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Each calendar year at my university we have to complete this thing called “Digital Measures,” where we basically list off all the stuff we did over the past 12 months. Publications, grants submitted/awarded, classes taught, service activities, media contributions…everything. It’s tedious but it is kind of cool to look back on the past year and see which goals you met (and which goals you didn’t meet). In my first year on the tenure track, a senior faculty member advised me to keep a record of everything I did, so that I’d have all the receipts when it was time to submit my tenure materials.

Earlier today I was reminded of some data I’m sitting on that my colleagues and I never published anywhere. This comes from a web-based survey of police officers at a large, southern agency that we administered in 2018. The response rate was 31%. So we asked officers to consider eight ideas that “have been proposed as ways to improve policing” and indicate the extent they supported or opposed each. We listed a hodgepodge of “reforms” including some that would (1) expand police authority, (2) restrict police authority, or (3) increase citizen oversight.

One of the joys of the tenure track is having to keep a record of everything you do in the areas of teaching, research, and service. Since 2015, I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet of manuscripts I’ve reviewed. Specifically, the title, manuscript number, and the recommendation I provided. Around 2018, I also started keeping track of when I agreed to review each paper, when the deadline was, and when I submitted my review.

Our survey experiment suggests the wording of questions about police fairness matters.

In my last post, I pointed out that shootings weren’t occurring less frequently in NYC in 2020 than in prior years, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. I was also careful not to jump to the conclusion that shootings had increased significantly. That was June 3rd. Suffice it to say a lot has happened since then - including 624 additional shootings. Each of the last four years, NYC had fewer than 200 shootings from June to July.

On March 1, 2020, New York City reported its first confirmed case of COVID-19. Eleven days later, Mayor de Blasio declared a state of emergency. By mid-March, the most populous city in America had essentially shut down. Schools, libraries, gyms, theaters, churches and nightclubs closed. Major sporting events and concerts were cancelled. Restaurants were limited to take-out and delivery only. Non-essential gatherings of any size were prohibited, and New Yorkers were ordered to “shelter in place.

In a forthcoming paper in Criminology & Public Policy, Michael and I conducted an exploratory analysis of fatal and non-fatal firearm assaults on U.S police officers using six years of public data provided by the Gun Violence Archive. We adopted the following inclusion criteria: Victim was a sworn officer employed by a local, state, or special jurisdiction law enforcement agency that routinely responds to calls for service (i.e., officers employed by town, city, or county agencies, sheriff’s departments, state agencies, tribal police, university police, transit police) Victim was on duty at the time of assault The bullet struck the victim’s person or his/her equipment (excluding vehicle) The bullet came from a real firearm (i.

Yesterday, Andy Wheeler posted a summary of the problems with recent studies about officer-involved shootings, including one my colleagues and I published in February 2017. As usual, Andy’s criticisms were thoughtful and spot on. And I hope I can take him up on that conference beer soon, even though he’s at a new job. That said, I do want to push back just a little about the motivation for our paper.

Correcting 91 misclassified incidents renders Bor et al.’s (2018) key finding non-significant.

Published Open Access in Journal of Experimental Criminology.