As more than a dozen officers face criminal investigation for their part in an alleged prostitution scandal involving an underage girl, the Oakland Police Department has lost its third police chief in a matter of eight days.
Continue reading Oakland Loses Third Police Chief in Eight Days Amid Prostitution Scandal
Stanford University just delivered further proof that massive, readily available data sets can solve tricky law enforcement problems. School researchers combing through a mix of 28,119 Oakland Police Department stop reports, officer body camera footage and community surveys havelearned that there are “significant” racial biases at play. OPD officers are not only more likely to stop a black person, but far more likely to conduct searches of black people, even though they weren’t any more likely to find something incriminating. Officers more frequently handcuffed black people without arresting them, too. And the pattern is the same regardless of the crime rate in a given region.
Continue reading Big data shows racial bias in police behavior
The Fat Cat Collective 