by Kevin Bliss
Wesley Little had an hours-long standoff with McKinney, Texas, police in Vicki Baker’s home after running off with a 15-year-old girl. Baker was not home at the time, and the 15-year-old got out safely. But Little committed suicide as the police stormed the house. Total damage to ...
by Kevin Bliss
Personal freedom on the planet has been on the decline since at least 2008. The Cato Institute in the U.S. and Canada’s Fraser Institute place New Zealand at the top, while the U.S. and the United Kingdom tie at 17th in the latest rankings announced ...
by Kevin Bliss
Politics professor at New York University Anna Harvey, Rutgers University economist Amanda Agan, and Texas A&M economist Jennifer Doleac conducted a study January of 2019 intended to show that the decision not to pursue prosecution for low-level nonviolent misdemeanors actually worked as a deterrent to recidivism and ...
by Kevin Bliss
Sixty-four current and former prosecutors, attorneys, law enforcement officers, and other judicial leaders from 26 states and the District of Columbia signed a group statement titled “Joint Statement on Sentencing Second Chances and Addressing Past Extreme Sentences” in April of this year. The statement calls for leaders ...
by Kevin Bliss
An article published May 25 by government watchdog organization VICE News stated that many police departments see a large number of Black police officers quitting. According to the report, Black police have a hard time coping with pressure from supervisors to crack down on low-level offenses and ...
by Kevin Bliss
Chokeholds are considered deadly and explicitly prohibited according to the New York Police Department (“NYPD”) patrol guide. Yet in practice, low-grade punishment does little to prevent the maneuver from being used in abundance by police.
ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom, and THE CITY teamed up to investigate ...
by Kevin Bliss
New data collected this past spring show that police have been more likely to use force against leftwing protests than rightwing. Black Lives Matter (“BLM”) protests were three times more likely to see police violence than Stop The Steal rallies centered on ex-President Trump’s claim that the ...
by Kevin Bliss
Illinois’ crime rate is not significantly tied to a reduction or an increase in prison population, according to the study Projecting Illinois Crime Rates and the Impact of Further Prison Population Reductions (November 2020.) In fact, Illinois should continue to see a decrease in the crime rate ...
by Kevin Bliss
USA Today reports that Denver, Colorado, is showing success with a new program that directs emergency 911 calls that deal with mental health issues, drug abuse, and homelessness to a two-person civilian team composed of a medic and clinician called the Support Team Assistance Response (“STAR”) ...
by Kevin Bliss
Walter Forbes was exonerated, then freed in November 2020 after 37 years in prison for an arson and murder he did not commit. The state’s key witness admitted to fabricating the story that convicted Forbes after she and her family were threatened by a couple of men ...
