statistical Evidence Not Required” (Heather MacDonald on DOJ and Chicago Police)
city-journal.org ^ | Heather MacDonald

Posted on 01/17/2017 4:44:22 AM PST by RoosterRedux

The most important statement in the Justice Department’s damning report on the Chicago Police Department has nothing to do with police behavior. Released on Friday, the report found the Chicago police guilty of a “pattern or practice” of unconstitutional force. But it turns out that the Justice Department has no standard for what constitutes a “pattern or practice” (the phrase comes from a 1994 federal statute) of unconstitutional police conduct. “Statistical evidence is not required” for a “pattern or practice” finding, the DOJ lawyers announce, citing unrelated court precedent. Nor is there “a specific number of incidents” required to constitute a “pattern or practice,” they proclaim.

Having cleared themselves of any obligation to provide “a specific number of [unconstitutional] incidents” or a statistical benchmark for evaluating them, the DOJ attorneys proceed to ignore any further obligation of transparency. The reader never learns how many incidents of allegedly unconstitutional behavior the Justice Department found, nor how those incidents compare with the universe of police-civilian contacts conducted by the Chicago Police Department. No clue is provided regarding why the DOJ lawyers concluded that the alleged abuses reached the mysterious threshold for constituting a pattern or practice. Instead, the report uses waffle words like “several,” “often,” or “many” as a substitute for actual quantification. This vacuum of information hasn’t stopped the mainstream media from trumpeting the report as yet another exposé of abusive, racist policing. Excessive force is rife in chicago, u.s. review finds, read the headline on the New York Times’s front-page story, which went on to note that the excessive force was “chiefly aimed at African-Americans and Latinos.”

(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: Illinois
KEYWORDS: blacks; blm; bluelives; chicago; doj; emanuel; lawenforcement; lynch; obama; officers; police; rahm
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1 posted on 01/17/2017 4:44:22 AM PST by RoosterRedux
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To: RoosterRedux

Statistical evidence isn’t required here. But “disparate outcomes” justifying racial preferences use wrongly applied statistics for their diagnosis.

In other words, the law is what they say it is.

WoW (War on Whites).


2 posted on 01/17/2017 4:49:10 AM PST by Pearls Before Swine
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To: RoosterRedux

Index

One would think that statistical data would be relevant to drawing a conclusion of “pattern or practice” of behavior.

Would anyone disagree that any action that is defined as a “pattern or practice” would occur in an least 51% of all similar encounters?


3 posted on 01/17/2017 4:50:39 AM PST by Oz8509338511 (2 Chron. 7:14)
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To: RoosterRedux

Chicago has a fine, modern, well trained police department and the DOJ just stuck a dagger in its heart.

Chicago has a serious crime problem through no fault of CPD.

Anyone who does not recognize the root cause of the problem lies within the community is blind.

The question to be addressed is; how do you change the culture of the inner city?

The DOJ has made the problem worse - shame!!


4 posted on 01/17/2017 4:52:04 AM PST by elpadre (AfganistaMr Obama said the goal was to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-hereQaeda" and its allies.)
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To: Oz8509338511

I would argue that to reach the conclusion that anything is a pattern or practice it must occur in an overwhelming majority of similar encounters somewhere between 95-99% with some rare EXPLAINED exceptions


5 posted on 01/17/2017 4:54:08 AM PST by Oz8509338511 (2 Chron. 7:14)
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To: elpadre

I would like to see the statistics used to conclude pattern or practice would you?


6 posted on 01/17/2017 4:55:44 AM PST by Oz8509338511 (2 Chron. 7:14)
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To: RoosterRedux

It’s the “JUST US” Dept. until 12:01 Jan. 20th. Then re go back to law, order and true justice, I pray!


7 posted on 01/17/2017 4:56:49 AM PST by Ann Archy (Abortion....... The HUMAN Sacrifice to the god of Convenience.)
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To: elpadre

>>The DOJ has made the problem worse - shame!!

At this point, I am convinced this is the goal of the community agitators throughout the Obama Administration, starting at the top. They want to create strife and discord as a means to create crises. Never let a crisis go to waste means they want more crises, and they will get them via actions like this.

It will be interesting to see if Sessions and his people will be able to unwind some of these consent agreements.


8 posted on 01/17/2017 4:59:07 AM PST by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: RoosterRedux
"Pattern of practice" = "We have no evidence as the witch hunt turned up empty, so we'll use some nonsense doublespeak and claim the right to come down on innocent folks because we need them to seem racist for our agenda to stay on track".

Thank God Sessions will be the new AG....

9 posted on 01/17/2017 5:00:20 AM PST by trebb (Where in the the hell has my country gone?)
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To: elpadre
Anyone who does not recognize the root cause of the problem lies within the community is blind.

Racism of Blacks toward Whites distorts a person's perception of reality. And this problem is particularly distorting when the racist person refuses to admit that he can even be racist.

Liberal ideology does the same.

10 posted on 01/17/2017 5:02:57 AM PST by RoosterRedux
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To: Pearls Before Swine

The DoJ also always uses a made up term called “Reasonable Cause”

In policing you have “reasonable suspicion” or “probable cause.”

Reasonable suspicion means the police officer has or can articulate enough facts continue to investigate further. Probable cause means the policeman has enough facts to arrest you and charge you with a crime.

Reasonable cause is some b.s. mish mash of those two terms and means nothing.


11 posted on 01/17/2017 5:11:53 AM PST by TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig (Repeal & replace Obamacare, tax reform, fix infrastructure, fixin military, Israel, kill enemies)
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To: Oz8509338511

If you want to see the facts and data...ya gotta fight the DoJ and take them to court. They will not release the info otherwise.

But since almost no city will fight the federal govt. the DoJ can just cut and paste away until they have a “document” to throw at an agency and scare them into submitting.


12 posted on 01/17/2017 5:15:18 AM PST by TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig (Repeal & replace Obamacare, tax reform, fix infrastructure, fixin military, Israel, kill enemies)
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To: RoosterRedux

Heather MacDonald is a national treasure.


13 posted on 01/17/2017 5:15:27 AM PST by kabar
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To: RoosterRedux

This particular Justice Department is about to be retired, along with its hooliganism. Just another reminder of what we escaped by defeating Hillary.


14 posted on 01/17/2017 5:22:28 AM PST by odawg
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To: RoosterRedux
Before you can establish a "pattern" or even a tendency towards something you have to establish not only what the normal is, but what the natural variability is.

If I tell you it has been unusually cold the past couple of weeks. Is that a valid pattern/observation? You need statistical data to say well, the average temperatures here in early January are ... Then you also need to quantify the variability of that. Maybe "cold snaps" lasting a few days are also common, or not.

If they are going to abandon objective data for purely subjective labels, then they can simply claim anything they want. They need no proof, no basis in reality. What they are saying is pure fiction of their own making.

15 posted on 01/17/2017 5:44:22 AM PST by ThunderSleeps (Stop obama now! Stop the hussein - insane agenda!)
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To: RoosterRedux

One of the main messages understood now to Chicago Police officers from Obama’s DOJ is:

DO NOT ENGAGE IN FOOT PURSUITS OF CRIMINALS.

The message has been received loud and clear.

The 800 murders in Chicago 2016 will be nothing compared to 2017 with 1000 murders or more anticipated.


16 posted on 01/17/2017 5:51:39 AM PST by KeyLargo
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To: kabar

From Chicago Second City Police Blog:

“A little bird that was in the know told us that the reason the report was so poorly done is the fact that the top muckrakers at the DOJ blew through their travel budget in the first six months of the investigation leaving the remaining six months thinly staffed here in Chiraq. Also, there are no dates in the report because all of the incidents investigated were conveniently from pre- 2011, before the nine digit midget was elected so as to not tarnish his little knob.”

“From what I understand SCC by the coppers who hosted the ride along’s is : the DOJ auditors were all civilians with attorney backgrounds. Not a single one of them had ever been employed as a law enforcement member. That in of itself is suspect to a high degree of bias. How could they ever recognize or accurately evaluate our police process given the community we deal with from a practice standpoint. They see youths exercising their constitutional right to assemble freely on street corners blind to the inclement weather. We see shit heads up to no good serving narcotics and becoming targets for other dope boys who want those corners. You don’t send a baker to evaluate the work of an electrician. It just won’t make sense. “

“On The eighth page of this report it states that CPD uses force including deadly force that is unreasonable. Doj claims to know this because they said so... There is no proof what so ever to back up this statement. As an academic I find their proof priceless “in consaltation with several active law enforcement experts “ who are never named,credentials are never stated,and the number of unnamed experts is never stated just several so I am guessing three. Its apparent from this report is that it was authored by a group of simpletons. I guess that getting a JD isn’t what it use to be. I am truly embarrassed for the schools that gave the authors of this report a JD. “

https://secondcitycop.blogspot.com/

For those that don’t know:

“Nine digit midget” is one of many nick names given to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

“Rahm Emanuel has his fingerprints on a lot of work done in the White House, with one notable exception.

President Obama’s Chief of Staff famously sliced off part of his right middle finger while working at an Arby’s. The finger ended up in a lot of punchlines, even Emanuel joking during a George Washington University commencement address, “Of all the fingers to lose! I could not express myself for months. I had to learn to talk with my left hand.”


17 posted on 01/17/2017 6:04:08 AM PST by KeyLargo
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To: RoosterRedux
Make no mistake: the last eight years were intended to pit professional race pimps against Whitey, from the muzzard halfrican on down, in every venue and by any means necessary.

(note: the above being but a subset of 'destroy Western Civilization via Marx, Alinsky, et al')


             

18 posted on 01/17/2017 6:23:21 AM PST by tomkat
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To: KeyLargo
From her article:

Here is the data that you will never find in any Justice Department civil rights report. In 2014, a thoroughly representative year, blacks made up 79 percent of all known non-fatal shooting suspects in Chicago, 85 percent of all known robbery suspects, and 77 percent of all known murder suspects, according to police department records. Whites were 1 percent of known non-fatal shooting suspects in 2014, 2.5 percent of known robbery suspects, and 5 percent of known murder suspects, the latter category being composed almost exclusively of domestic violence incidents. Whites are virtually absent from the population of violent street criminals, which is the population against which police force is most likely to be used. There is no evidence, in other words, that the use of force is racially biased.

The DOJ report argues at length that the only way to ensure necessary reforms of this blackguard department is via a court-enforced consent decree backed up by “an independent monitoring team . . . of policing and other experts.” The Obama administration is clearly nervous that the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump will be less enthusiastic about saddling financially struggling police departments with tens of millions of dollars in compliance costs in the service of statistically innumerate consent decrees. Simply paying a federal monitor and his team will likely cost Chicago taxpayers dearly. The LAPD spent about $40 million trying to comply with its consent decree in its first year in 2000 and $50 million a year for several years thereafter, for a total of about $300 million over 12 years, estimated Los Angeles’s chief legislative analyst in 2015.

One of the first things that the Trump Justice Department should do is figure out how to lighten the burden of existing consent decrees on law enforcement agencies; next, it should decide whether to pull the plug on those decrees that have not yet been finalized, as in Chicago. Simply compiling the paperwork demanded by the Justice Department investigators required the full-time labor of a Chicago sergeant and five officers. Much more manpower would have to be ripped away from crime-fighting in order to feed the insatiable appetite of a federal monitor for endless reports. And what would the federal monitor use as his benchmark for constitutional policing anyway, since DOJ never revealed its standard for finding the CPD a constitutional reprobate?

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has said that he intends to sign a consent decree putting the CPD under federal management; Emanuel undoubtedly calculates that aligning himself with the expiring Obama Justice Department serves his future political career. If current CPD superintendent Eddie Johnson isn’t willing to oppose this costly and unnecessary burden, the best hope for the thousands of law-abiding residents of Chicago’s high-crime areas is a change in both tone and policy from the White House.

19 posted on 01/17/2017 6:37:42 AM PST by kabar
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To: RoosterRedux

This report is going to KILL the poor blacks living in Chicago. Liberals pursue their fantasies, but the poor people living there will pay the price.


20 posted on 01/17/2017 6:45:54 AM PST by Mr Rogers (We're a nation of infants, ruled by their emotion)
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