A front-page story in this morning's New York Times reports on a grand jury's decision not to file criminal charges against the New York police detective who fatally shot Patrick Dorismond. The article says, "To police critics and Mr. Dorismond's family, his death was a symbol of a department whose aggressive tactics and appetite for ever-climbing arrest statistics caused detectives to draw a young man into a scuffle that led to his killing."
Well, this may be how some police critics frame the issue, but to leave it at that, as the Times does, misses the point. The New York police in the Bratton-Giuliani-Safir era have little appetite for "ever-climbing arrest statistics." What they have an appetite for is ever-declining crime statistics. In the past, police officials may have been rewarded for the number of arrests in their precincts, but after a while, smart police chiefs and academic scholars of policing such as George Kelling figured out that rewarding arrests is beside the point and even counterproductive. In some instances, an increase in arrests may simply indicate an increase in crime, which isn't something that the department would have an appetite for. The goals and incentives within the New York Police Department have been pretty thoroughly adjusted to make crime reduction, not arrests, the key statistical motivator.
Tax Cuts and Deficits: An article on the op-ed page of today's New York Times faults Richard Cheney for supporting tax cuts that allegedly created federal budget deficits. "A backer of the tax cuts that created the 80s deficits," a pull-out quote from the article says. The article contains a reference to "President Reagan's budget-busting tax plan." The article ignores the fact that government tax revenues actually increased after the Reagan tax cuts as a result of the economic growth they created. It wasn't the tax cuts that created the deficits, it was the runaway spending that was being passed at the time by the Democratic-controlled Congress. The spending increased even more than tax revenues did. Not that the Reagan-era deficits were so horrible; we've managed to dig ourselves out now into a surplus. And the military buildup that also contributed to the deficits helped win the Cold War, creating a peace dividend that saves taxpayers money in the long run.
"Kathie" Levine: Given that Cathie Levine is the press secretary to Senator Schumer of New York and was also his campaign spokeswoman, you would think that the New York Times would know how to spell her name. Nope. In the "Public Lives" column of the metro section in today's New York editions, an item reporting that Ms. Levine is joining Hillary Clinton's campaign renders her name incorrectly, as "Kathie" Levine. It's spelled Cathie, with a "C."