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Homicide

Junk Science And Bad Policing: The Homicide Prediction Project

The law enforcement breed can be a pretty dark lot. To be paid to think suspiciously leaves its mark, fostering an incentive to identify crimes and misdemeanours with instinctive compulsion. Historically, this saw the emergence of quackery and bogus attempts to identify criminal tendencies. Craniometry and skull size was, for a time, an attractive pursuit for the aspiring crime hunter and lunatic sleuth. The crime fit the skull. With the onset of facial recognition technologies, we are seeing the same old habits appear, with their human creators struggling to identify the best means of eliminating compromising biases.

Officer In Antwon Rose Shooting Charged With Homicide

The suburban Pittsburgh police officer who fatally shot 17-year-old Antwon Rose was charged Wednesday with criminal homicide. East Pittsburgh Police Officer Michael Rosfeld shot Rose, who was unarmed, three times, including once in the back, on June 19 as the teen fled a car that had been stopped by police, according to the criminal complaint filed against the officer. Rosfeld had been sworn into the police department just hours earlier. The officer surrendered Wednesday after the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office filed the charge against him, NBC News reported. He was released on bond, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. DA Stephen Zappala said at a news conference Wednesday that Rosfeld’s use of deadly force was unjustified because Rose was neither armed nor a fleeing felon.  “You can’t take somebody’s life under these circumstances,” Zappala said...

How Ceasefire Has Changed This Organizer And Baltimore

By Lisa Snowden-McCray for Baltimore Beat. Baltimore, MD - Just a few days after the second 72-hour Baltimore Ceasefire weekend, which ran from Nov. 3-5, Erricka Bridgeford and I are sitting in her car in her old Rosemont neighborhood escaping the cold and rain. She has a bit of a cough and she’s just off a speaking engagement at the Community College of Baltimore County’s Essex campus, but Bridgeford has gamely agreed to take a few moments to share her thoughts about the second ceasefire, meant to pause the violence in the city and connect with and create community.