I'm a quant guy, so at the vet today I pushed the doc to give me some hard numbers. Keeper is 10.4 pounds, over four floofs tall at the nuzzler, has a softness factor of 90 omgs, and an adorbs density of 13/10. Hard, objective, unbiased facts.
@poliSciDogs
#GradDogs
@dog_rates
Pretty big
#rstats
announcement from
@Rstudio
- the `text` package brings the ability to use cutting-edge language models (BERT, RoBERTa, and GP) to the R universe.
I'm happy to go Twitter-official and say how excited I'm am to be joining the faculty of
@UofSC_Crim
at the
@UofSC
as an assistant professor in Fall 2022. I can barely contain my excitement and gratitude, and can't wait to get started on the next steps on this path!
I'm so proud and grateful to have defended my dissertation today. The best part was the family and friends who'd come to take part. Wouldn't be here without the support of so many, and looking forward to the next life chapter.
Hearing "Dr. Ian Adams" is...a...trip :)
The Memphis video is awful and hard to make sense of at all. Every policing norm, every tactic, and every principle is completely thrown out of the window.
What in the hell went on in these officers' careers to let them get to the point where this was their reaction?
🚨New pub! 🚔
"Fuck: The Police" now in Police Quarterly
#OpenAccess
Do you like:
1) Swears
2) Policing
3) Pre-registered experiments?
Come along for a quick 🧵 on what I found:
Not a good look for Columbia University Press.
@PeterMoskos
’s voice in policing is essential. “Sympathetic to policing” is not a reason to reject scholarship, anymore than being critical. His first book was important to me as a patrol cop, can’t wait for this to see publication.
After a 5-month delay, and despite two _very_ positive peer reviews, the faculty board at Columbia University Press just rejected my NYC Crime Drop book. The reviewers were too sympathetic to policing, they said.
So I need a new publisher. Hopefully twitter can help me find one.
First attended
@UUtah
in 1997. As of today they’re kicking me out for good, after
Bachelors 2003 ✅
MPA 2017 ✅
PhD 2022 ✅
Dr. Sharon Mastracci has been the greatest mentor of my life. I’ll be forever grateful for the paths she opened for me.
Onward to
@UofSC
!
The most exciting bit of recent news in my work life is an appointment as an NIJ LEADS Academic. Looking forward to working alongside some other stellar academics like my friend
@BrandondelPozo
and making new friends aong the way. Thanks to the
@OJPNIP
folks for their support.
Dr. Adams is an Asst. Professor at the Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice,
@UofSC
. His research focuses on the practical concerns of police practitioners, with a specific interest in technology, policy, and personnel in law enforcement:
#NIJLEADS
One amazing thing about criminal justice scholars is the incredibly high percentage of our published research that just so happens to coincide with authors' priors. And, our findings nearly always support our preferred policy outcomes. The odds boggle the mind!
#expertise
Very odd to see a fan of "de-policing traffic enforcement" advocate for mass confiscation of guns. Who exactly would be doing the confiscation? Through what means?
What a cool paper (and well outside my normal fields).
Reintroduction of wolves reduce deer-vehicle collisions, saving $$$ and lives. Predations effects not reproducible by human hunters.
"1 in 14 Black youths in New Orleans will be slain before they reach 35."
Let that sink in, and remember it the next time you hear an "activist" pushing a depolicing or decarceration agenda.
"Whether you loathe the police or think they’re the answer, the fact is that 300-plus bodies who used to respond to 911 calls are gone — and haven’t been replaced with anything but small pilot programs."
Seattle cops keep leaving and backup never comes
New pub!
"De-Fanged," now at J. Experimental
#Criminology
The
#Police
#K9
has been used for ~115 years in the US. Critics and supporters propose competing claims about the effects of K9s
So what happened when a major agency suddenly stopped using K9s?
(1/7) New article in Policing: “Gunshot Detection Technology Time Savings & Spatial Precision. An Exploratory Analysis in Kansas City” w/
@da_hatt
Carter, Baughman & Mohler
#OpenAccess
postprint & research brief available at
@NU_SCCJ
Every time a scholar recommends “more training” for their pet policing theory without any evidence that training works, another rogue pig escapes to do whatever the fuck they want.
Markarian (APR, 2023) & Morris/Shoub (APSR, 2023) present divergent views on police killings' influence on voter turnout. Their differing conclusions underline how researchers' data choices can skew results, highlighting the need for caution before drawing definitive conclusions.
This is not just "bad policing," everything here runs counter to what is taught in policing. It's the opposite of policing - it's just raw animalistic rage.
Having been adopted, and been the very young birth parent who made the decision to place for adoption, this is an incredibly unnecessary and unthinking approach to take.
Update on this - it's super slick. If you're using Rstudio projects, just one command `softbib()` crawls your project space and kicks out nice latex/rmd/doc files for your software bibliography. Strong
#rstats
recommend.
Following up on our 2022 single-agency study in
@CPPJournal
, a preprint on police turnover after the George Floyd protests (with
@jnixy
and
@smourtgos
). We examine whether police resignations and retirements significantly changed in the two years following George Floyd's murder.
@joshshepperd
Self inflicted and avoidable at any point in the previous five years, or at the hearing itself. That’s not “the Right” claiming a scalp, it was self immolation and entirely predictable for anyone who’s observed the trajectory of academia’s take on speech in recent years.
At age 38, I asked a professor from my master's program for a letter of recommendation for a PhD program. Response: No, you'll be too old by the time you graduate to be productive or competitive for a tenure-track job.
@Rafa_Mangual
@NYPDnews
Here’s the 2021 Utah numbers (thanks to
@PaightenHarkins
and team at
@sltrib
). Note the huge jump in firearm assaults on police, even while overall police shootings held steady (and homicide and violent crime rates spiked).
Where do shootings happen (and did that change after 2020)? Together with John MacDonald we model the spatial concentration of shootings across 6 major US cities during 2018-2021 in the fresh paper in the Journal of Criminal Justice:
Policing scholars - consider having a couple police officers read your article drafts. I just had a sergeant *tear me up* on a draft in absolutely the best ways, and will make for a much stronger piece. Getting research to practice should start much earlier than publication day.
My main fear is that we are distracted by personal accountability and forget to find out what happened in these officers' careers and commands *beforehand.* The behavior in this video did not magically appear one night, it was built over time through consistent failure.
Excellent context and raises even more questions for me about why the public broadside from Jacob was more important than letting the process play out.
Open science is hurt when it becomes about collecting Twitter points. The goal is good science.
Jacob knows we’re aware of his claims. We’ve said as much in multiple email exchanges with him. We’ll share more details soon. I suggest people wait before reaching conclusions. We’re not going to hold court on Twitter. Here's a timeline to give a sense of how this has played out
@ColliniMelissa
@AcademicChatter
Nope, I spell "public" right every time. I definitely didn't misspell it in the title of my dissertation. That would just be silly, and embarrassing. Especially if it were a misspelling that doesn't get caught by spell check! Can you imagine? Phew, glad I'm not that guy.
Short piece from Seth Stoughton and I, as we trace a history of some specialized units and terrible outcomes.
Tyre Nichols' death underscores the troubled history of specialized police units
via
@ConversationUS
New pub!
With
@jnixy
and
@smourtgos
in JCJ, we show significant increases in turnover across our sample of 14 large, diverse police agencies in the US.
The patterns vary though, indicating a need for more tailored policy approaches to the problem.
Hard to overstate how excited I am about
@smourtgos
coming to
@UofSC_Crim
. Scott is going to make an immediate positive impact, and can't wait to see what he does over the next few years!
Almost four years ago
@AnEtchabear
and I were in Aberdeen, Scotland at the Aberdeen Whisky Shop. I picked up this bottle of Scotch and promised we wouldn’t drink it until the PhD was done. Tonight’s the night to make good on old promises.
@KassyDillon
We just gonna pretend that our own government, at the very highest levels, continuously claimed the virus was a hoax? Maybe before we go looking for other countries to get huffy about, we could take a good look at our own political failures.
Dear
@poliSciDogs
: I got a manuscript accepted on the same day as Keeper won his puppy class at his first dog show. If you're wondering which made me smile more, I'll note that I have exactly zero pictures of the journal acceptance email.
@OverheardOnDuty
@soulcycle
@Variis
@Refinery29
Yeah, but do those options literally exercise your SOUL? I thought not. Thanks for the advice, but my soul is worth around $3200, so this is still quite the deal.
My partner asked what I was doing today, and I said I had some work to do. She said, "Real work or just messing around in R doing things you don't get paid for? Because they look the same to me and I can never tell."
I can't tell either most days.
#rstats
#AcademicTwitter
New pub! With
@smourtgos
, Chris Simon, and Nick Lovrich.
Who we promote in
#policing
matters. Can we predict
#police
cadets' promotions later in their careers?
Yes. Based on cadets' headshots alone, we can predict later promotion with ~70% accuracy! 🤯
Leaving
@ASCRM41
very excited about the next few years. Maybe I’m getting better at attendance, but some absolutely stellar upcoming work is on the horizon. Some great students as well, makes me excited to see where they’ll take us!
It never gets old seeing Scott achieve everything he sets his mind to. Huge days in SLC this week watching him become Dr. Mourtgos and prepare to join us at
@UofSC_Crim
!
6 years ago
@ian_t_adams
(funny looking guy on left) convinced me I could do a PhD while working full time as a police executive. Last time I’ve taken anything he says seriously. BUT, I defended Thursday and am PhDone! Thanks to my awesome advisor Sharon Matracci (middle).
Working with diverse groups of coauthors can sometimes make for wildly different workflows. I use this little bit of
#rstats
code to create the initial file structures to help keep things clean.
Start a new R project, run this code. Easy.
@carbon_app
Common claim:
#Policing
is a huge % of local budgets.
Reality: In 2019, local policing expenditures across the US were ~ $100 billion. Per capita, this equates to about $325/year.
Want state data? Check new
@BJSgov
JEET tool:
At a policing research roundtable last week I predicted the relentless economic logic of police hiring/training means we'd soon see lateral bonuses of $75k as agencies come under worsening staffing pressure.
This is not magic - and will go up from here.
I don’t know a single person in law enforcement who says or believes this. If you are left with assigning a bald faced lie to those you deem your opponents, you’ve lost your way as a serious person.
“Cops across the country are quitting or allowing murders to happen because they think Chauvin was unfairly punished for doing the morally right thing” is an odd defense of policing. It’s an even odder argument that we should vastly expand it.
Two journal rejects in the same night and I'm so grateful for the obvious effort and skill of the six reviewers. The comments were on the nose throughout, and while clear, critiques never ventured into unkind. Sincere thanks if you're out there in
#AcademicTwitter
!
Our department is hiring! Open rank TT for a policing scholar looking to join a great and growing team in
@UofSC_Crim
at the
@UofSC
.
Details in the link below, happy to answer questions (DM or email).
Syllabus season rant: A syllabus statement prohibiting students from using ChatGPT/LLMs will not, in fact, stop them.
Nor will you be able to prove where they used one.
Instead, why not teach them to use the tools that will likely dominate their professional working lives?
Good thread on why this Balko piece trades in so much sleight of hand. You can’t just hand-wave out of existence the evidence that conflicts with your political project.
⬇️This⬇️ by
@radleybalko
is by far one of the worst pieces of crime-related journalism I’ve seen in a while. The article’s upshot? A bunch of cops quit in a very low-crime community and crime didn’t spike. So yeah, we can probably depolice.
I know… yikes.
Along with
@jnixy
and
@smourtgos
, I appreciate the chance to put some thoughts together on the police staffing crisis and it’s implications for
@CityJournal
.
TLDR: big crisis needs big solutions.
One year ago I got to finally have a drink of the scotch I’d saved for dissertation defense day. It’s been a whole year since I’ve first been able to insist my little brother call me Dr.!
The power of my newest piece is so great that some argue it’s the reason we should abolish *both* police AND criminology.
Some works are satisfied with abolishing only one profession. Let us not be satisfied with half steps.
#AbolishEverything
This is why some argue that Criminology as a field should be abolished along with the police. Fuck the police must be considered within an abolitionist/decolonial framework. We do not do research on police because we "like" or respect it but because of fighting racism.🧵1/4
How do you improve on the day where you found out you passed your comprehensive exams? Open the door to find the gorgeous
@AnEtchabear
with a bottle of celebration
#Lagavulin
16 year!
"Unnecessary by any definition"?!?
@apsrjournal
is a great journal and produces some empirical pieces that are useful, insightful, and contribute a ton.
But - this is ridiculous claim to lead with. "Any" definition would have to include legal definitions, for an easy example.
@AcademicChatter
Day one be ready with a citation manager, and in my opinion it should be
@zotero
. Little intro video for grad students I made a while ago here:
A meme homage to: "Et Tu Brute: Are Police Agencies Managed Better or Worse Than Universities?" by the great David Bayley (2011), in
@police_practice
.
I am not on the market, but my friend and excellent scholar
@HannahLebovits
is!
Please consider her for the thoughtful, hardworking work she does, and for the ways she will improve your program and students.
(And also so I don't have to compete with her next year! 😁)
Have
#police
staffing research on the mind? Hope you will submit to a special issue edited by
@smourtgos
, Jeremy Wilson and I!
Police Staffing: Global Perspectives and Local Realities
I learned that I will be receiving the Laverne Burchfield Award at
@ASPANational
2020 conference, for best book review article in
@PAReview
.
Instead of linking to my article, I hope you'll read about three important women behind this award! 1/4
A couple years ago
@joshmccrain
and I had an idea to bring together cutting edge policing scholars from econ, polisci, and crim. Just wrapped our 2nd year of that project and it was *absolutely amazing*. Thanks to all the amazing scholars who came out to make this work.
Just wrapped up
@joshmccrain
annual policing research workshop
@UUtah
. Scholars from all over and different disciplines to discuss interesting work and future directions. Students interested in learning ~the intersection of polisci and policing would be lucky to go work with josh
Very telling that Professor Vitale’s open letter refers to a woman as “Ms. Doleac” rather than her appropriate and earned title of Dr. Doleac. Or Professor Doleac, take your pick.
How quickly the pretense of “outrage” gives way to misogyny.
Outrage over the hiring of neoliberal economist and police apologist Jennifer Doleac to run criminal justice policy at Arnold Ventures is growing. My letter is in the thread.
One of the stronger expectations in the BWC era of policing is that the cameras would improve community perceptions of police.
New research based in NYC suggests no statistically significant effect for cameras on public perceptions of police.
Coverage of a tragic incident that seeks to inflame rather than inform. Zero quotes from outside academic or practitioner experts, instead relying only on two advocacy voices from the same side of the issue. Even an attempt to define de-escalation would have helped.
Interestingly, higher education institutions are trusted less than the police. Maybe it's time for a role reversal: How about lectures from police chiefs at universities on boosting trust in higher ed?
(with required shout out to David Bayley)
Words that shouldn’t make it thru review, perhaps especially in a law review journal: “Police Send People to Prison.”
Wish we could come up with some other words to describe other criminal justice actors, perhaps those who require law degrees, and who actually send ppl to prison
As part of an ongoing police turnover project,
@jnixy
@smourtgos
and I were already watching staffing in Memphis and other large, metro agencies with concern.
We put some thoughts down below.
via
@ConversationUS
Except…we have entire disciplines (ahem…criminology) where the first assumption doesn’t hold.
Periodic reminder that not a single criminology journal demands open scientific practice (data/code) from authors. This despite high profile outright data falsification.
7. However, journals now require high levels of transparency and accountability from their authors. So now, they should be willing to hold themselves to these same standards and make scientific decision making as transparent and open as possible.
Even the initial stop is confusing. Why is a task force member making a stop for a traffic violation?
Why are so many very inexperienced officers (all less than five years) being allowed to run this incident together? Where is the most basic arrest control training?
This week brought the good news that I've been awarded the public admin/policy/affairs scholarship so I can attend the
@ICPSRSummer
program. Getting all excited to get all
#quant
with it for a month!
It’s true, I’m on the academic job market, and while the stress is real, having good support and advice from mentors like
@jnixy
,
@jgaub_uncc
, and
@aecoppock
have been invaluable. So much more to learn and accomplish, and can’t wait to continue!
One last thing I want to mention is that one of my coauthors -
@LiminalMori
- is on the academic job market this cycle. He's finishing up his PhD at the University of Utah, but looking at his CV, you might think he was about to go up for tenure at an R1.
@raulpacheco
Your name and blog came up twice in our research design class last week, helping to point other PhD students to some resources. I don't know how you measure that kind of impact, but it's a lot bigger than the metrics!
There needs to be some reasonable perceived intent here. Maybe it exists, but that video doesn’t demonstrate it for me. A parade of “maybes” isn’t enough.
Mere presence of a firearm is always going to elevate the risk, but can’t (alone) be justification for using deadly force.
Celebrating two small things today
1. Fifth year in a row not permanently scarring or blinding myself with a firework on the 4th of July.
2. First time one of my articles hit 100 citations!
I was honored to have
@HannahLebovits
ask me to contribute my own experience of parenting as an academic, as I shifted from a previous profession. I would add that Hannah is an incredibly gifted writer and editor 😁
File under: More implicit bias training isn't the answer.
Pre-registered study: Day-long implicit bias training effective in class, but not after, in shifting attitudes among police.
I love using podcasts as material in classes. If you're teaching statistics/methods, suggest you give
@quantitudepod
a listen. Good mid-level summaries of methods/philosophies, large backlog so you can select relevant topics, and very engaging.
Want a real quick way to ensure that officers won’t be forthcoming about their struggles during mental health evaluations? Report the results to their boss and tie their professional livelihoods to the result.
"One [bill] would establish annual mental health evaluations for officers." Strikes me as dicey. Better annual performance evaluations, yes; but mental health≠performance. Linking the two can deter officers from getting help when they need it.
Some unexpected good news today, I've been awarded the Gustavson scholarship for quantitative studies for next year! Big thanks to
@BrentJSteele1
for being a strong advocate for me, and the not-on-twitter Profs. Sharon Mastracci and Matthew Burbank for their letters in support!
My favorite workshop of the year in SLC and what a treat to have OG Alpert speaking some of truths to a room full of hotshot interdisciplinary policing scholars. Great first day!
Seeing a lot of professors trying to regulate
@OpenAI
's
#ChatGPT
through syllabus statements. I think this is a mistake - the way forward must be about teaching students to use the tech, not punishing its use.
A short 🧵
Here’s that Professor of Economics who was arrested at Emory university and everyone seems to think is some poor victim of police repression. Caroline Fohlin ADMITS she hit a police officer on the head. Even professors are not allowed to assault cops. Yes, even professors.
Set the password for tonight’s zoom class to 8675309 and not a single student commented on it, or showed any awareness whatsoever.
Guess this is it for me, time to check into what senior communities are accepting applications.
All of today will be dedicated to making up for yesterday’s mistakes with a big focus on fitness.
First goal of the day - fit’ness slice of leftover key lime pie into my mouth for breakfast.
Happy nothing-goes-to-waste-day all.