Three Los Angeles police officers were shot Wednesday evening and the suspected gunman was dead after an ensuing standoff, authorities said.
Officers had gone to Lincoln Heights, an older neighborhood of single-family homes, at around 4:30 p.m. and the shootings were reported about two hours later, Los Angeles Police Department Officer Norma Eisenman said.
The officers were hospitalized in stable condition, LAPD Chief Michel Moore tweeted Wednesday night.
Two were patrol officers and the third was a K9 unit officer, Eisenman said.
The LAPD said it began when officers spotted a parolee wanted for an unknown felony and tried to take him into custody, but he ran and hid in a shed.
The scene of a standoff in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles on March 8, 2023.
CBS Los Angeles
According to the LAPD, K9 officers responded, found him and launched a “chemical agent” into the shed. The suspect then opened the shed door and began firing at officers, striking three.
Officers returned fire and backed out. It was unclear whether the suspect was hit, CBS Los Angeles reports.
SWAT officers were called and deployed a robot that saw the suspect wasn’t moving. SWAT officers then used a second robot to insert more gas into the shed before officers moved in. The Los Angeles Fire Department determined the suspect was dead.
At one point, the LAPD issued a citywide tactical alert, meaning officers from across the city are available to respond to the scene if needed. Officers, including SWAT team members, flooded into the area and sealed it off.
Some neighbors were evacuated from their homes by officers when the standoff was ongoing, CBS L.A. said, while other residents in the surrounding area were advised to stay inside and lock their doors.
“Everyday the men and women of the Los Angeles Police Department put themselves in harm’s way, tonight is a reminder that the danger is very real,” Mayor Karen Bass said at a news conference, CBS L.A. reported. “I’m relieved and grateful that these three brave officers are in stable condition, and are able to have a conversation with two of them when I checked in on them just now. I deeply appreciate their service and let them know that their city stands with them, and I very much look forward to their recovery.”
The Shelby County District Attorney’s Office says it’s reviewing every case — both open and closed — involving the five former Memphis police officers charged in the death of Tyre Nichols. Meanwhile, another man is accusing the same officers of a similar attack just days before Nichols’ arrest. Elise Preston reports.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Several more Memphis police officers could be charged in connection with the violent beating of Tyre Nichols, who died days after the incident, officials said Tuesday. Six Memphis officers have already been fired in the case, including five who are charged with second-degree murder.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Officials said Monday that two more Memphis officers were relieved of duty and three fire department employees were fired following the police beating of Tyre Nichols. CBS News correspondent Elise Preston joined John Dickerson from Memphis with the latest on the investigation.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Video footage of the brutal police beating of Tyre Nichols has reignited the national conversation on policing in America, as well as brought increased scrutiny to specialized police units.
The Memphis Police Department disbanded its SCORPION team, a specialized unit formed in 2021 to fight violent street crime, over the weekend after five of its members were charged in the death of Nichols.
Bill Bratton, the former chief of the Los Angeles Police Department and former commissioner of the New York City Police Department, said the Memphis unit ran into trouble because it lacked necessary training.
“The nature of these units require significant supervision, something that was apparently missing in the SCORPION unit in Memphis,” he told CBS News. “And then, most importantly, training, training and training.”
A former Memphis police officer, who asked that his name not be used due to the sensitivity of the situation, told CBS News the SCORPION unit’s training consisted of three days of PowerPoint presentations, one day of suspect apprehension training and one day at the firing range.
Similar issues have plagued units in cities like Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles. In 2017, Baltimore’s gun trace task force was disbanded and eight officers were later convicted of racketeering and extortion, among other charges.
In Memphis, the SCORPION unit had gained its own reputation.
“It’s a militarized, undercover culture that runs into communities,” community activist Devante Hill told CBS News. “There are these special units that actually cause more harm than they do help in the community.”
Though the Memphis Police Department said it is “permanently” deactivating the SCORPION unit, Bratton said such anti-crime task forces are essential to policing — when there is proper training and supervision.
A sixth Memphis police officer has been placed on administrative leave in the aftermath of the violent arrest that led to Tyre Nichols‘ death. The officer, Preston Hemphill, was relieved of duty amid an ongoing internal investigation at the Memphis Police Department, a spokesperson confirmed to CBS News on Monday.
The details of Hemphill’s involvement in Nichols’ arrest were not disclosed by Memphis Police. Hemphill was relieved of duty at the beginning of the police department’s investigation, at the same time as the five who were charged, CBS News has confirmed.
Lee Gerald, an attorney representing Hemphill, told CBS News that his client “was the third officer at the initial [traffic] stop of Mr. Nichols” and “was never present at the second scene,” where video footage showed police beating Nichols at a nearby intersection. The first of four tapes documenting the arrest was taken from Hemphill’s body camera footage, according to Gerald.
Hemphill “is cooperating with officials in this investigation,” his attorney said.
Hemphill joined the Memphis police force in 2018, according to the department spokesperson, who said in a statement that the department will share a more detailed update “once additional information is available.”
News of Hemphill’s leave comes after the city of Memphis released disturbing video footage of Nichols’ arrest. Five officers involved — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills, Jr., Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith — were fired earlier this month and face charges including second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression.
Attorneys for Nichols’ family issued a statement Monday calling into question the way the department was handling the investigation into Hemphill’s role — and noting that he is the only one of the six officers who is White:
“The news today from Memphis officials that Officer Preston Hemphill was reportedly relieved of duty weeks ago, but not yet terminated or charged, is extremely disappointing. Why is his identity and the role he played in Tyre’s death just now coming to light? We have asked from the beginning that the Memphis Police Department be transparent with the family and the community – this news seems to indicate that they haven’t risen to the occasion. It certainly begs the question why the white officer involved in this brutal attack was shielded and protected from the public eye, and to date, from sufficient discipline and accountability. The Memphis Police Department owes us all answers.”
Nichols, a 29-year-old father who worked for FedEx, died on Jan. 10, three days after he was hospitalized with serious injuries sustained in the arrest, stemming from a traffic stop on the night of Jan. 7. Although an official cause of death has not yet been released, attorneys representing Nichols’ family said last week that an independent autopsy they commissioned found that Nichols suffered “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating.”
In the videos, which include both body camera and surveillance footage totaling more than 60 minutes, at least one officer is seen pushing Nichols to the ground and hitting him with a taser, while another officer is heard saying at a different time, “I hope they stomp his ass.”
The five officers charged in Nichols’ death belonged to the SCORPION unit at the Memphis Police Department, which was “permanently deactivated” as of Saturday, police said in a statement.
In addition, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Friday night that two sheriff’s deputies were relieved of duties pending the outcome of an internal investigation.
“Having watched the videotape for the first time tonight, I have concerns about two deputies who appeared on the scene following the physical confrontation between police and Tyre Nichols,” said Sheriff Floyd Bonner in statement. “I have launched an internal investigation into the conduct of these deputies to determine what occurred and if any policies were violated.”
The incident has prompted demonstrations in cities around the country, with protesters demanding police accountability. Some members of Congress are also renewing calls for reform.
“We are calling on our colleagues in the House and Senate to jumpstart negotiations now and work with us to address the public health epidemic of police violence that disproportionately affects many of our communities,” Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford said in a statement, requesting a meeting with President Biden “to push for negotiations on much needed national reforms to our justice system — specifically, the actions and conduct of our law enforcement.”
Mr. Biden was one of numerous leaders who condemned the actions of the officers involved in the brutal arrest. The president spoke with Nichols’ mother and stepfather Friday, and said in a statement, “Like so many, I was outraged and deeply pained to see the horrific video of the beating that resulted in Tyre Nichols’ death.”
In an interview after the footage was released, Memphis Police Chief C.J. Davis called the officers’ conduct “heinous, reckless and inhumane.”
Memphis police “deactivate” SCORPION unit whose officers are charged in death of Tyre Nichols; Archeologists discover oldest non-royal mummy ever in Egypt
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Protesters across the U.S. are demanding justice and calling for an end to police brutality after videos were released Friday showing the violent arrest of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police. Jeff Pegues has more.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Officials have released video of Tyre Nichols’ violent arrest by Memphis police on Jan. 7. Nichols died three days after this encounter. This video is a combination of clips from each of the four videos released today. The content is disturbing and viewer discretion is advised.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Five former Memphis police officers are facing second-degree murder charges after the death of Tyre Nichols. The Memphis police chief called the officers’ actions “reckless” and “inhumane.” Video of the arrest is expected to be released Friday night. Elise Preston reports.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Protesters damaged property at numerous locations on Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta Saturday in the wake of a shooting earlier this week near the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center — a controversial future law enforcement training site — in which a Georgia state trooper was wounded and a man was killed. No one was hurt, authorities said.
In a news conference Saturday evening, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said that at least six people were arrested in the violence.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said “some” of those arrested “were found with explosives on them,” adding that a police patrol vehicle was set ablaze.
No protesters or officers were hurt during the ordeal, Schierbaum confirmed.
Demonstrators protest in downtown Atlanta on Jan. 21, 2023.
R.J. Rico / AP
Three local businesses were damaged during the violence, which was limited to a roughly two-block radius, Schierbaum said.
“We can tell now, early in this investigation, this was not, the folks tonight, just to damage windows on three buildings and set a police car on fire,” Schierbaum told reporters. “The intent was to continue to do harm. And that did not happen.”
Masked activists dressed in all black threw rocks and lit fireworks in front of a skyscraper that houses the Atlanta Police Foundation, shattering large glass windows, according to the Associated Press.
Over the past several months, the tension between protestors and law enforcement over the future training site has been rising, until it came to a boil on Wednesday.
A Georgia state trooper was shot and wounded Wednesday morning, and a man identified by police as 26-year-old Manuel Esteban Paez Teran was fatally shot during a planned multi-agency operation to remove protesters from the property, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI).
The trooper was rushed to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta and immediately taken into surgery, said officials. He was in stable condition as of Thursday, Georgia State Patrol said. The trooper’s identity has not yet been released.
Michael Register of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation briefs reporters after a shooting in Atlanta. Jan. 18, 2023.
Georgia Department of Public Safety
On Friday, GBI released a photo of a handgun it said Teran was carrying at the time of the shooting. It said a ballistic analysis of the round which wounded the trooper was a match to Teran’s Smith & Wesson M&P Shield 9mm.
Activists have questioned officials’ version of events, calling it a “murder,” and demanding an independent investigation, according to the Associated Press. According to the GBI, the incident was not recorded on body cameras.
For months, protesters have allegedly destroyed property, committed arson and carjackings and thrown rocks, bottles and other items at police, GBI said.
In December, five people were arrested and charged with domestic terrorism and other charges after allegedly throwing rocks and bottles at the training center, officials said. Another seven people were also arrested Wednesday, on the day of the shooting incident, on charges of domestic terrorism and criminal trespass, GBI said.
Schierbaum noted that all those who were arrested prior to Saturday’s violence were not Georgia residents. He could not immediately confirm whether the six arrested Saturday were also from out of state.
“I don’t know which news group it was…we saw a great graphic from everyone that was arrested this past week, not a single Georgia resident in there,” Schierbaum said. “It was from across the country.”
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the FBI and GBI will assist in the investigation into Saturday’s events, officials said.
“These are not acts of peaceful protest. These are criminal acts to destabilize communities and endanger citizens,” Michael Register, director of the GBI, said earlier this week. The agency is investigating the trooper shooting.
For months, police have been sending officers to the site due to the high “threat of safety,” Register said.
Five Memphis police officers who were involved in the arrest of Tyre Nichols – who died three days after a traffic stop earlier this month – have been fired, the department announced Friday.
The five officers were dismissed following an “internal investigation” which determined that they “violated multiple department policies, including excessive force, duty to intervene, and duty to render aid,” Memphis Police Chief C.J. Davis said in a statement.
The five officers were identified by the department as Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith.
A portrait of Tyre Nichols is displayed at a memorial service for him on Jan. 17, 2023, in Memphis, Tennessee. Nichols was killed following a traffic stop with Memphis Police on Jan. 7. He died three days later, on Jan. 10.
Adrian Sainz / AP
On Jan. 7, the 29-year-old Nichols, who is Black, was arrested after officers stopped him for reckless driving, police said.
There was a confrontation as officers approached the driver, and he ran before he was confronted again by the pursuing officers, who arrested him, authorities said. He complained of shortness of breath and was hospitalized. Officials said a cause of death has not yet been determined.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the state’s police agency, said Nichols died Jan. 10. The agency is conducting a use-of-force investigation at the request of Shelby County District Attorney General Steve Mulroy.
The five officers who were fired are all Black, according to a Memphis Police public information officer.
Federal authorities announced Wednesday they were launching a civil rights investigation into the actions of Memphis police.
Relatives have said that the officers who pulled over Nichols were in an unmarked vehicle and that he experienced cardiac arrest and kidney failure because of a beating by officers.
Davis and Mayor Jim Strickland said Tuesday that video footage of the arrest will be released after the police department’s investigation is completed and the family can review it.
After initially declining comment on the Justice Department’s investigation, the city of Memphis sent out a statement late Wednesday afternoon saying it will fully cooperate with the federal agencies conducting the probe.
At a memorial service for Nichols on Tuesday, family and friends remembered him as a joyful, lovable man who worked making boxes at FedEx, enjoyed skateboarding and regularly drank coffee and chatted with friends at Starbucks. Some of those in attendance wore T-shirts that read “Justice for Tyre,” and “Skate in Peace.”
Relatives said Nichols was from California and moved to Memphis about a year ago. He had two brothers and a sister, relatives said.
Nichols’ stepfather, Rodney Wells, said during the service that Nichols’ supporters want the officers involved in the arrest to be charged with first-degree murder.
“We’re not going down without a fight,” Wells said.
A Brackenridge police officer was shot and killed and another officer was wounded Monday, police said. The suspect was shot and killed by police later in the night, police said.
Allegheny County Police Superintendent Christopher Kearns said Monday night that police encountered a wanted suspect, identified as 28-year-old Aaron Lamont Swan, and engaged in a foot chase that lasted several hours. There were two shooting incidents several blocks apart.
In one, an officer was shot in the head and killed, Kearns said. The deceased officer has not been publicly identified, but sources identified him to CBS Pittsburgh as Brackenridge police chief Justin McIntire, who had been chief since 2018.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro tweeted, “Police Chief Justin McIntire ran towards danger to keep Pennsylvanians safe — and he made the ultimate sacrifice in service to community.”
Today’s tragedy in Brackenridge is a devastating reminder of the bravery of those who put their lives on the line every day to protect us.
Police Chief Justin McIntire ran towards danger to keep Pennsylvanians safe — and he made the ultimate sacrifice in service to community.
Another officer was then shot in the leg in the second incident. That officer was transported to a hospital and was in stable condition, Kearns said.
The suspect was wounded, but was able to flee after carjacking a vehicle, according to police. After police located the stolen car, the suspect led them on another chase. He crashed and then fled into a wooded area, police said. He then emerged from the woods into an open area in a housing development, where he fired at police officers, Kearns said Monday night. The officers returned fire, killing Swan, according to Kearns.
The people to whom the carjacked vehicle belonged were not harmed, police said.
Swan was originally wanted for an alleged weapons violation of his probation, and police had encountered him Sunday night, but he was able to evade them following a chase.
Brackenridge is located in Alleghany County, a few miles northeast of Pittsburgh.
Thanks for reading CBS NEWS.
Create your free account or log in for more features.
Supervisors in San Francisco voted Tuesday to give city police the ability to use potentially lethal, remote-controlled robots in emergency situations — following an emotionally charged debate that reflected divisions on the politically liberal board over support for law enforcement.
The vote was 8-3, with the majority agreeing to grant police the option despite strong objections from civil liberties and other police oversight groups. Opponents said the authority would lead to the further militarization of a police force already too aggressive with poor and minority communities.
According to CBS San Francisco, at the start of the meeting, Supervisor Aaron Peskin acknowledged the controversy, saying the robots “speak to fears about a dystopian robot killing future.”
“I understand the concern and fear that that can evoke in our society,” Peskin said.
Supervisor Connie Chan, a member of the committee that forwarded the proposal to the full board, said she understood concerns over use of force but that “according to state law, we are required to approve the use of these equipments. So here we are, and it’s definitely not a easy discussion.”
The San Francisco Police Department said it does not have pre-armed robots and has no plans to arm robots with guns. But the department could deploy robots equipped with explosive charges “to contact, incapacitate, or disorient violent, armed, or dangerous suspect” when lives are at stake, SFPD spokesperson Allison Maxie said in a statement.
“Robots equipped in this manner would only be used in extreme circumstances to save or prevent further loss of innocent lives,” she said.
Supervisors amended the proposal Tuesday to specify that officers could use robots only after using alternative force or de-escalation tactics, or after concluding they would not be able to subdue the suspect through those alternative means. Only a limited number of high-ranking officers could authorize use of robots as a deadly force option.
“San Francisco is not a warzone, and these kinds of devices are not needed to protect this city,” said Supervisor Dean Preston, who was one of three supervisors who voted against the proposal, per CBS San Francisco.
San Francisco police currently have a dozen functioning ground robots used to assess bombs or provide eyes in low visibility situations, the department says. They were acquired between 2010 and 2017, and not once have they been used to deliver an explosive device, police officials said.
But explicit authorization was required after a new California law went into effect this year requiring police and sheriffs departments to inventory military-grade equipment and seek approval for their use.
The state law was authored last year by San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu while he was an assembly member. It is aimed at giving the public a forum and voice in the acquisition and use of military-grade weapons that have a negative effect on communities, according to the legislation.
A federal program has long dispensed grenade launchers, camouflage uniforms, bayonets, armored vehicles and other surplus military equipment to help local law enforcement.
In 2017, then-President Donald Trump signed an order reviving the Pentagon program after his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, curtailed it in 2015, triggered in part by outrage over the use of military gear during protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after the shooting death of Michael Brown.
San Francisco police said late Tuesday that no robots were obtained from military surplus, but some were purchased with federal grant money.
Like many places around the U.S., San Francisco is trying to balance public safety with treasured civilian rights such as privacy and the ability to live free of excessive police oversight. In September, supervisors agreed to a trial run allowing police to access in real time private surveillance camera feeds in certain circumstances.
Debate on Tuesday ran more than two hours with members on both sides accusing the other of reckless fear mongering.
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who voted in favor of the policy authorization, said he was troubled by rhetoric painting the police department as untrustworthy and dangerous.
“I think there’s larger questions raised when progressives and progressive policies start looking to the public like they are anti-police,” he said. “I think that is bad for progressives. I think it’s bad for this Board of Supervisors. I think it’s bad for Democrats nationally.”
Board President Shamann Walton, who voted against the proposal, pushed back, saying it made him not anti-police, but “pro people of color.”
“We continuously are being asked to do things in the name of increasing weaponry and opportunities for negative interaction between the police department and people of color,” he said. “This is just one of those things.”
The San Francisco Public Defender’s office sent a letter Monday to the board saying that granting police “the ability to kill community members remotely” goes against the city’s progressive values. The office wanted the board to reinstate language barring police from using robots against any person in an act of force.
On the other side of the San Francisco Bay, the Oakland Police Department has dropped a similar proposal after public backlash.
The first time a robot was used to deliver explosives in the U.S. was in 2016, when Dallas police sent in an armed robot that killed a holed-up sniper who had killed five officers in an ambush.
Randy Cox, 36, was being driven to a New Haven police station June 19 for processing on a weapons charge when the driver braked hard, apparently to avoid a collision, causing Cox to fly headfirst into the wall of the van, police said. The incident was caught on video.
In this image taken from police body camera video provided by New Haven Police, Richard “Randy” Cox, center, is pulled from the back of a police van and placed in a wheelchair after being detained by New Haven Police on June 19, 2022, in New Haven, Conn.
/ AP
As Cox pleaded for help, saying he couldn’t move, some of the officers mocked him and accused him of being drunk and faking his injuries. Then, the officers dragged him by his feet from the van and placed him in a holding cell prior to his eventual transfer to a hospital.
“It made me sick to my stomach, to treat somebody like that,” Cox’s sister, Latoya Boomer, told CBS News.
The five New Haven police officers were charged with second-degree reckless endangerment and cruelty to persons. The officers were identified as Officer Oscar Diaz, Officer Ronald Pressley, Officer Jocelyn Lavandier, Officer Luis Rivera and Sgt. Betsy Segui.
All have been on administrative leave since last summer.
New Haven’s police chief, speaking to reporters Monday along with the city’s mayor, said it was important for the department to be transparent and accountable.
“You can make mistakes, but you can’t treat people poorly, period. You cannot treat people the way Mr. Cox was treated,” said Police Chief Karl Jacobson.
The officers turned themselves in at a state police barracks Monday. Each was processed, posted a $25,000 bond and are due back in court Dec. 8, according to a news release from state police. Messages seeking comment were sent to attorneys for the officers.
The case has drawn outrage from civil rights advocates like the NAACP, along with comparisons to the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore. Gray, who was also Black, died in 2015 after he suffered a spinal injury while handcuffed and shackled in a city police van.
The attorney for Cox’s family, Ben Crump, said Monday that the New Haven officers need to be held accountable.
“It is important – when you see that video of how they treated Randy Cox and the actions and inactions that led to him being paralyzed from his chest down – that those police officers should be held to the full extent of the law,” Crump said.
Cox was arrested June 19 after police said they found him in possession of a handgun at a block party. The charges against him were later dropped.
Cox’s family filed a federal lawsuit against the city of New Haven and the five officers in September. The lawsuit alleges negligence, exceeding the speed limit and failure to have proper restraints in the police van.
Four of the officers filed motions last week claiming qualified immunity from the lawsuit, arguing that their actions in the case did not violate any “clearly established” legal standard.
New Haven officials announced a series of police reforms this summer stemming from the case, including eliminating the use of police vans for most prisoner transports and using marked police vehicles instead. They also require officers to immediately call for an ambulance to respond to their location if the prisoner requests or appears to need medical aid.
Norman, Oklahoma — Stunning bodycam video captured the moment officers with the New York City Police Department on Thursday helped rescue a man who had fallen onto the subway tracks.
The officers — who were on the opposite platform — had to race across a busy city street to reach the man. A Good Samaritan was already trying to help, and together, they lifted him out of harm’s way, seconds before a train rolled into the station.
That is just one of the many life-threatening tasks police officers perform every day. However, law enforcement agencies nationwide are facing staffing shortages, with retirement rates up and new recruits in short supply.
The number of new officer hirings was down 3.9% in 2021 compared to 2019, according to a national survey earlier this year from the Police Executive Research Forum.
The survey found that there were 23.6% more retirements among law enforcement in 2021 compared to 2019. There were also 42.7% more resignations among law enforcement in 2021 compared to 2019 as well. The uptick in retirements and resignations were driven in party by low pay, the survey determined.
At Oklahoma’s Tulsa Police Department, new recruit Cheyenne Walden won’t be part of a full graduating class of recruits.
“You know, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” Walden told CBS News. “So it’s not a job, more of a career.”
Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin said he is struggling to fill about 150 positions.
“There is, there was, a lot of scrutiny placed upon law enforcement,” Franklin said. “And I think that soured a lot of interested people that wanted to go into the profession. They have made a detour, and they’ve gone and done something else.”
Smaller law enforcement agencies are sounding the alarm as well. Sgt. Shane Roddy with the University of Oklahoma Police Department (OUPD) told CBS News there are roughly 17 uniformed officers on staff. He said he has not physically trained in an active shooter drill in years.
“The University of Oklahoma is just going to have to start funding OUPD so that we can build our staffing levels to the point that we can actually start training again,” Roddy said.
In a statement to CBS News, the university said it recently raised its police department salaries “on average nearly 8%.” The school noted, however, that the pay raise is coming from open positions which have not been filled. The university, though, also said it has hired three new officers, and that it “will continue to hire more officers in the coming months.”
Furthermore, Saturdays brings college football to Norman — and even with other departments helping with game day security — with more than 100,000 fans on the University of Oklahoma campus, officers worry about the nightmare scenario.
“There’s always going to be the threat of an active shooter or armed subjects coming on campus and causing death or great bodily harm,” Roddy said.
When asked if his department is “adequately staffed,” Roddy responded, “absolutely not.”
“Don’t make a wrong move,” the officer said as he pinned the struggling subject to the ground. “Period.”
The officer tightened the handcuffs around the subject’s thin wrists.
“Ow, ow, ow, it really hurts,” the subject exclaimed.
The officer pressed his weight into the subject’s small body while school staff watched it all unfold. The person he was restraining was 7 years old.
“If you, my friend, are not acquainted with the juvenile justice system, you will be very shortly,” the officer told the child.
Earlier that day, the child allegedly spit at a teacher. Now, he was in handcuffs and a police officer was saying he could end up in jail.
That child — a second grader with autism at a North Carolina school — was ultimately pinned on the floor for 38 minutes, according to body camera video of the incident. At one point, court records say, the officer put his knee in the child’s back.
CBS News is not identifying the North Carolina child to protect his privacy.
Similar scenes have played out in viral incidents: police officers arresting young children like him at school, often violently.
There are many more cases of young children arrested in school — cases that don’t make headlines, according to a CBS News analysis of the latest data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
More than 700 children were arrested in U.S. elementary schools during the 2017-2018 school year alone, according to CBS News’ analysis.
Experts tell CBS News the fact that young children are arrested at all is troubling.
Ron Applin, chief of police for Atlanta Public Schools, says they’ve never arrested an elementary school child in his six years running the department.
“I’ve never seen a situation or a circumstance in my six years where an elementary school student had to be arrested,” Applin said. “We’ve never done it. I don’t see where it would happen.”
But it does happen elsewhere — and to some kids more than others, CBS News’ analysis showed.
Unequal treatment
Children with documented disabilities were four times more likely to be arrested at school, according to CBS News’ analysis of the 2017-2018 Education Department data.
Federal law requires schools to have a plan, known as an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), for dealing with the needs of every student with disabilities.
Those plans help schools understand how to care for children with disabilities, said Alacia Gerardi, the mother of the North Carolina child who was arrested. Without this plan, she said, a police officer might misunderstand her son’s behavior.
“I believe a lot of it is a misunderstanding with children who are struggling, that they believe that in general, that behavior indicates intention. And when you’re dealing with a child who’s going through a difficult time, any child, that is not the case.”
Anyone working with children with disabilities must understand how to respond when a child with an emotional or behavioral disorder acts out, according to Dr. Sonya Mathies-Dinizulu, who teaches psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Chicago.
In a crisis, children need someone to “be there to help the kid start to de-escalate and help soothe,” said Mathies-Dinizulu, who works with children who are exposed to trauma.
Black students are even more disproportionately affected. They made up nearly half of all arrests at elementary schools during the 2017-2018 school year, CBS News’ analysis showed. But they accounted for just 15% of the student population in those schools.
Those disparities could be explained, at least in part, by the mentalities of the officers who work in schools, according to Professor Aaron Kupchik, who teaches sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware.
In a 2020 study, Kupchik and his colleagues analyzed interviews with 73 School Resource Officers, or SROs. Nearly all the officers interviewed said their primary mission was to keep the school safe. The difference, Kupchik said, was who those officers felt they needed to protect the school from.
SROs who worked with low-income students and students of color “define the threat as students themselves,” Kupchik said. “Whereas the SROs who work in wealthier, whiter school areas define the threat as something external that can happen to the children.”
“It’s an external threat for the more privileged kids,” Kupchik said. “As opposed to students in the schools with more students of color, low-income students, where they’re seen as the threats themselves.”
One such student arrested was an 11-year-old Black student with disabilities in Riverside County, California. CBS News is referring to him only as “C.B.” to protect his privacy.
Police alleged he threw a rock at a staffer, though a police report said she was uninjured. The next day, he was handcuffed after refusing to go to the principal’s office over the incident.
A lawsuit filed on C.B.’s behalf alleges his arrest was part of a pattern: police getting involved for “low-level and disability-related behaviors” that could be handled by teachers or administrators.
Police handling school discipline, not school staff
Gerardi said she couldn’t understand why her son was handcuffed face down on the floor.
She said school staff called saying her son was having a hard time that day. She later got a text asking her to come pick him up.
What she saw when she arrived shocked her.
“At that point, I had no idea why [he was handcuffed],” she said. “I couldn’t fathom in my mind what could possibly have occurred to make handcuffing a 7-year-old face down on the floor necessary.”
She said the school staff knew her son had been struggling. He was in a treatment program where he received special support. He had an IEP on file, which documented his needs.
Yet when teachers disciplined her son for repeatedly tapping his pencil — something she said he does out of anxiety — the situation escalated. He spit on a teacher, and the police officer was called. The boy ended up in handcuffs.
“I have a real hard time understanding that these adults don’t have a better solution than to do this,” she said. “The long-term effects, the trauma of putting a child in a completely powerless situation, even physically over their body and causing them harm based on a behavior is ludicrous to me.”
After his mother arrived, the officer allowed her to take him home.
“It was a very rude awakening, because when I arrived there and I picked my son up off the floor, he was limp, completely limp,” she said. “He was just exhausted. I didn’t know what had happened, but after I saw the video, it was very apparent that his little body just couldn’t take being put in that position for that length of time. He had his chest against the floor, his hands behind his back. This man’s applying pressure against his back”
Alex Heroy, attorney for Gerardi’s family, said the police shouldn’t have gotten involved in the first place.
“A lot of officers don’t want to be the first line when it comes to a mental health crisis,” Heroy said. “They don’t have as much training as the teachers in the school, for example, so they shouldn’t insert themselves for one, and they really should be there for support.”
The officer in that arrest defended his actions.
The officer “knew nothing about [the child] prior to the day in question, including his age or medical history,” his attorney said in a statement sent to CBS News.
“Unequivocally, he never intended to cause any harm to [the child] and did the best he could with the knowledge and training he possessed at the time, seeking only to help [the child] and diffuse the situation safely for everyone, including [the child],” the statement said.
The child’s school district declined to comment, saying the case had been settled.
The child wasn’t charged with a crime, despite what the officer repeatedly said during the incident.
Federal reaction
Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, said schools should do everything they can to prevent young kids from ending up arrested in school.
CBS News shared the results of its analysis of the Education Department data with Lhamon. Though she said there could be times in which arresting a 7-year-old is acceptable, she said it should not be the norm.
“That should not be the way we expect to treat our students,” Lhamon said. “And if you find yourself there as a school community, you should be evaluating hard whether you needed to and what steps you can take to make sure you don’t find yourself there again.”
When asked if the Department of Education is doing enough to prevent arrests like the North Carolina child’s, she said, “You’re never doing enough if a child is harmed.”
“When we send a child to law enforcement, we are sending a very deleterious governmental message,” Lhamon said. “That’s scary. I want very much for that to be minimized and for it to take place only in those circumstances where it’s absolutely necessary.”
Lhamon called the video of the North Carolina child’s arrest “enormously distressing” and said it was something she’d never forget.
“There’s very little that I saw in that video that is acceptable, and there’s very little on that video that is consistent with federal civil rights obligations,” she said.
The U.S. Department of Education issued new guidance on school discipline in July, requiring school officials to evaluate a student with disabilities before disciplining them.
Department of Education spokespeople said the agency wants schools to be responsible for the actions of their SROs, even if those officers are employees of a local police department.
“They are responsible for the actions of school resource officers that they employ and that they contract with in their schools, and that the civil rights obligation extends to them,” Lhamon said.
Lhamon described the disproportionate impact on children with disabilities and children of color as “deeply distressing.”
“It’s a deep, deep concern for all of us,” Lhamon said. “And it has been over a distressingly long period of time that we see students with disabilities disproportionately referred to law enforcement. We see students of color disproportionately referred to law enforcement.”
Training needed
An SRO’s training can be critical, according to Applin. He helped change the way Atlanta SROs interact with children.
After being in the top 10 nationally in elementary arrest rates, Georgia changed its approach in 2018. They trained their SROs to focus on helping students to reach graduation, rather than making arrests.
Part of that new SRO training involved “making a switch from being a warrior to a guardian,” Applin said.
“One of the things that’s stressed to my officers is that we’re student focused,” Applin said. “The whole idea behind why we’re here is to create an environment where students can learn, teachers can teach. We’re not here to criminalize our students.”
Virginia has taken a different approach. Schools there arrested kids in elementary schools at five times the rate for the U.S. overall during the 2017-2018 school year, according to CBS News’ analysis of Education Department data.
Donna Michaelis, who manages the Virginia Center for School and Campus Safety, said Virginia law requires school officials to report any crimes that occur at school — even minor ones like fights, vandalism, or disorderly conduct.
“In that list of criminal offenses, they are very serious things,” Michaelis said. “It’s not bullying. It is malicious wounding. It is kidnapping. It is threats to harm staff. They are serious crimes: threats to bomb [or] drugs.”
Data from the Virginia Department of Education shows that, during the 2020-2021 school year, there were 24 bomb or other threats reported. There were nearly 700 reported threats to either students or staff.
The data doesn’t contain any references to “malicious wounding” or kidnapping.
The most common offense in the data is “interference with school operations,” which made up nearly 40% of the 14,000 incidents recorded in the data for that one school year.
Do SROs really make kids safer?
Amid the epidemic of school shootings in the US, many districts have looked to SROs to keep kids safe.
But Kupchik’s research shows SROs don’t make kids safer.
“There is some disagreement [among experts],” Kupchik said. “There have been some studies showing that police officers in schools can prevent some crime and misbehavior, but there are far greater numbers of studies finding the opposite, that they either have no impact or in some cases can increase crime. What they do all show consistently is that while we’re not sure about any benefits, there are clear and consistent problems with putting police in schools.”
Kupchik said schools with more police have more suspensions and more arrests.
“We see greater numbers of arrests and not necessarily for things like guns or drugs or what we’re all afraid of,” Kupchik said. “But for more minor things that are unfortunate, but perhaps don’t need to result in an arrest record. Something like two kids getting in a fight after school.”
Some schools have taken a similar view. Schools across the country, including those in Denver, San Francisco, Fremont, CA, and Chicago have voted to remove SROs.
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Minneapolis Public Schools removed SROs from their hallways. The result: a dramatic drop in student referrals to law enforcement, and a shift toward “restorative outcomes” rather than arrests.
Nearly every parent interviewed by CBS News for this story said their children were permanently traumatized by these experiences.
“The trauma from this has truly created PTSD,” Gerardi said. “So, day by day, especially if he is physically hurt in any way — even accidentally — it can trigger a real PTSD response that affects the entire family. And, of course, it affects him.”
Part of the problem, she said, is that he doesn’t understand what happened to him.
“It was an instantaneous ‘fight or flight’ response, and we were there for literally years,” she said. “So to try to calm his nervous system down … has taken a lot a lot of intense work. And it was terrifying. We’re going we were going up against a police department, a city, and we live in a small town.”
The problems only worsened when her son began running away. The very people she needed to help find him were those who harmed him: the police.
“After you go through something like this, it’s hard to have trust that a sane person is going to show up that understands how to deal with a child,” she said.
Other parents told CBS News similar stories. The father of one child told CBS News Colorado his child, who was arrested at age 5 and had documented disabilities, “regressed significantly” after the incident and even had to move to a residential treatment facility to receive more intensive care.
Mathies-Dinizulu said those effects can last a child’s entire life.
“Children in particular, they could be incredibly resilient,” Mathies-Dinizulu said. “But it’s something that they will never forget. And because of that, if something traumatic or scary happens to them in the future — that type of accumulated stress from what happened at school, now it’s happening again in another place.”
The effects of that trauma can warp the way a child sees the world, Mathies-Dinizulu said.
“They may feel like they’re not worthy, or they may feel like they’re bad,” she said. “Some of those symptoms of anxiety or depression or traumatic stress symptoms like flashbacks or anger and irritability might be tied to the traumatic event.”
Gerardi said she hopes seeing her son’s suffering will help people understand things need to change.
“This is 100 percent preventable,” she said, “100 percent preventable. There’s a lot of trauma and things in life that are not. This is not one of those. This could have been prevented.”
Thousands of police officers from across the U.S. gathered Friday at the Pratt and Whitney Stadium in Connecticut for the joint funeral of two Bristol officers killed in an apparent ambush last week. Lt. Dustin Demonte and Sg. Alex Hamzy were both promoted posthumously.
“Our family was as close to perfect as it could be because we had you,” Demonte’s wife, Laura Demonte, said.
This combo of images provided by the Connecticut State Police, show, from left, Bristol, Conn. Police Department Sgt. Dustin Demonte and Officer Alex Hamzy.
Connecticut State Police
“While you may know my officer as a number, know he is far more than that,” Katie Scott Hamzy, Hamzy’s wife, said. “He is my hero, my protection, the love of my life and of course my heart. I love you Alex.”
Alongside the family members were Bristol police officers carrying the fallen.
“Words cannot express the grief we are experiencing. The anger, confusion, frustration, fear, uncertainty and overall sadness,” said Bristol Police Chief Brian Gould.
Both officers were fatally shot last Wednesday night after allegedly being lured by a fake 911 call reporting a domestic dispute, which officials suspect was a trap. Officer Alec Iurato was injured and fired one shot, killing the gunman.
Hamzy, 34, was with the department for eight years and Demonte, 35, was a 10-year veteran. He was a father of two with a third child on the way.
In observance of the funeral, much of Bristol was closed.
Nationwide, 53 law enforcement officers have been killed by gunfire so far this year, compared to 50 at this time last year.
Richmond, Indiana — After a police officer was shot in the line of duty just days before her wedding, the whole community grieved deeply.
Seara Burton, 28, was beloved. She died 39 days after she was shot on Aug. 10.
The idea that anything good could ever come from her passing was unimaginable. Until one day a stranger walked into the department. He held in his hand a white envelope with a sliver of hope inside — eight crumpled up $1 bills and a note that read, “People from the street.”
To information clerk Charlotte Jones, the man appeared to be homeless.
“I told him, ‘This is like the most amazing gift that we have gotten,’” Jones told CBS News.
The man accepted a hug, but insisted on no other recognition. He didn’t give his name, but said Burton was kind and would often check in on the homeless. So he collected donations from people living on the street — people with virtually nothing to give.
“They gave that knowing they don’t know if they’re going to have another dollar tomorrow,” Richmond Police Department Lt. Donnie Benedict told CBS News. “That is as genuine as you’re going to get. I mean, that $8 was like $8 million.”
We’ll never know exactly who all gave the money or why. Those answers are hiding beneath the brush and underpasses of Richmond. But by all accounts, Burton was generous and fair with a face that always defaulted to a smile.
Her stepmom, officer Ami Miller, said she was “not at all” surprised by the act. Miller said she hopes that “people don’t forget” who her stepdaughter was and that “this is part of who she was.”
In Burton’s honor, donations for the homeless are already pouring in. For the department, the greatest gift will always be that simple white envelope.
“There’s hope out there,” Benedict said. “There are people out there who will give everything.”
Both those in the line of duty and those they serve.
Larry Krasner has been at the forefront of the progressive-prosecutor movement since becoming Philadelphia’s district attorney in 2017. Which means that he has also been at the center of an unending storm.
Krasner has faced relentless battles with the police union, other local elected officials, and Republicans who control the Pennsylvania state legislature and are now making an unprecedented effort to impeach him. He’s also won support from many community leaders and criminal-justice-reform advocates. On Wednesday he reached a milestone: His office won a manslaughter conviction against a Philadelphia police officer for shooting a Black man in 2017—the first such conviction for on-duty action in Philadelphia in at least half a century.
Yet, like other progressive prosecutors in major cities from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles to San Francisco, his political position remains precarious. These prosecutors received a huge burst of momentum from the nationwide protests that erupted after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. And they have an aggressive agenda aimed at reducing jail and prison populations, elevating alternatives to incarceration (particularly for juvenile offenders), emphasizing community services over tough enforcement to reduce gun violence, and imposing greater accountability for police-officer misconduct. (Beyond Wednesday’s conviction, Krasner is pursuing murder cases against two other police officers; previously no murder case involving a Philadelphia police officer had gone to trial in almost 40 years, ThePhiladelphia Inquirer found.)
But rising crime rates have weakened these prosecutors’ standing. Though violent crime, particularly homicides, remains far below its peak, in the 1990s, the rates in many major cities spiked at the height of the pandemic to levels far above the totals earlier in this century—and have remained stubbornly high since. As of Monday, Philadelphia, for instance, has experienced 388 homicides this year, slightly more than in 2021 and double the number through that date as recently as 2015.
Criminologists say the causes of these increases are complex. And crime rates often rise faster in places committed to traditional hard-line policing and prosecutorial policies, as the centrist Democratic group Third Way showed in an eye-opening report earlier this year. (The murder rate in red counties outside Pittsburgh grew much faster than Philadelphia’s did from 2019 through 2021, Krasner’s office pointed out to me.) Krasner and his allies in Philadelphia cite the Republican-controlled legislature’s repeated rejection of stronger gun laws, such as red-flag statutes and universal background checks, as a key cause of the city’s endemic gun violence.
Yet none of this has insulated progressive prosecutors from an intensifying backlash. San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was recalled earlier this year; like-minded Los Angeles D.A. George Gascón narrowly avoided a recall election because opponents bungled their petition-gathering effort.
The decision by the Pennsylvania General Assembly to explore impeaching Krasner marks the latest challenge to the movement. Last week the chamber voted to hold Krasner in contempt when he refused to provide documents it demanded as part of the probe. Krasner, for his part, has filed suit in state court arguing that the legislature lacks the authority to remove him, primarily because its impeachment power, under the state constitution, is limited to state officials, not local ones.
Craig Green, a law professor at Temple University, told me he thinks Krasner is likely to win that argument. The General Assembly, Green says, has “never tried anything” like this possible impeachment before, even in cases where local officials were guilty of gross misconduct and corruption, which no one has alleged against Krasner. Craig is dubious that the state supreme court will conclude that the legislature’s disapproval of Krasner’s policy choices meets the standard of “improper or corrupt motive” the court has set as justifiable grounds for a potential impeachment.
Even if Krasner doesn’t win in court, Republicans don’t have enough votes in the State Senate to reach the two-thirds majority they would need to remove him should the House impeach him. But the controversy over his approach isn’t going anywhere, either, particularly as Philadelphia struggles with the wave of gun violence that has spilled out from long impoverished neighborhoods on the north and west sides into its rejuvenated Center City. More than 1,700 people have been shot in the city this year, police statistics show.
Yesterday at The Atlantic Festival, I sat down with Krasner to discuss his battles with the state legislature, his diagnosis for the rising crime rate, and his continued commitment to rethinking how the criminal-justice system operates. Below are highlights from that conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Ronald Brownstein: Mr. District Attorney, you have been in the center of the storm since your election in 2017. And you’ve certainly got one brewing now with the Republican-controlled General Assembly in Pennsylvania trying to impeach you. Why is this happening, and where is it going?
Larry Krasner: It’s happening because progressive prosecutors keep winning elections. There is a misperception that we’re losing; that’s actually incorrect. They can’t beat us in elections, so they try to remove us from office in other ways: by recalls, by impeachment. In my situation, what occurred is, for the first time in the history of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the legislature is trying to remove an elected official for their policies. I repeat: policies. You can get removed for crimes or deeply corrupt activity. That’s what impeachment is for. But you’re not supposed to be removed because your policy won by a landslide.
Brownstein: Can they remove, in your view, a local official as opposed to a statewide official?
Krasner: No, in my view, they can only remove statewide officials, because there is a separate impeachment procedure for cities. And I happen to be in a city.
Brownstein: Well, the policy dispute is obviously about your approach and what is happening with crime in Philadelphia. And [according to] the police department, there have been 388 homicides in Philadelphia. That was the figure through Monday. We are still not back up to the levels of crime that we saw in the 1990s, but we are at an elevated rate from earlier in the century, not only in Philadelphia but in many other cities. What’s driving this?
Krasner: Well, there’s been an uptick really since 2014 in Philadelphia. That’s more or less the low point nationally. I think a lot of things are driving this. But the main thing I bring up is guns. There are more and more and more guns every year. And if you look at the number of guns that are actually removed from the street by law enforcement, they are at least doubled or tripled by the new legal gun sales that are occurring. We have seen an accumulation of guns in this country at this point where we have one and a half guns per human being, more or less. And we have an NRA that would like to see a loaded gun tucked into a diaper. This is an NRA that would like silencers, which hasn’t happened since the 1930s. They would like us to be able to print our guns at home on 3-D printers. [It’s] the most damaging organization to public safety in the history of the United States.
Brownstein: Let me ask you about guns, because that is certainly one of the flash points in the debate about your approach in Philadelphia. It’s also been a flash point in L.A., where I live: what to do with people who are caught with guns but haven’t used them yet in a crime. Your view, as quoted recently in The New York Times, is that it’s counterproductive to focus on arresting and incarcerating people caught carrying firearms without legal permit. Why do you think that?
Krasner: So that view is not correct. It’s counterproductive to prioritize that more than solving gun violence. The reality is that if you want to stop gun violence, you should pursue gun violence. That means you should solve homicides. You should solve shootings. The current solve rate, or at least the most recent measured solve rate for gun homicides in Philly, is 28 percent. The most recent solve rate for shootings in Philly is 17 percent. Our conviction rate for homicides is approaching 90 percent; better than our predecessors, but we only get the cases [police officers] solve.
So a lot of what has happened all across the country is coming from [fraternal-order-of-police] sources, right-wing sources: that the real problem is guns; it’s not the homicides. And the reason they’re saying that is they’re having terrible difficulty solving the homicides. I do not say that, by the way, to besmirch the police. There are certain tools that they need. There are modern ways to actually solve these cases, including some absolutely unbelievable forensics that would blow your mind. But you’ve got to invest in them.
Brownstein: You had a landmark conviction of a police officer this week, which we’ll talk about in a moment. But I want to just be clear: What is your view about what should happen to people who are found with guns who have not yet committed a crime? Are you saying that they should in fact be prosecuted on a routine basis?
Krasner: Yes, they should. And the fact is that the House itself, before they decided to impeach me, did a study and found that the sentences for gun possession were longest in Philadelphia. Just so we understand what’s really happening here. This is not coming from some real concern about crime. Our city is giving out longer sentences, including under my administration. So that’s a total red herring.
Brownstein: Many of the other progressive prosecutors have talked about treating gun violence as a public-health problem. Again, the statistics as of Monday: 1,700 shooting victims. In Philadelphia, what have you learned about the opportunities and limits of a public-health strategy to combat gun violence? Do you feel like it’s stemming the tide with those kinds of numbers?
Krasner: I’ve learned we haven’t tried it. This is a country that has not used public health to try to deal with addiction. We have not used public health to deal with mental illness and homelessness. We haven’t used public health to deal with criminal justice. Even though we do have reform going on in ways that are constructive, all of the money that’s being saved, which is an enormous amount of money, is not going back into rebuilding the mental-health system that was torn down about 85 percent during the period of mass incarceration. All that money is not going into public schools. And in Philadelphia, public-school kids are funded at half the level of the surrounding counties. But that’s another enormous problem. If we don’t take the money that we’re saving from doing stupid and put it into smart, then all we’re doing is building another tax break for wealthy people, and there is going to be some level of failing to succeed as much as we could.
Brownstein: So give me your wish list to reduce those 1,700 shootings.
Krasner: On the enforcement side, the biggest thing that we should be doing is investing very, very heavily in modern forensics. You can do absolutely amazing things with cellphones that we could not do before. You can do amazing things right now with tiny bits of DNA. You can do amazing things that would solve an enormous number of cases. And until we do that, the notion of deterrence is really not there.
I don’t know why we are allowing anybody to have an AR-15. I don’t know why we’re allowing [young] people … to get them. I don’t know why we have gun shows at all. I don’t know why we have unregistered gun parts. I mean, the whole notion of a polymer gun or a ghost gun is that it’s a loophole. You can get an unmarked piece of plastic and a bunch of unmarked pieces of metal that you can buy on the internet. You can put them together in your basement and you can sell an arsenal round out the back door. And we see more and more ghost guns that are showing up at crime scenes, and it’s doubling and tripling and quadrupling every year.
Brownstein: Some of the prosecutors elected as part of this movement have opposed cash bail, sometimes in all cases. But you have taken a different approach, a more nuanced approach. You support high cash bail in cases of gun violence.
Krasner: There’s a general misunderstanding of what “no cash bail” is. No cash bail has happened in D.C. for over 30 years. There’s only two stops on this train. One stop is you get out without having to pay money. You may have to go to a place that provides homeless services or mental-health services or addiction services, because whatever they’re sending you to is associated with your interaction with police. And those are nonviolent offenses, for the most part. But then there’s the other group who sit in jail, no matter how rich they are.
But the problem in Pennsylvania is you’ve got a legislature that likes its bail-bonds people, makes a lot of money in donations off of their lobbyists, and they are in love with cash bail. What we did in Philly is we tried to simulate a no-cash-bail system by asking for very high bail, which is a million or more in some cases. And then no bail; we don’t ask for these $10,000 bail, $50,000 bail amounts, because they just make things worse.
Brownstein: You won a landmark conviction of a police officer for an on-duty shooting, a manslaughter conviction—the first one, I believe, in at least 50 years. You have several more in the pipeline. What is the message you are sending with these cases?
Krasner: The message is what it always should have been, which is that justice applies to everybody. We probably cleared 150 or 200 shootings toward or of civilians by police in uniform. But we have charged three officers with homicide so far. And I mean, to me, this is not complicated. If you commit a murder, if you shoot an unarmed person in the back and you don’t have a lawful justification, the fact that you’re in uniform doesn’t excuse that.
[There are] a lot of really great cops in Philly. They just have a rotten leadership of their union. But there are a lot of really good cops in Philadelphia who are trying to do it the right way. And every time we knock down a corrupt police officer or a vicious, brutal police officer, we’re just lifting up the good ones, which also hasn’t been done in forever.
Brownstein: There’s a sense that this [progressive-prosecutor] movement is on the defensive now, as you noted, with the recall of Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, the attempted recall of Gascón, the fight that you are facing in Pennsylvania. Is it possible to maintain support for alternative approaches that focus less on incarceration while crime is going up?
Krasner: The way to get it under control is criminal-justice reform, because doing things in a just way actually does make us safer. And I know that sounds like a platitude. But let me just give you an example of why I think they’re really at our throats.
So, 10 years ago, there were essentially zero progressive prosecutors and no portion of the U.S. population lived in a jurisdiction with a progressive prosecutor. Two and a half years ago, 10 percent of the U.S. population [did]. Right now it’s about 20 percent; 70, 75 million Americans have elected or reelected a progressive prosecutor. They all want to talk all day about Chesa Boudin and his recall, all that. They want to talk about that. Who here knows that we have a new district attorney in Memphis who is a progressive and replaced a very conservative incumbent? Who here knows that in Alameda County, right across from San Francisco, Pamela Price is about to win and win big? And she lost four years ago. It is not the case that progressive prosecution is dead in action. The real case here is that even in this incredibly difficult time, it’s maintaining. I wouldn’t say it’s growing, you know, doubling in leaps and bounds like it did around the events surrounding George Floyd. But it is maintaining. So the reality is we’re doing really well, and they can’t beat us in elections, and they’re worried about that.
The truth is, conservatives don’t actually care very much about crime. They really don’t. What they’re really worried about is that criminal-justice reform is something that connects to voters who are unlikely voters who are alienated from the system, who finally are seeing some reason to go to the polls, which is why we had insane turnouts in our off-year, low-turnout elections both times I ran. And we’ve seen this in many other jurisdictions. If I am a MAGA Republican, the last thing I want to see is any progressive prosecutor still standing. Because what it could be is the salvation of democracy. And they are out to destroy democracy.
