04-21-2021, 05:44 PM
SteveO wrote:
I saw this headline and my first reaction was like, "About f-ing time. And I hope they have a LOT of time...they need to do this for um...probably every department in the nation."
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was under a federal consent decree for about 10 years, and was finally released from federal court oversight in 2013. I think that there was significant progress over that time. The county sheriff department continued to be a problem and still continues to be questionable.
It's interesting that the LAPD was the "model" for television's serialized cop shows such as Dragnet and Badge 714. I can still remember a show or shows where Detective Friday questioned some suspect for 18 hours straight. This was before the Miranda decision and (if a true depiction of practice at the time) would have been a good argument in favor of the Miranda decision. New York City (Blue Bloods) seems to be the current model, along with a lot of reruns of Chicago PD.
Violent crime -- particularly murders -- fell by about half over a 20 year period. As Kevin Drum has reported at length, this is most likely due to the removal of lead from gasoline, which results in this crime reduction with a 20 year lag time. The reduction happened not only all over the United States, but all over the world where lead was no longer used. The problem is that we still carry the mindset of the 1990s in which violent crime was scaring people and legislatures reacted.