Category: crime and punishment

American professor: “White crime dramas” are a sign of racism. So are black and Hispanic crime dramas

October 2, 2018 • 9:30 am

I really should stop looking at HuffPo, as it’s simply the Left’s version of Breitbart: a tendentious and often ridiculously slanted look at politics. Both sites anger me. If you know what subject a HuffPo article is about, you already know what it’s going to say. Or, at least, you know what line they’re going to take, as the article below surprised even me with its stupid thesis. Click on the screenshot if you must see the carnage:

This article is not written by a gung-ho Leftist college student but—and I guess it’s no surprise—by a gung-ho Leftist academic: Jessie Daniels, a sociology professor at Hunter College and the City University of New York.

Her thesis is clear, and amounts to a lot of virtue signaling by the good professor, as she simply has no solution for the “problematic” issue she raises. Her claim is that our fascination with “white crime dramas” like “Ozark”, “Weeds,” or “Breaking Bad” reflects racism. How? Because, as racists, we don’t expect white families to be engaged in crime, so our attention to these kinds of television shows reflects the overturning of our expectations. Of course, black and Hispanic “crime dramas” are also racist, as they fulfill our expectations of the criminality of people of color. In other words, you can’t win, for every crime drama is racist, no matter who it portrays.

Her thesis:

a.) White crime dramas are popular because they overturn racist expectations of how white people should behave. I quote:

In all of these shows, part of the drama and the comedy and the surprise depends on these families being white. Their whiteness is largely not discussed. But the juxtaposition between what audiences expect from these moms and dads and kids ― innocence and stability ― and what we see characters doing ― committing crimes and trying not to fall apart ― is intrinsic to the programs’ appeal.

White crime family dramas actually rest on the subversion of two expectations. The first is the widely held belief (at least among white people) about the inherent wholesomeness of white families, and the second is the false notion (again most popular among white people) that criminals are almost always individuals of some color other than white. [JAC: That last sentence is pure bullshit, I must say.]

Is there any truth in this? Well, I’ll admit that, for some, part of the suspense of a show could be the juxtaposition of a “normal” family with their life of crime. But that might not have anything to do with the families being white; it might have more to do with their middle-class status jarring with what they do on the side. It would also startle us if there was a “double” television show (à la Hannah Montana) in which Bill Cosby’s television family did the comedy show on one side but then dealt drugs on the other. (Bill Cosby isn’t white, of course.) Or perhaps 5% of our interest could come from the expectation that Daniels notes. But what is the evidence? There is none, just anecdote and assertion. I don’t watch much t.v., but I’m sure readers can produce counter-anecdotes.

After all, there’s a whole history of crime dramas that I find it impossible to characterize as subverting expectations that white people shouldn’t do crime. Take The Godfather trilogy, for example. Did anybody like it, or watch it, partly because they thought, “Jesus, the Corleone family is white! How odd that they’re in the Mafia.”?

I’m somewhat handicapped here because I don’t watch television except for the nightly news and “60 Minutes”, and don’t get cable. But I remember plenty of crime dramas in the old days, like Hill Street Blues, in which whites and nonwhites both committed crimes, and my absorption was with the story, not with the race of the criminal. And, of course, although racism was more pervasive before the Sixties, the crime dramas before then, like Dragnet, were popular not because they subverted expectations, but because of the story. There were almost no black people on television then, and I can’t imagine that Dragnet was popular because it overturned our expectations about whites. (One can also think of the popularity of the Bogart crime dramas, which had white offenders.)

I’m sure I have a lot of readers with cable who watch crime dramas, so please weigh in below.

b.) Some of the racism that motivates our watching these dramas is their concern with the family. I quote Dr. Daniels:

Together, Wendy and Marty are clear about what motivates their life of crime: It is always “for the family.” When Wendy tells Marty she bought a house so they can launder money through construction costs, she says she feels good about it because she “did it for our family.”

Then, she asks Marty, “What’d you do today ― for our family?”

“Bought a strip club,” he replies.

In “Ozark,” as in other white crime family dramas, the characters manage to justify every horrendous deed ― even murder ― because it was done “for the family.” These are anti-heroes, to be sure, but their moral and ethical dilemmas are meant to be sympathetic, because who among us wouldn’t do everything possible for our family? If the audience wants to think these felons-in-the-making are not as bad as the “real criminals,” the show gives them some room to do so.

Again, I doubt it is the case—though The Godfather involves “the family” a lot, but not in the way described above—that white crime dramas invariably involve families, and that’s to make them more sympathetic. Perhaps this is true to some degree, but Daniels doesn’t make the case that this involves racism and whiteness. She merely quotes anecdotes because, in the end, this is not about fixing racism (Daniels has no solution), but about the author showing how virtuous she is.

c.) Even showing white families engaged in crime somehow buttresses racism. This part of the article escapes me, but I think what Daniels is saying is that these dramas gives a false picture of crime because they portray the white criminals as more “wholesome” than blacks or Hispanics. That, at least, is what I glean from this bit.

The reality is that white families are no more or less wholesome than any other families. A majority of most violent crimes against white people are committed by other white people, and white people are far more likely to commit white collar crime.

Well, I’ll accept Daniel’s data here, but what she doesn’t point out—surely deliberately—is that blacks commit violent crimes far more often, compared to their proportion in the population, than do whites. This is well known, and I’m not for a minute imputing it to anything inherent in being black. In fact, I think it represents the residuum of racism, with blacks being put into living situations, including dire poverty, that can promote criminal behavior. But it can’t be denied that there’s a disproportionality. As one website notes,

It’s true that around 13 per cent of Americans are black, according to the latest estimates from the US Census Bureau.

And yes, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, black offenders committed 52 per cent of homicides recorded in the data between 1980 and 2008. Only 45 per cent of the offenders were white. Homicide is a broader category than “murder” but let’s not split hairs.

. . . What about violent crime more generally? FBI arrest rates are one way into this. Over the last three years of data – 2011 to 2013 – 38.5 per cent of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were black.

Clearly, these figures are problematic. We’re talking about arrests not convictions, and high black arrest rates could be taken as evidence that the police are racist.

But academics have noted that the proportion of black suspects arrested by the police tends to match closely the proportion of offenders identified as black by victims in the National Crime Victimization Survey.

This doesn’t support the idea that the police are unfairly discriminating against the black population when they make arrests.

I don’t think that this means that black families are less wholesome than any other families. The crime could, for example, reflect the higher proportion of black families that have just one parent. I simply point out that the tendentious Daniels is being very selective in citing her statistics.

What is to be done? If the popularity of white crime dramas reflects racism, and the popularity of black crime dramas also reflects racism, as Daniels suggests below, what can we do? It’s not to show more crime dramas involving people of color:

One could argue that we need racial and ethnic diversity in the representation of crime families. Writing more criminals who are black, Latinx or Asian would only reinforce existing stereotypes about race and crime, and we have plenty of shows doing that already.

The stories we tell ourselves matter, even when they come in the form of middling shows like “Ozark.” When stories about white crime families rest on ideas about the supposed goodness of white people, they reinforce a whole apparatus of assumptions, benefits of the doubt and second chances afforded to white people who cheat, steal, rape or kill someone.

You can’t show more black crime dramas, and you can’t eliminate white crime dramas, as that would suggest that white people don’t do crime. Nor should we show more white crime dramas, as those dramas simply reinforce racism. Are we then supposed to eliminate all crime dramas? Daniels doesn’t say. I suppose one could suggest we show white crime dramas that don’t show seemingly wholesome white people, but I don’t think that would work, either, as The Godfather attests.

In the end, Daniel’s misguided essay does nothing to eliminate the problem of racism. But, as I said, that’s not why she wrote it. She wrote it to signal her virtue by crying that racism is everywhere. Well, fine, but where is her solution?

Oh, and at the end of her essay, Daniels can’t resist taking a wholly gratuitous lick at Donald Trump and his family. This has nothing to do with her essay; it’s just another flag she runs up to show her virtue. I quote:

Those set of assumptions that animate “Ozark” are also the same ones that have enabled the white crime family that’s currently installed in the White House.

I don’t think so. And neither do a lot of commenters on the piece, who say stuff like this:

 

There’s hope for America yet.

Errors in forensic DNA testing are still pervasive: false matches and wonky statistics

September 23, 2018 • 9:30 am

About twenty years ago I spent a good deal of my time testifying for the defense in criminal cases involving DNA evidence. These were trials in which the prosecution claimed that the defendant’s DNA profile had been found to match crime-scene samples (these involve blood or sperm analysis), and in which the prosecution presented “match probabilities: the supposed chance that a randomly-selected and innocent person would have had DNA that also matched the evidence. (If these probabilities are very low, say one in several million, juries tend to conclude that the suspect is guilty.)

While I favored the responsible use of DNA testing, the prosecution at that time was not being responsible, ergo my involvement. What I testified about, as an unpaid expert witness (I decided that saying I was paid for a case—and the prosecution always asks when you’re on the stand—might make the jury think that I was making money as a “professional witness”) were two issues: match probabilities and lab error rates. Here’s a brief synopsis:

Match probabilities. If the suspect’s own DNA matches that from the crime scene, you can then calculate the chance that a randomly-selected person would match the sample as well. This corresponds to the chance that an innocent person would have been implicated by the DNA evidence. Absent lab errors (see below), these calculations involve population genetics, which was my area of expertise. If, for example, the suspect matches the crime-scene sample at three tested genes, how do you calculate the probability of a random match?

That depends on who you consider to be a “random and innocent” person. Is it the population of Hispanics in America if the suspect is a Hispanic? Probably not, because we don’t know the ethnicity of the perpetrator. It’s thus best to use a series of databases and take the most conservative (highest) probability. Moreover, you can’t just multiply the probabilities for each gene together if gene forms are associated with each other in different groups, as they tend to be.  One of my beefs was that the prosecution would use a database corresponding to the ethnicity of the defendant, and then just multiply the probabilities for each tested gene together; or they would use a variety of databases and select the lowest probability. Neither of these is kosher given the way human populations are genetically structured.

Nowadays, when we can do almost full DNA sequences rather than just matches at a few sites in three genes or so, this problem has been ameliorated. If a match is not perfect, then the suspect is exculpated. But one big problem remains, and it is one about which I testified at length:

Lab error rates.  Labs aren’t perfect, and sometimes two samples whose DNA doesn’t match can be found to match if tubes get mixed up or if there is contamination. (Since genes are amplified thousands of times before sequencing, a small bit of contamination can be magnified.)

This happens more often than you think. When I was testifying (I stopped doing that after the Simpson trial), blind testing of labs gave an error rate of around 2%. That is, about one time in fifty, two non-matching samples sent to a lab to test its prowess would be seen to match based on lab error.

With error rates like this, match probabilities from popuation genetics become virtually useless. That’s because the chance of a random match becomes about equal to the lab error rate. If the rate of an innocent subject matching a crime sample includes both the random match probability based on the frequency of DNA profiles PLUS the chance that a match would occur from lab error, then the largest probability—lab error—dominates. If the former probability is, for example, one in a million (0.000001) and the latter one in fifty (0.02), then the total “random match” probability is the sum of these, or 0.020001. That’s about 2%.  The default match probability is thus not one in a billion or one in a million, even if many genes are used, but simply the probability that a random person will match the crime sample because of lab error. The probability of lab error is invariably higher than the population-genetic probability.

This is all common sense, but prosecutors hated my testimony, because it made their evidence look a lot less incriminating than it was. So they tried to get around it, saying that the population-genetics calculation and the error rate calculations were “apples and oranges” and couldn’t be combined. (As I discovered from my courtroom experience, the prosecution is often less interested in presenting an honest case than in securing a conviction.) They also used irrelevant arguments that might appeal to non-scientists, often saying that my testimony was unreliable because it involved humans but my research was on fruit flies. (Both species, of course, have genes!)

One way I suggested to ameliorate the lab error rate was to label the samples blindly and to have the DNA tested in at least two or three labs independently. If all of them matched, the chances of error causing this would be reduced. (For three labs it would have been 0.02 X 0.02 X 0.02, or 8 in a million—comparable to some population-genetic calculations). But at that time the prosecution didn’t do this, and I don’t know if they do it now.

These considerations may seem simple to you, but juries are composed of a sample of voters, most of whom don’t even know what DNA is. To try to educate them about error rates, population genetics, and probabilities was a daunting task, and I often spent several days on the stand. Even then the jury was often baffled, as I suspect it was in the Simpson case.

While the population-genetic calculations have been improved by more extensive DNA analysis, the problem of lab errors remains, as shown in this new article from the New York Times (click on screenshot to read it). It’s by Greg Hampikan, a professor of biology at Boise State University, one of whose concerns is forensic DNA (he has a joint appointment in Criminal Justice).

Outside testing of forensic DNA labs have shown that there’s still a very large probability of lab error, and that error comes from two sources. (The article cites “an alarming new study of crime laboratories published this summer”, but I can’t find it and it isn’t cited.) I quote:

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology gave the same DNA mixture to about 105 American crime laboratories and three Canadian labs and asked them to compare it with DNA from three suspects from a mock bank robbery.

The first two suspects’ DNA was part of the mixture, and most labs correctly matched their DNA to the evidence. However, 74 labs wrongly said the sample included DNA evidence from the third suspect, an “innocent person” who should have been cleared of the hypothetical felony.

The test results are troubling, especially since errors also occur in actual casework.

In other words, an innocent person was deemed a match over 70% of the time due to lab error. This involves two types of mistakes: switching of tubes and the new possibility that the sensitivity of DNA tests allows the DNA of completely innocent people to be present in low concentration in crime-scene samples, but concentrations high enough to be detectable and thus judged “culpable”.

Tube swaps are easy to understand. But some laboratory errors are far more difficult to detect. For example, it’s hard to interpret DNA mixtures from three or more people. As DNA testing has become more sensitive, most laboratories are now able to produce profiles from anyone who may have lightly touched an object. The result is that DNA mixtures have become more common, making up about 15 percent of all evidence samples.

Moreover, there’s still the problem of different labs calculating different match probabilities, probably because they use different population-genetic calculations (my emphasis):

One shocking result from the new N.I.S.T. study is that labs analyzing the same evidence calculated vastly different statistics. Among the 108 crime labs in the study, the match statistics varied over 100 trillion-fold. That’s like the difference between soda change and the United States’ gross domestic product. These statistics are important because they are used by juries to consider whether a DNA match is just coincidence.

One would think that the data in the new paper (and again, I can’t find it) would make the prosecution think twice about how it presents data. But even the authors of that paper larded it with disclaimers, and the journal took four years to get the paper out, meaning that its results didn’t affect criminal cases over that period. Here’s Hampikan’s angry but justifiable complaint:

While this lapse in publication is troubling, more disturbing is that the authors try to mute the impact of their own excellent work. Neither the paper’s title nor the abstract mention the shocking findings. And the paper contains an amazing number of disclaimers.

In fact, the conclusion begins with a stark disclaimer apparently intended to block courtroom use:

The results described in this article provide only a brief snapshot of DNA mixture interpretation as practiced by participating laboratories in 2005 and 2013. Any overall performance assessment is limited to participating laboratories addressing specific questions with provided data based on their knowledge at the time. Given the adversarial nature of the legal system, and the possibility that some might attempt to misuse this article in legal arguments, we wish to emphasize that variation observed in DNA mixture interpretation cannot support any broad claims about “poor performance” across all laboratories involving all DNA mixtures examined in the past.

People serving time behind bars based on shoddy DNA methods may disagree. It is uncomfortable to read the study’s authors praising labs for their careful work when they get things right, but offering sophomoric excuses for them when they get things wrong. Scientists in crime labs need clear feedback to change entrenched, error-prone methods, and they should be strongly encouraged to re-examine old cases where such methods were used.

That disclaimer is absolutely unconscionable. ANY participating lab must be blind tested, and the results of that testing presented in the courtroom. There is no other way to ensure a fair presentation of evidence.

I’ve been out of this game for some time, so I wasn’t aware of this and had assumed that the lab error issue had been corrected. It hasn’t.

And those errors are important. When DNA testing exculpates a subject, it’s likely not due to lab error (though it could be). But when the testing implicates a suspect, one must be very scrupulous to ensure that the match isn’t an error and, if it isn’t, that the match statistics be presented fairly. I agree with the old dictum that it’s better (and, for DNA evidence, also less likely!) to let a hundred guilty people walk free than to jail one innocent person.

Hampikan suggests some fixes for correcting errors, but they aren’t perfect. Blind testing of samples and use of multiple labs remains two essential ways to ensure that the innocent don’t get jailed.

“Nazi puncher” gets a $1 fine, no jail time

September 14, 2018 • 1:15 pm

I’m cooling my heels in the SFO airport with a big cup of Peet’s coffee, but will be in Chicago this evening. I hope my ducks are there when I return tomorrow.

According to Vice (and other sources), Jason Kessler, the guy who organized the white supremacist “Unite the Right” Rally in Charlottesville—a rally in which he blamed the car-attack death of Heather Heyer on the police, for crying out loud—held a press conference immediately after the rally. But Kessler’s address didn’t last very long. Right after beginning his “conference,” Kessler was rushed by the chanting crowd and then one guy, shown wearing a red checked shirt in the video below, punched Kessler. You can see the punch about two seconds into the video.

Well, this is assault, and the assailant, one Jeffrey Winder, was arrested, tried, and convicted, but apparently the ideology of the punchee Kessler mattered in determining his punishment. As Vice notes:

That protestor, Jeffrey Winder, was later charged and convicted for assault and battery, facing a $2,500 fine and a year in jail for clocking Kessler. But on Tuesday, a jury decided that his punishment for punching a neo-Nazi would only amount to a paltry $1 fine, local NBC affiliate WVIR reports.

Thus the Vice headline (click on screenshot to read article):

My own view is that although Kessler is a reprehensible human, his politics shouldn’t enter into the punishment of his assailant. For if that happens, it reduces the deterrent to physically attacking anyone who espouses generally despised sentiments, and in fact encourages such assaults. Just as freedom of speech guarantees a lack of government censorship of reprehensible speech, and the spirit of the First Amendment encourages us to avoid disrupting speakers like those invited to universities, so the same principle should encourage equal treatment of those who disrupt or assault speakers—regardless of what the speaker says.

In my view, Winder’s punishment should therefore be something close to the average for people who assault and punch someone they don’t know. (I suppose the degree of physical damage or pain inflicted should also matter.) Clearly, the jury decided otherwise, sending a message that it’s pretty much okay to punch some people as opposed to others. (I guess in Virginia the jury is allowed to levy the sentence.)

Vice’s report on the sentencing concludes with this:

Tuesday’s sentencing was just another big L for Kessler, who staged a second Unite the Right rally in DC last month that basically no one showed up to. Since then, he’s busied himself by rattling off anti-semitic screeds online, only to have his dad yell at him in the middle of a recent livestream. According to the 34-year-old’s dad, his son is currently living off and on with his grandmother, a housing situation Kessler has blamed on all the lawsuits he’s dealing with.

And while punching anyone in the face, regardless of how offensive their views are, might be deemed morally reprehensible, we now at least have a better judgement of just how much that kind of behavior could cost—less than a cup of coffee.

Maybe it’s me, but that last paragraph almost sounds as if Vice is excusing Kessler’s assailant, or at least the crime of punching someone whose views are socially abhorrent.

Now I don’t know if Kessler can even be classified as a Nazi, but he’s clearly someone whose views will offend any right-thinking person.(By “right”, of course, I mean “correct”, not “conservative.”) But even white supremacists and anti-Semites deserve equal treatment under the law. In this case, Kessler clearly didn’t get it.

I would hope that most readers agree with me here, but feel free to weigh in below.

Pope Francis does something good: changes Catholic dogma to oppose the death penalty

August 2, 2018 • 11:00 am

If we’re to be credible in our criticism of religion, we must also laud it when someone uses their religious authority to do something good. And that was just done by Pope Francis, whom I’ve criticized before for being all sweet talk and no action. This time there’s action—at least a formal change in Church dogma and a pledge to work toward the abolition of the death penalty. Here’s the report from CNN; click on the screenshot to go to the story:

I don’t know if he was speaking ex cathedra, but the Catholic Catechism, the guidebook to what the Church holds to be true and moral, is said to have been changed. CNN:

Pope Francis has declared that the death penalty is never admissible and that the Catholic Church will work towards its abolition around the world, the Vatican formally announced Thursday.

The change, which has been added to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, makes official a position that the Pope has articulated since he became pontiff.

The church now teaches that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” and states that it will “work with determination towards its abolition worldwide,” the Vatican said.

The declaration by Pope Francis, who is spiritual leader to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, may have particular resonance in the United States, where capital punishment remains legal in 31 states and as a federal punishment.

I couldn’t find this change today in the online Catholic Catechism, which still says the following:

2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself – the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”

But I’ll assume that the Internet hasn’t yet caught up to God.

My only beef with this, and it’s a minor one, is that the Vatican’s rationale for opposing the death penalty is because it contravenes “the inviolability and dignity of the person,” a position that could be used to buttress almost any bit of Catholic morality, including opposition to abortion. In my view, the real reasons for opposing the death penalty are that it’s not a deterrent, it doesn’t allow for reformation of the criminal, it’s barbaric, it costs society more than putting someone in prison for life and, in cases when the defendant pleaded “not guilty”, it doesn’t allow the legal system to rectify a false conviction. (Also, some people plead guilty when they’re not.) As for the “dignity of the person,” that’s in short supply in most American prisons.

Curiously, since the Church has opposed the death penalty—albeit informally—for several decades, the proportion of Catholics favoring that penalty is in line with the rest of America, and is a majority. As CNN reports:

Among Americans, 54% favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, while 39% are opposed, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in April and May.

That represents a slight increase since 2016, when public support for the death penalty reached a four-decade low, Pew said in a June news release.

Its survey found that 53% of Catholics favor capital punishment, while 42% oppose it. Support for the death penalty is highest among white evangelical Protestants, Pew said.

Here are the data from the Pew report, showing not only a sustained temporal decrease (but a slight two-year increase) in American support for the death penalty, but also a widening gap between Democrats and Republicans (guess which party favors it most?), as well as the heartening fact that those unaffiliated with a church are the biggest opponents of the death penalty. The first bar graph is especially interesting, but I’ll let you explore that yourself.

The general decrease over time:

So the Pope did a good thing, but nonbelievers and “nones” are still the group that takes the highest road with respect to the death penalty. Maybe Francis could give us a shout-out?

The figure below shows the gap between the Dems and the GOP, so that the proportion of Republicans who favor the death penalty is now more than twice the proportion of Democrats:

 

Bill Cosby will probably die in jail

April 26, 2018 • 1:30 pm

I was surprised at the verdict given the hung jury in Bill Cosby’s previous trial, but according to all accounts (and his own admission that he gave women drugs “to relax them” before having “consensual sex”), entertainer Bill Cosby appeared to be a serial rapist. And today he was found guilty of drug-accompanied rape. Justice appears to have been done, with Cosby convicted of three counts of aggravated indecent assault against a woman he mentored at Temple University.

The guilty verdict this time undoubtedly involved the testimony of five corroborating witnesses who testified that Cosby raped them after giving them Quaaludes. The number of women who have accused him of this behavior in toto is about fifty!

The three counts for which he was convicted were penetration with lack of consent, penetration while unconscious, and penetration after administering an intoxicant. Each of these is a felony punishable by ten years in jail, but several sites note that he’ll probably serve them concurrently. Since Cosby is 80, it’s likely that he’ll still die in jail if he’s there for a decade.

It’s weird to think that the children’s entertainer and sitcom star will be wearing prison garb soon, but that’s what he deserves. One never knows what demons lurk in the apparently amiable—especially those with power. Cosby is too old to be rehabilitated and I doubt that he’d do it again (but who knows?); but at the very least he needs to be put away for a long time to deter others from the same odious behavior.

He still faces several civil suits that will bankrupt him. I won’t shed any tears for him, but I’m sorry for his wife and family, including three surviving children and five grandchildren. Their own lives will forever be lived under a pall of his misdeeds.

Students continue to blame U of C shooting on failures of the University police and poor mental health care for students

April 11, 2018 • 10:30 am

As I reported a few days ago, a University of Chicago student went on a rampage one evening last week, breaking windows and bashing cars with a metal bar. He was wearing a hat and visor covering his face. The University of Chicago police were called, and ordered the student, who was stalking the alley shouting “fuck you!”, to drop the bar. They asked him this several times. Instead of dropping the weapon, he eventually charged directly at a university cop, and the cop shot him in the shoulder. The student, fourth-year Charles Thomas, survived, but is in the hospital guarded by police, facing two felony and two misdemeanor charges.

Why Thomas went on the rampage is unclear. His roommate says that Thomas sought mental health services at the University for academic stress, and they referred him to outside help, as is their custom when more than a few sessions are required. But all we have is one person’s word for that, because, of course, the University can’t comment. Thomas’s mother says there’s a history of bipolar disorder in the family, but that Thomas showed no symptoms.

All of this has been transformed by student protestors into the claim that the University failed Thomas by not providing him with the proper help, and that he certainly was bipolar (see below). But of course we know no such thing. To me it’s possible he could have been on drugs.

Bodycam video by the police (see my report) shows that the cop acted according to protocol: he backed away, warned Thomas to drop the weapon several times, and did not fire until Thomas charged him. That bar could have killed the cop, so this seems like reasonable self defense. The cops didn’t know that the assailant was a student, nor (despite student accusations of racism) that he was biracial (Asian/African-American), for he was wearing a visor that obscured his face.

Nevertheless, there have been several protests on campus over the last week, most of them indicting the University for “failing” Thomas. The implication is that they should have given him proper mental health care that would have prevented his rampage.  But there’s no indication that he was “failed” by student care: Thomas was referred, presumably after being seen, to an outside therapist (again, we’re not sure if any of this happened), and that’s the usual protocol. It’s then Thomas’s responsibility to book that therapist, and not the University’s to ensure that he does.  What happened is tragic, with a young man losing control of his life, but I don’t see that the University or its police bear responsibility for that. If he is mentally ill, I hope he gets help, and I’m pretty sure he will.

The students continue to beef and protest en masse, however, and I’m not sure why. It appears that they want to exculpate Thomas (perhaps because he’s a “person of color”, or just “one of us”, meaning a student?), and instead want to blame everyone but Thomas for what happened. Not only that, but they also want to parade their own feelings, saying that they’re “heartbroken.” This is archetypal victimhood culture, as seen in one student’s letter to the student newspaper (the Chicago Maroon): “Mental health and the UCPD shooting“.  It begins with several tropes: emphasizing the student’s own feelings (the cop, of course, is ignored, and there’s not much empathy for Thomas himself). We also see the usual lists of demands sent out—demands made in almost complete ignorance of why Thomas did what he died:

From the letter (my emphasis):

Agony and rage just as well describe our campus’s reaction to this incident. Students have risen in protest; they have sent out demands. The pressing questions surging through campus vary in scope: Some argue as to whether the officer’s action, in the very moment of things, was at all justified. Others question why the UCPD is given as much power as a municipal police department. [JAC: Because this is what the students and parents want!] We ask these questions because we are confused as to how the very organization meant to protect us has, in fact, endangered one of us. We are hurt, perhaps because we knew Thomas personally, but maybe also because this shooting falls in tandem with the national problem of gun control which has already claimed so many victims. We are heartbroken.

The logic here is bizarre. People are asking, for example, why “the very organization meant to protect us has, in fact, endangered one of us.” The answer is simple. That “organization”, the University police, acted in self defense when “one of us” (the student) charged him brandishing a metal bar. Any police officer would have done the same, and it makes not a whit of difference that the alleged assailant was a student. The letter continues:

In the past week since the shooting, more and more of Thomas’s story has come to light. Thomas’s roommate, Dan Lastres, would reveal that Thomas, buckling under academic stress, had sought help from our very own Student Counseling Service (SCS) weeks prior, only to be referred elsewhere. Friends and family, including Thomas’s mother, expressed bewilderment at Thomas’s behavior, since he had never before acted in such a way. His mother would also disclose that their family has a history of bipolar disorder. Altogether, it became clear that Thomas acted not out of malice, but of a manic episode brought about by overwhelming stress.

Here the narrative moves from a report of bipolar disorder in the family (and none ever shown by Thomas himself) into a clear “manic episode”.  That’s far from clear. And even if it was a manic episode, the police had no way of knowing that, nor would they necessarily have behaved differently had they known this was the case. The officer who shot Thomas is reported to have had extensive training in dealing with people having mental health issues.

Finally, there’s this from the same letter:

. . . Charles Thomas was let down by the University in many ways, but most egregiously in the access to the mental health resources he so needed.

The catch-22 of our generation seems to be that if we speak out about the necessities of things like mental health resources, or gun control, or curbing police brutality, we are labeled as hypersensitive. Yet, if we ignore these issues, we are the ones who get hurt, which Thomas’s case shows quite literally. More must be done for us—let the painful irony of a student being endangered by his own University speak for itself.

No, there is no evidence that he was let down by the University. He was reported to have been seen and, presumably after assessment, referred to an outside carer. I’m not labeling the student who wrote this letter as hypersensitive. Rather, I am appalled by her willingness to point fingers in the absence of information. That’s ignorance, not hypersensitivity. But there is a sense of entitlement behind her—and the protestors’—reaction. It is indeed possible that the University needs to upgrade or alter its mental health system, but I know that they’ve devoted considerable time and resources to doing this. The fact is that no matter how good such a system is, it can’t prevent every unfortunate outcome of mental illness—especially if the afflicted person fails to take advantage of recommended care.

There’s another student “op-ed” letter in the same issue of the Maroon. While it’s a bit more reasonable, in that it at least admits that the attacked cop had the right to defend himself, it still makes insupportable statements. Here’s an excerpt from “A preventable tragedy“, written by a third-year student:

Still, the fact is that a man was shot during a mental health crisis. People should not be shot during a bipolar episode. There have rightly been protests on campus for days now.

The protesters are right that what took place was a failing of police. The failing was by the police as a whole, who did not deal with the situation in an organized manner. They allowed an armed man to advance on one of their officers until he had to fire out of self-defense. UCPD has not, to the best of my knowledge, discharged a weapon in over thirty years before that night. That is good evidence that they tend to know what they are doing in terms of the use of deadly force. But that this officer needed to fire to protect himself from someone armed with a metal pole, seems, in retrospect, entirely unnecessary and wrong. [JAC: what else was he supposed to do?]

Again we see that this is not only “a mental health crisis” but “a bipolar episode.” Have the students not learned to avoid rushing to judgments backed by no evidence? And “a failing of police”? Watch the video (first link above) and tell me if you think the police behaved irresponsibly. The statement, “[the police] allowed an armed man to advance on one of their officers until he had to fire out of self-defense” is risible. The police allowed the man to advance? How were they supposed to stop him save with words, which they tried? This is a prime example of blaming the victim—the cop—for something that was the student’s responsibility.

I’ve pretty much given up on the newspaper itself to editorialize sensibly about these issues. The Maroon not only hasn’t said a word in favor of free speech, nor uttered a peep about Steve Bannon’s scheduled appearance here, which prompted faculty, students, and alumni to call for his deplatforming, but they’ve also remained totally silent on the shooting. It would seem to me that the paper should be pointing out the rush to judgment and the unconscionable blaming of police. But all we get is crickets. The paper’s editors are pusillanimous, and that’s a word that’s too kind.

University of Chicago student wounded by cops after vandalism spree and attack on police; students blame the cops

April 8, 2018 • 9:45 am

To me this story exemplifies the tendency of today’s Leftist college students to think from gut rather than the brain, and to react to a “social justice” incident precipitously and in an accusatory manner—without knowing the facts. Sadly, the story took place at my University.

Last Tuesday, the University of Chicago police (who are armed and deputized to act like Chicago city police) were called to an alley not too far from me, responding to a report that a man wielding an iron bar was breaking doors and car windows.  The police arrived up on the scene to find someone wearing a helmet and visor, acting like a maniac, and damaging property. (When the person was later charged, the estimate was that he’d done $300,000 worth of damage, which seems high.) The accused vandal and police assailant turned out to be a fourth-year student at the University of Chicago, Charles Thomas. The cops of course did not know he was a student.

When the cops told Thomas to drop the bar, he went gonzo and then walked toward them, brandishing the bar. As the student newspaper Chicago Maroon reports in the paper edition (this isn’t in any online report I can find):

Bodycam and dashboard footage released by the University shows officers confronting Thomas.  As he walks toward them, an officer can be heard shouting, “Put down the weapon!” while Thomas shouts “What the fuck do you want?” and “Fuck you.” About a minute after the officers arrived on the scene, Thomas begins running rapidly toward the individual wearing the body camera, who commanded Thomas again to drop the weapon, and then fired a single shot into his shoulder.”

Here’s that video. As you can see, Thomas was wounded (I think they aimed for the shoulder to get him to drop the weapon), but he was still screaming “Fuck you!” and “Fuck you all!” as he lay wounded on the ground.

Here’s a video from the police car dashcam:

Taken into custody and sent to Northwestern Hospital, where he’s recovering, Thomas has been charged with three felonies: two counts for criminal property damage and one for aggravated assault of a police officer. The indictment also includes two misdemeanors involving criminal damage to property.  His bond has been set at $15,000, with the judge ordering that Thomas be kept at home with “electronic monitoring”. (This is from the paper version of the Maroon, whose articles aren’t all online.) The judge said she gave Thomas a break because he had a clean record.

The response has been surprising to me (well, maybe not that surprising): the students are saying the police shooting was unnecessary, that the cops should be disarmed; that this was clearly a psychotic episode or some symptom of mental illness that should have been treated by the University and, accordingly, by the cops on the scene; that this demonstrates the racism of the University police (Thomas is reportedly half black and half Japanese), and even that the University should pay reparations to Thomas! They also demonstrated at a University event. Here’s a video of that below. The protest was in favor of unionization of graduate students, but turned into a demonstration against the shooting incident:

When the group arrived at I-House, the activists gathered around the steps on South Dorchester Avenue, around the corner from the building’s main entrance. As more and more people joined the protest, speakers repeatedly called on activists to “Make some noise,” eliciting cheers from the crowd directed toward the I-House windows.

Meanwhile, inside the I-House Assembly Hall, moderator and Institute of Politics (IOP) Director David Axelrod opened the forum by asking Zimmer and Boyer for an update on Tuesday’s shooting, which he said he believed to be the first incident of its kind in recent memory.

“I don’t know if there’s anything that new to say. This is a tragic incident for all those involved. We were very focused on getting what information that we did have out as quickly as possible in terms of making the videos that we did have available…and there’s a mandatory investigation on the use of firearms from our police,” Zimmer said.

Axelrod also asked Zimmer how he felt about the University’s response to the shooting, Zimmer again emphasized the UCPD firearms investigation. Boyer added that spring quarter can be a high pressure time for undergraduates as they try to find summer internships and organize their coursework.

Chants began outside the western window of the Assembly Hall about five minutes after the start of the event, making it difficult for attendees to hear the speakers. GSU organizers said they were shouting, “Bargain now,” though some chants sounded like “Fire him now” from inside.

The reaction of the students and protestors was instantaneous and, to my mind, not well thought out. Here are the questions:

1.) Was Thomas dealt with properly? As far as I can see, the police acted properly in this incident (this is just my judgment from the videos and reports). They asked Thomas to drop his weapon several times, and he refused. He then charged the cop brandishing his iron bar. What was the cop to do? Take the blow—or use judo? He couldn’t have used a Taser, as University cops don’t carry them (maybe they should). Everyone knows that if a cop is pointing a gun at you and asks you to drop your weapon or do something, you do it.

Further, the cops shot not to kill, but to disable him: a shoulder shot was probably designed to make Thomas drop the weapon. He is now out of intensive care. I’m sure the cops could have shot him in the torso, which is where you’re supposed to aim to fully take someone down, but they didn’t. [JAC: See my note in the comments; even if they did shoot to take him down, Thomas could have killed the cop with a single blow of that iron bar.]

Now, is there anything else they could have done to stop him? Perhaps a Taser would have worked had the cops had one, but I’m not sure whether they can be deployed when someone decides to charge you at such short range. At any rate rate, that question is academic. Could they have tackled him from behind? I don’t know; I don’t think that’s the usual procedure when someone has a metal bar that could do serious damage. I will await reports on normal police procedure, but for now it seems that a shoulder shot was the proper and most humane response to somebody acting psychotic and trying to attack you.

2.) Was Thomas mentally ill?  A lot of the student response to the shooting centers on the claim that Thomas was clearly mentally ill or had some sort of psychotic break, and you must treat people differently when they are mentally ill. Yes, you should do that after the suspect is neutralized, but not necessarily when he’s doing what Thomas did. In fact, we have no idea whether Thomas was mentally ill. The Maroon reports that Thomas’s mother cites a family history of bipolar disorder, but also that he himself had shown no symptoms of it:

Kathleen Thomas said she has never seen anything like the behavior her son Charles Thomas, a fourth-year in the College, displayed Tuesday night, but there is a history of bipolar disorder in their family.

“That was not the Charles I know. All through him growing up and his teenage years, I’ve only seen him get slightly angry a couple times,” she said. “He never had to go to the principal’s office ever, never had any run-ins with the law.”

She had not previously seen any signs of bipolar disorder from Thomas; she said that she has been paying close attention because it can start manifesting around this age.

Now she’s wondering if it may explain his behavior Tuesday night.

She suspects that stress because of B.A. thesis deadlines may have been a factor contributing to his mental health episode.

“He’s always put a lot of pressure on himself to be successful.”

She said Thomas has been working hard to finish a thesis for his political science major, and he probably has not been sleeping much.

But something must have made him snap, she said.

Much has been made of the cop saying, in the first video, that the guy was “mental” (they of course didn’t know he was a student). But that isn’t an on-the-spot diagnosis of mental illness; it refers to the fact that Thomas was in a frenzy.  All of us have heard the word “mental” used to refer to someone acting crazy, but not necessarily afflicted with a mental illness. Given that Thomas had no history of this behavior, I think it’s at least as likely that he either snapped, as his mother said, or that he was on some kind of drug that made him act erratically.

There is, however, one statement by a friend of Thomas’s, reported in the Maroon:

A friend of Thomas told protesters at a UChicago United protest on Friday that Thomas sought help from the University’s mental health services and was “referred off campus.”

The University of course cannot confirm this, as health issues are confidential. But the article adds, and this is indeed the case:

The Student Counseling Service (SCS) website suggests that, for counseling needs beyond “immediate needs,” students are referred to an independent counseling provider.

“If any student requires more support, they will be referred to counseling outside of SCS,” the website reads. It’s not clear if Thomas ever received outside treatment.

It’s also not clear whether, even if he sought mental health service, that it was for some kind of bipolar disorder as opposed to the many other issues for which students seek counseling.

In this respect, the Maroon‘s front page paper story on this episode, composed by five reporters, was irresponsible, for the headlines were these:

UCPD Shoots Fourth-Year Charles Thomas (sub-headline; Protests continue Friday after UCPD shot a student who was having a manic episode. He ran toward the cops with a metal rod.

But it’s unclear if he was having a manic episode unless “manic” is meant in the sense of “frenzied”. The usual meaning of “manic,” however, and one followed in the story, is that he was in one phase of bipolar disorder. In the Maroon‘s paper issue on the report, a postdoctoral fellow, Guy Emerson Mount, who teaches one of Thomas’s classes, says “. . . obviously he had a mental health episode as everyone can see on the film. . “. But that’s not obvious to me. It is just as “obvious” that he was on some drug.  Only further diagnosis or blood tests can distinguish between these hypotheses.

3.) Did the cops shoot Thomas because he was a person of color? There is no evidence for this. For one thing, we don’t know the race of the shooting cop; many of the U of C police are African American. More important, Thomas was wearing a visor, and you simply can’t discern his race in the video. Have a look at the bodycam; my guess would have been that Thomas is white. The claim that this shooting was motivated by racism holds no water.

*********

Now, what about the student and faculty reaction? It was unseemly, accusatory, and unreflective. The three accusations above, for instance, are not supportable with the evidence at hand. Nevertheless, a consortium called UChicago United (which has beefed before about the University’s declaration that it would discipline students who disrupted University events, issued another series of demands. Here’s the organization’s description from the Maroon’s op-ed by the group:

UChicago United is a coalition of multicultural student organizations, including Organization of Black Students (OBS), PanAsia, MEChA, Organization of Latin American Students (OLAS), and African Caribbean Students Association (UChicago). UC United was formed to make the University of Chicago campus more inclusive for students of marginalized backgrounds and identities.

  • We demand the University disarm the UCPD and reduce the jurisdiction of the Department’s patrol.
  • We demand community control over UCPD. This shall include an all-elected Independent Review Committee with decision-making powers. No more Board of Trustees control of UCPD!
  • We demand UCPD compliance with the Freedom of Information Act. We demand University support legislation that would hold the UCPD accountable to the Freedom of Information Act.
  • We demand UChicago fully fund mental health services, including responders trained in trauma-informed crisis intervention. In addition, the University policy on involuntary leaves of absence must cease immediately. Deterring students from seeking out on-campus mental health services is harmful and not effective.
  • We demand community safety for all, from community members to students on the South Side of Chicago.

The full statement of this group (and others), as well as the list of demands, which goes beyond the following, is here.

This is a kneejerk and gut response. I have no idea about the Freedom of Information Act, but I doubt that the students would want the police disarmed if they themselves were attacked by someone with a gun or metal bar while the police had to stand by unarmed. While I’m against private ownership of guns except, perhaps, for target shooting, I’m not against police having guns, although their need for guns would be less if, as in the UK, private gun ownership was severely restricted. And how can you demand “community safety” for all when our University is on the South Side of Chicago, a place notorious for gun violence? (There were 12 shootings just between March 30 and April 1.) As for mental health services, as far as I know the University has made huge strides in assuring they’re available to students, including a 24/7 crisis manager for mental health problems and good psychiatric care. I’m sure there’s room for improvement, but remember that the demand above is in response to an unproven claim that Thomas’s frenzy was due to mental illness, and also that he wasn’t adequately treated by the University for it. There is no evidence for either of those claims.

Guy Emerson Mount, who has been focused on reparations he says are due to blacks from the University of Chicago, also calls for reparations to Thomas for being shot. As the paper edition of the Maroon reports:

Postdoctoral fellow Guy Emerson Mount, a former grad student organizer, spoke about his student, demanding reparations in wake of the shooting.

“On Tuesday of last week, he was in class. On Tuesday of this week, he was shot by the campus police at the University of Chicago,” Mount said. “Charles was shot under a system of punitive justice which says that if you break a law of the state, yo must be punished for it. Restorative justice says we must help people who have been harmed and must bring together people who are responsible for harm that has happened. In this case, the University of Chicago has harmed Charles. The University of Chicago needs to make reparations to Charles and his family for the harm they have caused.”

That’s truly bizarre. No punishment? In this case, Thomas was shot because he was threatening police; he would not have been shot had he dropped his iron bar. And “punishment” is necessary for good reasons: keep dangerous people out of society, deter others from committing similar acts, and so on. If Thomas is truly mentally ill, the proper response would be treatment, not incarceration. But he’s still responsible for paying for the damage he caused. Perhaps the “reparations” that, according to Mount, should go to Thomas, should then be given to those whose property he damaged!

Finally, three faculty members and a postdoctoral scholar from departments of social services (the usual locus of such reactions) wrote an op-ed in the Maroon whose thesis is largely that Thomas was mentally ill and that “police are inadequate and inappropriate first responders in the case of mental health crises.” (They cite another example of someone who was mentally ill being shot by Chicago police last month). The writers first express sorrow for the incident, but it’s directed solely to Thomas, whose shooting, they aver, was clearly the University’s fault:

To this student and to all those who love them, we send this unequivocal message: We are deeply sorry for what happened. We wish you the easiest possible recovery and we are terribly dismayed that the University so badly failed to create a safe environment for you at a time of vulnerability. We cannot imagine the level of trauma this must have caused to you and your loved ones. We send you a message of care and support during what we know will be an ongoing period of recovery.

And then, asserting—again without evidence—that this was a mental health crisis inappropriately dealt with by the University, they have the temerity to say this (my emphasis):

As we write, many factual details regarding this incident remain unclear. As more details emerge, many in the observing public may focus on adjudicating the facts of the case and whether the shooting was justified. As tends to be the case in police shooting incidents, there will be divergent interpretations of police accounts and body camera footage. We argue that many of these details—whether the student charged the officer, whether the officers ordered him to drop the pipe he was holding—are in fact irrelevant to the undisputed facts and the crucial concerns they raise for our community. Three officers approached a civilian who was not armed with a deadly weapon, and they fired a gun at him, endangering his life.

This level of logic is unworthy of University faculty and scholars. They note in bold that the shooting may have been justified, but then the rest of the letter, including the last sentence, clearly say that the shooting was not justified. And if a brandished iron bar isn’t a “deadly weapon,” then we’re truly in fantasyland.

At this point, the proper response is to wait for more facts before we figure out whether any blame falls on the University or the police. For, as the data at hand show, there is no evidence that the police acted improperly, were racist, knew that Thomas was mentally ill (and we still don’t know that), or that the University is somehow deficient in mental health care.  I am surprised by the immediate, kneejerk, and accusatory response of the students and some of the faculty, as well as by the accusations of police racism, but of course that’s what we can expect these days.