One day in 1995, two officers from the New York Police Department walked up to a podium at Harvard University’s Ash Center. Louis Anemone and John Yohe were representing the department as a finalist in the Kennedy School’s Innovations in American Government competition, and their excitement about the force’s new, computerized crime-fighting system was palpable. “It’s revolutionizing the way the NYPD polices the city of New York,” Anemone told the judges. Giving officers rapidly-updating maps of crime all over the city, the system was “a shot of adrenaline to the organization of the NYPD,” the officer stressed, “right to the heart.” Previous decades had seen a tremendous rise in crime, but with the advent of CompStat, as it was called, the police said they were finally able to flatten the curve. More →

As the sweltering July heat baked the streets of Bed-Stuy Monday morning, mourners dressed in black and white filed out of Pleasant Grove Baptist behind the three-foot-long, cartoon-covered casket of one-year-old Davell Gardner, Jr, who was shot and killed in Brooklyn on July 12. The procession, led by Rev. Al Sharpton, spilled onto Fulton Street with a visible weariness; the weariness of a community wracked by death, facing another loss so horrific it is difficult to even comprehend. More →

Davell Gardner Jr., the one-year-old boy who was shot and killed at a cookout on July 12, was laid to rest in Brooklyn yesterday, at a service presided over by Rev. Al Sharpton and Bishop Albert L. Jamison. In a somber ceremony, attended by members of the community and prominent New York politicians and public figures, speakers remembered the short life of Gardner, while calling for an end to gun violence in the community. More →

As tensions come to a head in Portland, Oregon, where federal agents in military garb are putting protesters into unmarked vehicles and tear-gassing demonstrators, people on the other side of the country are throwing support behind the protesters. On the heels of President Trump’s announcement that he may send these same federal officers–described by one Oregon senator as an “occupying army”— into other Democrat-run cities such as New York, many are standing in solidarity with those in Portland and reminding elected officials that the movement is showing no signs of stopping. More →

Three weeks ago, Carlos had an internship in finance lined up for the summer and was planning to channel years of social activism, beginning in middle school, into a job in impact investing. But as protesters flooded the streets of New York, the 21-year-old Dartmouth student declined his internship offer and headed out to join them. Read more at NY Mag…