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Monday, August 17, 2020

Human pathogen

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
A human pathogen is a pathogen (microbe or microorganism such as a virus, bacterium, prion, or fungus) that causes disease in humans.

The human physiological defense against common pathogens (such as Pneumocystis) is mainly the responsibility of the immune system with help by some of the body's normal flora and fauna. However, if the immune system or "good" microbiota are damaged in any way (such as by chemotherapy, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), or antibiotics being taken to kill other pathogens), pathogenic bacteria that were being held at bay can proliferate and cause harm to the host. Such cases are called opportunistic infections.

Some pathogens (such as the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which may have caused the Black Plague, the Variola virus, and the malaria protozoa) have been responsible for massive numbers of casualties and have had numerous effects on afflicted groups. Of particular note in modern times is HIV, which is known to have infected several million humans globally, along with the influenza virus. Today, while many medical advances have been made to safeguard against infection by pathogens, through the use of vaccination, antibiotics, and fungicide, pathogens continue to threaten human life. Social advances such as food safety, hygiene, and water treatment have reduced the threat from some pathogens.

Types

Viral

Pathogenic viruses are mainly those of the families of: Adenoviridae, Picornaviridae, Herpesviridae, Hepadnaviridae, Coronaviridae, Flaviviridae, Retroviridae, Orthomyxoviridae, Paramyxoviridae, Papovaviridae, Polyomavirus, Poxviridae, Rhabdoviridae, and Togaviridae. Some notable pathogenic viruses cause smallpox, influenza, mumps, measles, chickenpox, ebola, and rubella. Viruses typically range between 20 and 300 nanometers in length. 

Bacterial

Although the vast majority of bacteria are harmless or beneficial to one's body, a few pathogenic bacteria can cause infectious diseases. The most common bacterial disease is tuberculosis, caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which affects about 2 million people mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Pathogenic bacteria contribute to other globally important diseases, such as pneumonia, which can be caused by bacteria such as Streptococcus and Pseudomonas, and foodborne illnesses, which can be caused by bacteria such as Shigella, Campylobacter, and Salmonella. Pathogenic bacteria also cause infections such as tetanus, typhoid fever, diphtheria, syphilis, and Hansen's disease. They typically range between 1 and 5 micrometers in length.

Fungal

Fungi comprise a eukaryotic kingdom of microbes that are usually saprophytes, but can cause diseases in humans. Life-threatening fungal infections in humans most often occur in immunocompromised patients or vulnerable people with a weakened immune system, although fungi are common problems in the immunocompetent population as the causative agents of skin, nail, or yeast infections. Most antibiotics that function on bacterial pathogens cannot be used to treat fungal infections because fungi and their hosts both have eukaryotic cells. Most clinical fungicides belong to the azole group. The typical fungal spore size is 1-40 micrometers in length.

Other parasites

Some eukaryotic organisms, such as protists and helminths, cause disease. One of the best known diseases caused by protists in the genus Plasmodium is malaria. These can range from 3-200 micrometers in length.

Prionic

Prions are infectious pathogens that do not contain nucleic acids. Prions are abnormal proteins whose presence causes some diseases such as scrapie, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease), and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. The discovery of prion as a new class of pathogen allowed Stanley B. Prusiner to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1997.

Animal pathogens

Animal pathogens are disease-causing agents of wild and domestic animal species, at times including humans.

Virulence

Virulence (the tendency of a pathogen to cause damage to a host's fitness) evolves when that pathogen can spread from a diseased host, despite that host being very debilitated. An example is the malaria parasite, which can spread from a person near death, by hitching a ride to a healthy person on a mosquito that has bitten the diseased person. This is called horizontal transmission in contrast to vertical transmission, which tends to evolve symbiosis (after a period of high morbidity and mortality in the population) by linking the pathogen's evolutionary success to the evolutionary success of the host organism.

Transmission

Transmission of pathogens occurs through many different routes, including airborne, direct or indirect contact, sexual contact, through blood, breast milk, or other body fluids, and through the fecal-oral route. One of the primary pathways by which food or water become contaminated is from the release of untreated sewage into a drinking water supply or onto cropland, with the result that people who eat or drink contaminated sources become infected. In developing countries, most sewage is discharged into the environment or on cropland; even in developed countries, periodic system failures result in sanitary sewer overflows.

Examples

Pathogen

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In biology, a pathogen (Greek: πάθος pathos "suffering", "passion" and -γενής -genēs "producer of") in the oldest and broadest sense, is anything that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ.

The term pathogen came into use in the 1880s. Typically, the term is used to describe an infectious microorganism or agent, such as a virus, bacterium, protozoan, prion, viroid, or fungus. Small animals, such as certain kinds of worms and insect larvae, can also produce disease. However, these animals are usually, in common parlance, referred to as parasites rather than pathogens. The scientific study of microscopic organisms, including microscopic pathogenic organisms, is called microbiology, while the study of disease that may include these pathogens is called pathology. Parasitology, meanwhile, is the scientific study of parasites and the organisms that host them.

There are several pathways through which pathogens can invade a host. The principal pathways have different episodic time frames, but soil has the longest or most persistent potential for harboring a pathogen. Diseases in humans that are caused by infectious agents are known as pathogenic diseases, though not all diseases are caused by pathogens. Some diseases, such as Huntington's disease, are caused by inheritance of abnormal genes.

Pathogenicity

Pathogenicity is the potential disease-causing capacity of pathogens. Pathogenicity is related to virulence in meaning, but some authorities have come to distinguish it as a qualitative term, whereas the latter is quantitative. By this standard, an organism may be said to be pathogenic or non-pathogenic in a particular context, but not "more pathogenic" than another. Such comparisons are described instead in terms of relative virulence. Pathogenicity is also distinct from the transmissibility of the virus, which quantifies the risk of infection.

A pathogen may be described in terms of its ability to produce toxins, enter tissue, colonize, hijack nutrients, and its ability to immunosuppress the host.

Context-dependent pathogenicity

It is common to speak of an entire species of bacteria as pathogenic when it is identified as the cause of a disease (cf. Koch's postulates). However, the modern view is that pathogenicity depends on the microbial ecosystem as a whole. A bacterium may participate in opportunistic infections in immunocompromised hosts, acquire virulence factors by plasmid infection, become transferred to a different site within the host, or respond to changes in the overall numbers of other bacteria present. For example, infection of mesenteric lymph glands of mice with Yersinia can clear the way for continuing infection of these sites by Lactobacillus, possibly by a mechanism of "immunological scarring".

Related concepts

Virulence

Virulence (the tendency of a pathogen to reduce a host's fitness) evolves when a pathogen can spread from a diseased host, despite the host becoming debilitated. Horizontal transmission occurs between hosts of the same species, in contrast to vertical transmission, which tends to evolve toward symbiosis (after a period of high morbidity and mortality in the population) by linking the pathogen's evolutionary success to the evolutionary success of the host organism. Evolutionary biology proposes that many pathogens evolve an optimal virulence at which the fitness gained by increased replication rates is balanced by trade-offs in reduced transmission, but the exact mechanisms underlying these relationships remain controversial.

Transmission

Transmission of pathogens occurs through many different routes, including airborne, direct or indirect contact, sexual contact, through blood, breast milk, or other body fluids, and through the fecal-oral route.

Types of pathogens

Algae

Algae are single-celled eukaryotes that are generally non-pathogenic although pathogenic varieties do exist. Protothecosis is a disease found in dogs, cats, cattle, and humans caused by a type of green alga known as prototheca that lacks chlorophyll.

Bacteria

The vast majority of bacteria, which can range between 0.15 and 700 μM in length, are harmless or beneficial to humans. However, a relatively small list of pathogenic bacteria can cause infectious diseases. Pathogenic bacteria have several ways that they can cause disease. They can either directly affect the cells of their host, produce endotoxins that damage the cells of their host, or cause a strong enough immune response that the host cells are damaged. 

One of the bacterial diseases with the highest disease burden is tuberculosis, caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which killed 1.5 million people in 2013, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Pathogenic bacteria contribute to other globally significant diseases, such as pneumonia, which can be caused by bacteria such as Streptococcus and Pseudomonas, and foodborne illnesses, which can be caused by bacteria such as Shigella, Campylobacter, and Salmonella. Pathogenic bacteria also cause infections such as tetanus, typhoid fever, diphtheria, syphilis, and leprosy.

Fungi

Fungi are eukaryotic organisms that can function as pathogens. There are approximately 300 known fungi that are pathogenic to humans including Candida albicans, which is the most common cause of thrush, and Cryptococcus neoformans, which can cause a severe form of meningitis. The typical fungal spore size is <4 .7="" be="" but="" in="" larger.="" length="" m="" may="" p="" some="" spores="">

Prions

Prions are misfolded proteins that can transfer their misfolded state to other normally folded proteins of the same type. They do not contain any DNA or RNA and cannot replicate other than to convert already existing normal proteins to the misfolded state. These abnormally folded proteins are found characteristically in some diseases such as scrapie, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.

Viroids

Not to be coinfused with Virusoid or Virus. Viroids are the smallest infectious pathogens known. They are composed solely of a short strand of circular, single-stranded RNA that has no protein coating. All known viroids are inhabitants of higher plants, and most cause diseases, whose respective economic importance on humans vary widely.

Viruses

Viruses are small particles, typically between 20 and 300 nanometers in length, containing RNA or DNA. Viruses require a host cell to replicate. Some of the diseases that are caused by viral pathogens include smallpox, influenza, mumps, measles, chickenpox, ebola, HIV, rubella, and COVID-19.

Pathogenic viruses are mainly from the families: Adenoviridae, Coronaviridae, Picornaviridae, Herpesviridae, Hepadnaviridae, Flaviviridae, Retroviridae, Orthomyxoviridae, Paramyxoviridae, Papovaviridae, Polyomavirus, Rhabdoviridae, and Togaviridae. HIV is a notable member of the family Retroviridae which affected 37.9 million people across the world in 2018.

Other parasites

Some eukaryotic organisms, including a number of protozoa and helminths, are human parasites.

Pathogen hosts

Bacteria

Although bacteria can be pathogens themselves, they can also be infected by pathogens. Bacteriophages are viruses, also known as phage, that infect bacteria often leading to the death of the bacteria that was infected. Common bacteriophage include T7 and Lamda phage. There are bacteriophages that infect every kind of bacteria including both gram-negative and gram-positive. Even pathogenic bacteria that infect other species, including humans, can be infected with a phage.

Plants

Plants can play host to a wide range of pathogen types including viruses, bacteria, fungi, nematodes, and even other plants. Notable plant viruses include the Papaya ringspot virus which has caused millions of dollars of damage to farmers in Hawaii and Southeast Asia, and the Tobacco mosaic virus which caused scientist Martinus Beijerinck to coin the term "virus" in 1898. Bacterial plant pathogens are also a serious problem causing leaf spots, blights, and rots in many plant species. The top two bacterial pathogens for plants are P. syringae and R. solanacearum which cause leaf browning and other issues in potatoes, tomatoes, and bananas.

Fungi are another major pathogen type for plants. They can cause a wide variety of issues such as shorter plant height, growths or pits on tree trunks, root or seed rot, and leaf spots. Common and serious plant fungi include the rice blast fungus, Dutch elm disease, chestnut blight and the black knot and brown rot diseases of cherries, plums, and peaches. It is estimated that pathogenic fungi alone cause up to a 65% reduction in crop yield.

Overall, plants have a wide array of pathogens and it has been estimated that only 3% of the disease caused by plant pathogens can be managed.

Animals

Animals often get infected with many of the same or similar pathogens as humans including prions, viruses, bacteria, and fungi. While wild animals often get illnesses, the larger danger is for livestock animals. It is estimated that in rural settings, 90% or more of livestock deaths can be attributed to pathogens. The prion disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as Mad cow disease, is one of the few prion diseases that affect animals. Other animal diseases include a variety of immunodeficiency disorders that are caused by viruses related to the Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) including BIV and FIV.

Humans

Humans can be infected with many types of pathogens including prions, viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Viruses and bacteria that infect humans can cause symptoms such as sneezing, coughing, fever, vomiting, and even lead to death. Some of these symptoms are caused by the virus itself, while others are caused by the immune system of the infected person.

Treatment

Prion

Despite many attempts, to date no therapy has been shown to halt the progression of prion diseases.

Virus

A variety of prevention and treatment options exist for some viral pathogens. Vaccines are one common and effective preventive measure against a variety of viral pathogens. Vaccines prime the immune system of the host, so that when the potential host encounters the virus in the wild, the immune system can defend against infection quickly. Vaccines exist for viruses such as the measles, mumps, and rubella viruses and the influenza virus. Some viruses such as HIV, dengue, and chikungunya do not have vaccines available.

Treatment of viral infections often involves treating the symptoms of the infection rather than providing any medication that affects the viral pathogen itself. Treating the symptoms of a viral infection gives the host immune system time to develop antibodies against the viral pathogen which will then clear the infection. In some cases, treatment against the virus is necessary. One example of this is HIV where antiretroviral therapy, also known as ART or HAART, is needed to prevent immune cell loss and the progression into AIDS.

Bacteria

Much like viral pathogens, infection by certain bacterial pathogens can be prevented via vaccines. Vaccines against bacterial pathogens include the anthrax vaccine and the pneumococcal vaccine. Many other bacterial pathogens lack vaccines as a preventive measure, but infection by these bacteria can often be treated or prevented with antibiotics. Common antibiotics include amoxicillin, ciprofloxacin, and doxycycline. Each antibiotic has different bacteria that it is effective against and has different mechanisms to kill that bacteria. For example, doxycycline inhibits the synthesis of new proteins in both gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria which leads to the death of the affected bacteria.

Due in part to over-prescribing antibiotics in circumstances where they are not needed, some bacterial pathogens have developed antibiotic resistance and are becoming hard to treat with classical antibiotics. A genetically distinct strain of Staphylococcus aureus called MRSA is one example of a bacterial pathogen that is difficult to treat with common antibiotics. A report released in 2013 by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimated that each year in the United States, at least 2 million people get an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection, and at least 23,000 people die from those infections.

Due to their indispensability in Bacteria, essential persistent DNA methyltransferases are potential targets for the development of epigenetic inhibitors capable of, for example, enhance the therapeutic activity of antimicrobials , or decrease a pathogen's virulence.

Fungi

Infection by fungal pathogens is treated with anti-fungal medication. Fungal infections such as athlete's foot, jock itch, and ringworm are infections of the skin and can be treated with topical anti-fungal medications like Clotrimazole. Other common fungal infections include infections by the yeast strain Candida albicans. Candida can cause infections of the mouth or throat, commonly referred to as thrush, or it can cause vaginal infections. These internal infections can either be treated with anti-fungal creams or with oral medication. Common anti-fungal drugs for internal infections include the Echinocandin family of drugs and Fluconazole.

Algae

Algae are commonly not thought of as pathogens, but the genus Prototheca is known to cause disease in humans. Treatment for this kind of infection is currently under investigation and there is no consistency in clinical treatment.

Sexual interactions

Many pathogens are capable of sexual interaction. Among pathogenic bacteria, sexual interaction occurs between cells of the same species by the process of natural genetic transformation. Transformation involves the transfer of DNA from a donor cell to a recipient cell and the integration of the donor DNA into the recipient genome by recombination. Examples of bacterial pathogens capable of natural transformation are Helicobacter pylori, Haemophilus influenzae, Legionella pneumophila, Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Streptococcus pneumoniae.

Eukaryotic pathogens are often capable of sexual interaction by a process involving meiosis and syngamy. Meiosis involves the intimate pairing of homologous chromosomes and recombination between them. Examples of eukaryotic pathogens capable of sex include the protozoan parasites Plasmodium falciparum, Toxoplasma gondii, Trypanosoma brucei, Giardia intestinalis, and the fungi Aspergillus fumigatus, Candida albicans and Cryptococcus neoformans.

Viruses may also undergo sexual interaction when two or more viral genomes enter the same host cell. This process involves pairing of homologous genomes and recombination between them by a process referred to as multiplicity reactivation. Examples of viruses that undergo this process are herpes simplex virus, human immunodeficiency virus, and vaccinia virus.

The sexual processes in bacteria, microbial eukaryotes, and viruses all involve recombination between homologous genomes that appears to facilitate the repair of genomic damage to the pathogens caused by the defenses of their respective target hosts.

Sunday, August 16, 2020

Stop-and-frisk in New York City

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
The stop-question-and-frisk program, or stop-and-frisk, in New York City, is a New York City Police Department practice of temporarily detaining, questioning, and at times searching civilians and suspects on the street for weapons and other contraband. This is what is known in other places in the United States as the Terry stop. The rules for the policy are contained in the state's criminal procedure law section 140.50 and based on the decision of the US Supreme Court in the case of Terry v. Ohio.

In 2016, a reported 12,404 stops were made under the stop-and-frisk program. The stop-and-frisk program has previously taken place on a much wider scale. Between 2003 and 2013, over 100,000 stops were made per year, with 685,724 people being stopped at the height of the program in 2011. The program became the subject of a racial profiling controversy. Ninety percent of those stopped in 2017 were African-American or Latino, mostly aged 14–24. Seventy percent of those stopped were later found to be innocent. By contrast, 54.1% of the population of New York City in 2010 was African-American or Latino; however, 74.4% of individuals arrested overall were of those two racial groups.

Research shows that "persons of African and Hispanic descent were stopped more frequently than whites, even after controlling for precinct variability and race-specific estimates of crime participation." According to the Washington Post fact-checker, the claim that stop-and-frisk contributed to a decline in the crime rate is unsubstantiated.

Legal background of stop-and-frisk

Stops by NYPD
Year Stops
2002 97,296
2003 160,851
2004 313,523
2005 398,191
2006 506,491
2007 472,096
2008 540,302
2009 581,168
2010 601,285
2011 685,724
2012 532,911
2013 191,851
2014 45,787
2015 22,565
2016 12,404
2017 11,629
2018 11,008
2019 13,459
The United States Supreme Court made an important ruling on the use of stop-and-frisk in the 1968 case Terry v. Ohio, hence why the stops are also referred to as Terry stops. While frisks were arguably illegal, until then, a police officer could search only someone who had been arrested, unless a search warrant had been obtained. In the cases of Terry v. Ohio, Sibron v. New York, and Peters v. New York, the Supreme Court granted limited approval in 1968 to frisks conducted by officers lacking probable cause for an arrest in order to search for weapons if the officer suspects the subject to be armed and presently dangerous. The Court's decision made suspicion of danger to an officer grounds for a "reasonable search."

In the early 1980s, if a police officer had reasonable suspicion of a possible crime, he or she had the authority to stop someone and ask questions. If, based on the subject's answers, the suspicion level did not escalate to probable cause for an arrest, the person would be released immediately. That was only a "stop-and-question". The "frisk" part of the equation did not come into play except on two cases: if possession of a weapon was suspected, or reasonable suspicion of a possible crime escalated to probable cause to arrest for an actual crime based on facts developed after the initial stop-and-question. That all changed in the 1990s, when CompStat was developed under then-Police Commissioner William Bratton. High-ranking police officials widely incorporated the "stop, question and frisk".

Use of stop-and-frisk is often associated with "broken windows" policing. According to the "broken windows theory," low-level crime and disorder creates an environment that encourages more serious crimes. Among the key proponents of the theory are George L. Kelling and William Bratton, who was Chief of the New York City Transit Police from 1990 to 1992 and Commissioner of the New York City Police Department from 1994 to 1996. Mayor Rudy Giuliani hired Bratton for the latter job and endorsed broken windows policing. Giuliani and Bratton presided over an expansion of the New York police department and a crackdown on low-level crimes, including fare evasion, public drinking, public urination, graffiti artists, and "squeegee men" (who had been wiping windshields of stopped cars and aggressively demanding payment).

Bratton and Kelling argue that stop-and-frisk has been wrongly conflated with broken windows policing. They argue that stop-and-frisk is a short-term tactic for preventing a potential crime, whereas broken windows policing is a long-term tactic that requires the police to engage with communities.

Measurement of stop-and-frisk in New York City

In 2002, there were 97,296 "stop-and-frisk" stops made by New York police officers; 82.4% resulted in no fines or convictions. The number of stops increased dramatically in 2008 to over half a million, 88% of which did not result in any fine or conviction, peaking in 2011 to 685,724 stops, again with 88% (603,437) resulting in no conviction. Leading to the remaining 82,287 resulting in convictions. On average, from 2002 to 2013, the number of individuals stopped without any convictions was 87.6%.

Part of the stop-question-and-frisk program is executed under Operation Clean Halls, a program in which private property owners grant officers prior permission to enter a property for enforcement against criminal activity.

Some NYPD officers have objected publicly to the department's use of stop-question-and-frisk paperwork as a performance metric, which they claim encourages officers to overuse the practice and creates public hostility. Activists have accused the NYPD of encouraging stops through quotas, which department representatives have denied. In the vast majority of cases, no evidence of wrongdoing is found, and the stopped person is let go.

Controversy regarding misuse and claims of racial profiling

Demonstrators protest racial bias in policing, marching to then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg's house on June 17, 2012

New York police officer Adrian Schoolcraft made extensive recordings in 2008 and 2009, which documented orders from NYPD officials to search and arrest black people in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. Schoolcraft, who brought accusations of misconduct to NYPD investigators, was transferred to a desk job and then involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital. In 2010, Schoolcraft sent his tapes to the Village Voice, which publicized them in a series of reports. Schoolcraft alleges that the NYPD has retaliated against him for exposing information about the stop-and-frisk policy. The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), LatinoJustice PRLDEF, and The Bronx Defenders filed a federal class action against this program.

In response to allegations that the program unfairly targets African-American and Hispanic-American individuals, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg has stated that it is because African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans are more likely to be violent criminals and victims of violent crime.

On June 17, 2012, several thousand people marched silently down Manhattan's Fifth Avenue from lower Harlem to Bloomberg's Upper East Side townhouse in protest of the stop-question-and-frisk policy. The mayor refused to end the program, contending that the program reduces crime and saves lives.

In early July 2012, stop-question-and-frisk protesters who videotaped police stops in New York City were targeted by police for their activism. A "wanted"-style poster hung in a police precinct headquarters, without any allegation of criminal activity, accused one couple of being "professional agitators" whose "purpose is to portray officers in a negative way and too [sic] deter officers from conducting their responsibilities." Police officers later surveilled and recorded the exit of persons from a "stop stop-and-frisk" meeting held at the couple's residence, allegedly in response to an emergency call of loitering and trespass.

In October 2012, The Nation published an obscenity-filled audio recording that revealed two NYPD officers conducting a hostile and racially charged stop-and-frisk of an innocent teenager from Harlem. Following its upload, the recording soon turned viral, as it triggered outrage and "shed unprecedented light" on the practice of stop-and-frisk.

In June 2013, in an interview with WOR Radio, Michael Bloomberg responded to claims that the program disproportionately targeted minorities. Bloomberg argued that the data should be assessed based on murder suspects' descriptions and not the population as a whole. Bloomberg explained:
One newspaper and one news service, they just keep saying ‘oh it’s a disproportionate percentage of a particular ethnic group.’ That may be, but it’s not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the [crime]. In that case, incidentally, I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little.
In February 2020, an audio recording surfaced of Michael Bloomberg defending the program at a February 2015 Aspen Institute event. In the speech, Bloomberg said:
Ninety-five percent of murders- murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16-25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city (inaudible). And that’s where the real crime is. You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of people that are getting killed. So you want to spend the money on a lot of cops in the streets. Put those cops where the crime is, which means in minority neighborhoods. So one of the unintended consequences is people say, ‘Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana that are all minorities.’ Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in minority neighborhoods. Yes, that’s true. Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is. And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the wall and frisk them… And then they start… ‘Oh I don’t want to get caught.’ So they don’t bring the gun. They still have a gun, but they leave it at home.

Class-action lawsuit brought by Center for Constitutional Rights

In Floyd v. City of New York, decided on August 12, 2013, US District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that stop-and-frisk had been used in an unconstitutional manner and directed the police to adopt a written policy to specify where such stops are authorized.  Scheindlin appointed Peter L. Zimroth, a former chief lawyer for the City of New York, to oversee the program. Mayor Bloomberg indicated that the city will appeal the ruling. Scheindlin had denied pleas for a stay in her remediation of the policing policy, saying that "Ordering a stay now would send precisely the wrong signal. It would essentially confirm that the past practices... were justified and based on constitutional police practices. It would also send the message that reducing the number of stops is somehow dangerous to the residents of this city."

On October 31, 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit blocked the order requiring changes to the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk program and removed Judge Shira Scheindlin from the case. On November 9, 2013, the city asked a federal appeals court to vacate Scheindlin's orders. On November 22, 2013, the federal appellate court rejected the city's motion for a stay of the judge's orders.

On July 30, 2014, Southern District Court Judge Analisa Torres denied the police unions' motions to intervene and granted the proposed modification of the District Court's August 2013 remedial decision. A week later, the City of New York filed a motion to withdraw its appeal. On August 13, 2014, the Second Circuit announced the cases would be argued on October 15, 2014. On October 31, a three-judge panel on the Second Circuit unanimously ruled against the unions and allowed the city to proceed with its overhaul of the police department.

Settlement of lawsuit and political ramifications

A record 685,724 stops were made under the program in 2011; however, the number of stops made has been reduced in every year since then. A major turning point was the 2013 court case Floyd v. City of New York and a subsequent NYPD mandate that requires officers to thoroughly justify the reason for making a stop. In 2013, 191,558 stops were made.

Stop-and-frisk was an issue in the 2013 mayoral election. The race to succeed Bloomberg was won by Democratic Party candidate Bill de Blasio, who had pledged to reform the stop-and-frisk program, called for new leadership at the NYPD, an inspector general, and a strong racial profiling bill.

The number of stops continued to decrease over the next two years. In August 2014, Newsweek reported while stop-and-frisk numbers were down, they still happen disproportionately in New York City's African-American and Latino neighborhoods. In 2015, only 22,565 stops were made.

Class-action lawsuit brought by Bronx Defenders

On September 5th 2019, a New York judge granted class-action status to a case brought by The Bronx Defenders on behalf of individuals affected by stop-and-frisk. The lawyers attest that records of individuals who underwent stop-and-frisk were retained by police, despite the law requiring that those records be sealed. The arrestees had cases which were downgraded to non-criminal status, dropped, declined by prosecutors, or thrown out by court. Despite this, personal information such as arrest reports, mugshots, details about appearance, and residential addresses remained in law enforcement databases.

These records were used to increase the charges of individuals later arrested for unrelated crimes, and also continue to be used by the NYPD facial recognition database to track down suspects.

The politics of stop-and-frisk

Opposition

Opponents of the program have complained that it is racist and failed to reduce robbery, burglary, or other crime.

As Manhattan Borough President, current New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer argued that the program constitutes harassment of blacks and Latinos because it is disproportionately directed at them.

The NYC Bar Association casts doubt on whether police were applying the "reasonable suspicion" rule when making stops: "The sheer volume of stops that result in no determination of wrongdoing raise the question of whether police officers are consistently adhering to the constitutional requirement for reasonable suspicion for stops and frisks."

In a January 2018 op-ed in the National Review, conservative writer Kyle Smith said that the steep decline in New York City's crime rate since the reduction in the use of stop-and-frisk had shown him that he was wrong about stop-and-frisk; Smith had earlier argued that reducing stop-and-frisk would increase the crime rate.

Support

Paul J. Browne, an NYPD spokesman, defended the practice, saying "stops save lives, especially in communities disproportionately affected by crime, and especially among young men of color who last year represented 90 percent of murder victims and 96 percent of shooting victims in New York City."

Then-mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the aspect of stopping young black and Hispanic men at rates that "do not reflect the city’s overall census numbers", saying that "the proportion of stops generally reflects our crime numbers does not mean, as the judge wrongly concluded, that the police are engaged in racial profiling; it means they are stopping people in those communities who fit descriptions of suspects or are engaged in suspicious activity."

Heather Mac Donald denied that African Americans are being stopped too often and claimed the opposite: "The actual crime rates reveal that blacks are being significantly understopped, compared with their representation in the city's criminal population." NYC Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly wrote, "the statistics reinforce what crime numbers have shown for decades: that blacks in this city were disproportionately the victims of violent crime, followed by Hispanics. Their assailants were disproportionally black and Hispanic too."

Stop-and-frisk became an issue in the 2016 presidential election, with Donald Trump attributing a nonexistent increase in murders in New York to the reduction of stop-and-frisk.

Advocates for a small-scale program

Bratton and Kelling both argue that stop-and-frisk is a useful tool that must be used in moderation. In a joint article in late 2014, they wrote that a Terry stop is "one of the key means to detect and prevent crimes in progress" and "an important tool in street policing", while also supporting efforts to reduce its use. Bratton agreed it was causing tension with ethnic communities and that it was less needed in an era of lower crime.

Impact

Racial discrimination

A 2007 study in the Journal of the American Statistical Association found that under the stop-and-frisk policy, "persons of African and Hispanic descent were stopped more frequently than whites, even after controlling for precinct variability and race-specific estimates of crime participation."

Crime

A 2012 study finds few effects of stop-and-frisk on robbery and burglary rates in New York between 2003 and 2010. According to the Washington Post fact-checker, the claim that stop-and-frisk contributed to a decline in the crime rate is unsubstantiated.

A 2016 study found no evidence that stop-and-frisk was effective. One of the authors of that study, Jeffrey Fagan of Columbia University, said that "you can achieve really very positive crime control, reductions in crime, if you do stops using those probable-cause standards. If you just leave it up to the officers, based on their hunches, then they have almost no effect on crime." Fagan "found stops based on probable cause standards of criminal behavior were associated with a 5–9 percent decline in NYC crime in census block groups."

Another 2016 study found that stop-and-frisk lowered crime, and that the size of the effect was "significant yet modest". The authors also noted that "the level of SQFs needed to produce meaningful crime reductions are costly in terms of police time and are potentially harmful to police legitimacy." A 2017 study also reported that stop-and-frisk was associated with modest crime reductions, and cautioned against drawing strong causal conclusions.

A 2017 study in The Journal of Politics found that the introduction of a mandate in 2013 that officers provide thorough justifications for stopping suspects led to far fewer stops, far fewer detainments of innocent people and increased the ratio of stops that ultimately produced evidence of the crime that the police stopped the suspect for.

Economy

One study, controlling for relevant factors, finds "that properties exposed to more intense Stop & Frisk activity sold for significantly lower price."

Community policing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Police officers interact with the public in Des Moines, Iowa, during Police Week 2010.
 
Community policing, or community-oriented policing (COP), is a strategy of policing that focuses on building ties and working closely with members of the communities. A formal definition states:
Community policing is a philosophy of full service personalized policing, where the same officer patrols and works in the same area on a permanent basis, from a decentralized place, working in a proactive partnership with citizens to identify and solve problems.
—Bertus Ferreira
The central goal of community policing is for the police to build relationships with the community through interactions with local agencies and members of the public, creating partnerships and strategies for reducing crime and disorder. Although community policing mostly targets low-level crime and disorder, the broken windows theory proposes that this can reduce more serious crime as well.

Community policing is related to problem-oriented policing and intelligence-led policing, and contrasts with reactive policing strategies which were predominant in the late 20th century. It does not eliminate the need for reactive policing, although successful prevention can reduce the need for the latter. Many police forces have teams that focus specifically on community policing, such as Neighbourhood Policing Teams in the United Kingdom, which are separate from the more centralized units that respond to emergencies.

The overall assessment of community-oriented policing is positive, as both officers and community members attest to its effectiveness in reducing crime and raising the sense of security in a community.

History

Robert Peel's ideas about policing are sometimes considered a precursor to modern community policing.

Some authors have traced the core values of community policing to certain original 1829 Peelian Principles, most notably John Alderson, the former Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall Police. These included the ideas that the police needed to seek "the co-operation of the public" and prioritize crime prevention. The term "community policing" came into use in the late 20th century and, then, only as a response to a preceding philosophy of police organization.

In the early 20th century, the rise of automobiles, telecommunications and suburbanization transformed how the police operated. Police forces moved to using a reactive strategy versus a proactive approach, focusing on answering emergency calls as quickly as possible and relying on motor vehicle patrols to deter crime. Some police forces such as the Chicago Police Department began rotating officers between different neighborhoods as a measure to prevent corruption, and, as a result, foot patrols became rare. These changes significantly altered the nature of police presence in many neighborhoods.

By the 1960s, many countries such as the United States were looking for ways to repair relations between police forces and racial minorities. For example, in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a Blue Ribbon committee to study the apparent distrust with the police by many community members, especially along racial lines. The resulting report, the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice suggested the development of a new type of police officer which would act as a community liaison and work to build bridges between law enforcement and minority populations. Furthermore, the Kansas City preventive patrol experiment provided evidence that aimless motor patrols were not an effective deterrent to crime. Similarly, by 1981, a study by the US-based Police Foundation suggested that police officers spent so much time on response duties and in cars that they had become isolated from their communities. In response to some of these problems, many police departments in the United States began experimenting with what would become known as "community policing".

Research by Michigan criminal justice academics and practitioners started being published as early as the 1980s.  As a professor of criminal justice, Bob Trajanowcz in the late 1990s influenced many future law enforcement leaders on how to implement elements of community policing.  One experiment in Flint, Michigan, involved foot patrol officers be assigned to a specific geographic area to help reduce crime in hot spots. Community-oriented policing was promoted by the Clinton Administration. The 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act established the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) within the Justice Department and provided funding to promote community policing.

Kenneth Peak has argued that community policing in the United States has evolved through three generations: innovation (1979 to 1986), diffusion (1987 to 1994) and institutionalization (1995 to present day). The innovation period occurred following the civil unrest of the 1960s, in large part as an attempt to identify alternatives to the reactive methods developed in mid-century. This era was also saw the development of such programs as the broken windows theory and problem-oriented policing. The diffusion era followed, in which larger departments began to integrate aspects of community policing, often through grants that initiated specialized units. Lastly, the institutionalization era introduced mass application of community policing programs, in not only large departments but also smaller and more rural ones.

Method

Police officers and PCSOs of West Midlands Police prepare to go on cycle patrol. Community meetings were used to decide which areas needed patrolling the most.
 
Police in Strasbourg, France. Community policing movements have led to a revival of foot patrols.

Many community-oriented police structures focus on assigning officers to a specific area called a “beat”, those officers become familiar with that area through a process of “beat profiling.” The officers are then taught how to design specific patrol strategies to deal with the types of crime that are experienced in that beat.

These ideas are implemented in a multi-pronged approach using a variety of aspects, such as broadening the duties of the police officer and individualizing the practices to the community they're policing; refocusing police efforts to face-to-face interactions in smaller patrol areas with an emphasized goal of preventing criminal activity instead of responding to it; solving problems using input from the community they're policing; and, finally, making an effort to increase service-oriented positive interactions with police.

Common methods of community-policing include:
  • Encouraging the community to help prevent crime by providing advice, giving talks at schools, encouraging neighborhood watch groups, and a variety of other techniques.
  • Increased use of foot or bicycle patrols.
  • Increased officer accountability to the communities they are supposed to serve.
  • Creating teams of officers to carry out community policing in designated neighborhoods.
  • Clear communication between the police and the communities about their objectives and strategies.
  • Partnerships with other organizations such as government agencies, community members, nonprofit service providers, private businesses and the media.
  • Decentralizing the police authority, allowing more discretion amongst lower-ranking officers, and more initiative expected from them.

Comparison with traditional policing

Although all societies incorporate some mechanisms of social control, "policing" as we understand it today is a very particular mechanism of control. "Traditional policing" is used to describe policing styles that were predominant before modern community policing movements, or in police forces which have not adopted them. The response-centred style has also been called "fire brigade policing" in the UK. In countries with a tradition of policing by consent, the term "traditional policing" can be misleading. In those cases, community policing could be seen as a restoration of an earlier ideology, which had been overshadowed by reactive policing after the rise of automobiles and telecommunications.

The goal of traditional policing is to protect law-abiding citizens from criminals. As Jauregui argues, it reflects a "popular desire for justice and order through any means necessary." They do this by identifying and apprehending criminals while gathering enough evidence to convict them. Traditional beat officers' focus on duty is to respond to incidents swiftly, and clear emergency calls as quickly as possible. Many officers working busy shifts only have time to respond to and clear emergency calls. This type of policing does not stop or reduce crime significantly; it is simply a temporary fix to a chronic problem where officers are often called to return to the same issue and individuals.

In contrast, community policing's main goal is to assist the public in establishing and maintaining a safe, orderly social environment. While apprehending criminals is one important goal of community policing, it is not necessarily the most important goal. Community policing is concerned with solving the crimes that the community is concerned about by working with and gaining support from the community. The most effective solutions include dialogue between police, government resources, citizens, and local business to address the problems affecting the community. Police communicate with the community in variety of ways, including polls or surveys, town meetings, call-in programs, and meetings with interest groups. They use these connections to understand what the community wants out of its police officers and what the community is willing to do to solve its crime problem.
The structure of the community policing organization differs in that police assets are refocused with the goals of specific, written rules to give more creative problem-solving techniques to the police officer to provide alternatives to traditional law enforcement.

In Nordic countries and Camden, NJ

Journalist Ryan Cooper described law enforcement in Nordic countries in terms that seem consistent with community policing. In 2013 the city of Camden, NJ, with support from the New Jersey state government, disbanded their city police and hired some of the officers back at lower pay into new Camden County Police Department, following examples in Nordic countries. Camden had previously had appallingly high crime rates, which have reportedly declined dramatically since the change, presumably because more people are more likely to report crime and cooperate with law enforcement.

In high conflict zones like Afghanistan

D. Scott Mann, retired U.S. Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel, claims that his troops made substantial progress against insurgents in places like Afghanistan and Columbia by embedding themselves in local, remote communities and working hard to actually protect the locals from insurgents. They were not resisted when they initially arrive, but they were also not initially welcomed. After locals saw Mann's special forces working to understand their concerns and bleeding with them during attacks by insurgents, the locals begin to trust Mann's special forces and provide information about the insurgents that helped reduce the level of violence and make law enforcement easier.

Community alienation

The experience of community alienation among police officers is closely tied to the experience of mastery, the state of mind in which an individual feels autonomous and experiences confidence in their ability, skill, and knowledge to control or influence external events. Community policing requires departments to flatten their organizational pyramid and place even more decision-making and discretion in the hands of line officers. As the level of community alienation or isolation that officers experience increases, there will be a corresponding decrease in officers' sense of mastery in carrying out their expanded discretionary role. Second, a strong sense of community integration for police officers would seem to be vital to the core community policing focus of proactive law enforcement. Proactive enforcement is usually defined as the predisposition of police officers to be actively committed to crime prevention, community problem-solving, and a more open, dynamic quality-oriented law enforcement-community partnership.

A lack of community support resulted in an increased sense of alienation and a greater degree of apathy among police officers. A lack of community support and working in a larger populated community was associated with an increased sense of alienation and a greater degree of inactivity among police officers. An increased sense of alienation resulted in a greater degree of negative feelings and lethargy among police officers. The more police officers felt socially isolated from the community they served, the more they withdrew and the more negative they felt towards its citizens.

Evaluation

Traditionally, determining whether police or policies are effective or not can be done by evaluating the crime rate for a geographic area. A crime rate in the United States is determined using the FBI's "Uniform Crime Reports" (UCR) or "National Incident-Based Reporting System" (NIBRS) as well as the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ "National Crime Victimization Survey" (NCVS).

Community policing is more complicated than simply comparing crime rates and there is no universally-accepted criteria for evaluating community policing. However, there are some structures that are commonly used. One possible way to determine whether or not community policing is effective in an area is for officers and key members of the community to set a specific mission and goals when starting out. Once specific goals are set, participation at every level is essential in obtaining commitment and achieving goals. Street-level officers, supervisors, executives, and the entire community should feel the goals represent what they want their police department to accomplish.

The U.S. federal government continues to provide support for incorporating community policing into local law enforcement practices through funding of research such as through the National Center for Community Policing at Michigan State University, small COPS grants to local agencies, and technical assistance.

The Center For Evidence-Based Crime Policy in George Mason University identifies the following randomized controlled trials on community policing as very rigorous.

Criticisms

Criminologists have raised several concerns vis-a-vis community policing and its implementation. On the broadest conceptual level, many legal scholars have highlighted that the term "community," at the heart of "community policing," is in itself ambiguous. Without a universal definition of the word, it is difficult to define what "community policing" should look like.

Others have remained skeptical of the political ambition behind community policing initiatives. For example, in 1984 Peter Waddington cautioned that the "largely uncritical acceptance with which [the notion of community policing] has been welcomed is itself a danger. Any proposal, however attractive, should be subjected to careful and skeptical scrutiny."  In particular, Waddington voiced concern that community policing was merely a restoration of the "bobby on the beat" concept, which had nostalgic appeal because it was less impersonal than the officer "flashing past" in a police car. He said that the former was a "romantic delusion", because "there was never a time when the police officer was everyone's friend, and there will never be such a time in the future." He also believed that order could only be maintained by the community itself, and not by the police alone. Similarly, C. B. Klockars and David Bayley both argue that community policing is unlikely to bring fundamental change to how police officers work, with Klockars calling it "mainly a rhetorical device". Unlike Klockars, Steven Herbert believe that community policing is proposing a fundamental change to policing, but argues that it would be a difficult one to achieve. He argues the progressive and democratic ethos of shared governance inherent in community policing runs counter to central elements in police culture and more widespread understandings of crime and punishment. Charles P. McDowell argued in 1993 that because community policing was a radical departure from existing ideology, implementing it would take time.

Yet another set of criticisms revolves around the potential efficacy of community policing. David Bayley has argued that enacting community policing policies may lead to a reduction in crime control effectiveness, maintenance of order in the face of violence, increase in bureaucratic and governmental power over community affairs, increases in unequal treatment, and an erosion of constitutional rights. According to Stenson, there is a major dilemma within community policing: when practicing community policing, police officers have the tendency of getting too involved with trying to institute "particularistic community normative standards". This in turn could be problematic, in that it could entice corruption or vigilantism.

Lie point symmetry

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie_point_symmetry     ...