I meant to post about this a lot earlier. From the NYPD website:

September 24. New York City Police Department, Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and Innocence Project Awarded Federal Funds to Identify Wrongful Convictions

Grant Will Enable the NYPD to Catalogue Evidence That Can Be Subjected to DNA Testing

The New York City Police Department, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and the Innocence Project have been awarded a National Institute of Justice grant to catalogue evidence to improve access for those seeking to prove their innocence through DNA testing. The $1.25 million in grant funds will be distributed over two years.

You can read the rest of the press release on the NYPD’s website. Here’s an earlier post of mine about the Property Clerk Division, which I believe illustrates the need for this grant. But as I’ve said many times now, the responsiblity for storing evidence should be handed over to an independent group.

Evidence should not be stored by an organization that has a vested interest in the outcome of the trial. If I wanted to put you in jail, for instance, would you be comfortable with me holding onto all the physical evidence that will decide your fate? This is not a comment on the NYPD by the way, this is just common sense.

Barrels of evidence at the Property Clerk warehouse.

There’s a new show on BBC America about the early New York police department in the years just following the end of the Civil War. It’s called Copper. I was afraid they were going to white-wash the story a bit, but they haven’t. So if you are interested in law enforcement history, while this is a fictionalized account, they are getting some things right.

And, as long as I’m on the subject, a book called Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York, by Richard Zacks, chronicles Roosevelt’s attempts to clean up the mess depicted in Copper. From the Amazon review, where it was listed among the Best Books of March 2012:

“Those living in New York City today may be surprised (or not!) to read about the state of their city in the 1890’s; overrun with prostitution, gambling, boot liquor and Tammany Hall, NYC was known as the “Island of Vice.” Enter the ever-ambitious Theodore Roosevelt, years before he became president, who stepped-in as the NYC Police Commissioner and made it his mission to clean up the city. Richard Zacks’ enthusiastic account of this period is a fun read—an adjective rarely used to describe history books. It would be difficult to invent a cast of characters as exuberant and flawed as those involved here, and Zacks brings them all to life with ease. He clearly enjoys the subject, elevating this well-researched book into something memorable.”

A detail from a photograph in Jacob A. Riis book, How the Other Half Lives. The caption for this photograph reads: Police station lodgers waiting to be let out.

I posted this on my personal blog and I realized I should also put it here. When I was researching my book about the NYPD’s Cold Case Squad, one of the things I did was go down to the Municipal Archives and copy sections from the NYPD’s Annual Reports, going back to 1860.

I wanted to learn everything I could about murder in NYC over the years. This was from a section in the 1887 annual report called “Miscellaneous Statistics.” It’s one of many sad lists I came across.

The conference will take place from Aug. 13-17 at the DoubleTree Hotel in Murfreesboro, Tenn. The very impressive list of instructors and presenters listed in the email announcement:
 
• Detective Sgt. Pat Postiglione, Metropolitan Davidson County (Nashville) Police Department’s Cold Case Unit
 
• Dr. Lee Meadows Jantz and Dr. Joanne Bennett Devlin of the University of Tennessee Knoxville’s Forensic Anthropology Department (The Body Farm)
 
• Jerry Findley, renowned veteran criminologist
 
• Special Supervisory Agent  Lydia Pozzato of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit
 
• Dr. J. Randall Pearce, forensic odontologist with the National Forensics Academy
 
• Nick Beres, Emmy Award-winning TV journalist and veteran Murfreesboro Police Department spokesman Kyle Evans
 
• William C. Whitesell, Tennessee’s 16th Judicial District Attorney General, and ADA J. Paul Newman
 
• Lt. Bill Sharp and Sgt. Dan Goodwin, RCSO Cold Case Unit
 
• Cold case murder victims’ surviving loved ones
 
Also from the email:

Attendees are being asked to bring at least one open-unsolved murder case to present to the entire class and instructors. A group discussion of investigative strategies will follow.
 
Tuition is $450, but agencies sending three investigators can add a fourth or more for half-price. DoubleTree is offering a conference rate on rooms of $77 per night for a king-room and $97 per night for a double-room.

The 2012 Conference curriculum and agenda has been certified by Tennessee’s Police Officer’s Standards and Training Commission. Bethel University in Jackson, Tenn., will confer one (1) semester hour of undergraduate credits to each attendee.
 
The 80 officers from 60 agencies across the USA and Canada who attended our 2011 conference gave it extremely positive reviews.

To reserve a conference slot, or for more information, contact:
 
Capt. Steve Spence: 615-904-3062, sspence@rutherfordcountytn.gov
 
Cpl. Greg Wassom: 615-904-3020, gwassom@rutherfordcountytn.gov

Dr. Lee Meadows Jantz, one of the presenters.