Jeff Lamson
@jefflamson.bsky.social
History PhD candidate. Studying cop cars, police technology, and counterinsurgency. Researcher with Campaign Zero.
Pinned
Jeff Lamson
@jefflamson.bsky.social
· Nov 11
Fatal Chase: Cops and the Illusion of Control
Police chases place ordinary citizens in grave danger. No amount of training or increasingly strict department policies will change that.
www.publicbooks.org
Happy to share this article I wrote for @publicbooks.bsky.social about police chases and PIT maneuvers: “Like all forms of police brutality, its essential purpose is not to protect the public but to violently reassert police authority.”
www.publicbooks.org/fatal-chase-...
www.publicbooks.org/fatal-chase-...
A phenomenal explainer
November 25, 2025 at 2:10 AM
A phenomenal explainer
I know all the sports franchises I love are pretty much soulless monsters, but this is a real gut punch. Absolutely shameful
www.overthemonster.com/red_sox_news...
www.overthemonster.com/red_sox_news...
Whatever excuse the Red Sox have for allowing a Palantir advertisement to hang above Fenway Park, it’s not good enough
The banner was there, and it always will have been there.
www.overthemonster.com
November 22, 2025 at 1:39 AM
I know all the sports franchises I love are pretty much soulless monsters, but this is a real gut punch. Absolutely shameful
www.overthemonster.com/red_sox_news...
www.overthemonster.com/red_sox_news...
For some, ALPRs seem innocuous on their face, but loop them into police systems that use predatory algorithms and suddenly normal behavior gets coded as criminal. You can’t regulate the danger of this tech away. It is always going to be harnessed to criminalize regular people doing regular things
AP finds a secretive Border Patrol intelligence program detains Americans for “suspicious” travel. Critics call it mass surveillance.
Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with 'suspicious' travel patterns
The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious.
bit.ly
November 21, 2025 at 1:54 AM
For some, ALPRs seem innocuous on their face, but loop them into police systems that use predatory algorithms and suddenly normal behavior gets coded as criminal. You can’t regulate the danger of this tech away. It is always going to be harnessed to criminalize regular people doing regular things
Reposted by Jeff Lamson
I'm game for whatever as long as can get rid of the miserable Apple tv coverage
NEWS: MLB is set to announce its new TV deals with NBC, Netflix and ESPN, sources tell @andrewmarchand.bsky.social.
NBC will become the new home of the first round of the playoffs and Sunday Night Baseball.
NBC will become the new home of the first round of the playoffs and Sunday Night Baseball.
November 19, 2025 at 5:35 PM
I'm game for whatever as long as can get rid of the miserable Apple tv coverage
Agreed. And yet at ASC Conference last week I attended a panel featuring reps from SoundThinking (ShotSpotter) alongside established criminologists, and the field has a long history of bolstering and sanitizing the deployment of harmful tech. The relationship is a complicated and embedded one.
Criminologist here. The things that actually retard crime have very little to do with the deployment of any given technology. But most social scientists don’t have a product to sell. So, what could we know?
I've been following practically every move Amazon's Ring has been making at a microscopic level for 7 years now--so forgive me that I wrote a thread about the returning CEO's interview with the Verge from yesterday. 🧵
November 19, 2025 at 2:08 AM
Agreed. And yet at ASC Conference last week I attended a panel featuring reps from SoundThinking (ShotSpotter) alongside established criminologists, and the field has a long history of bolstering and sanitizing the deployment of harmful tech. The relationship is a complicated and embedded one.
Reposted by Jeff Lamson
Reposted by Jeff Lamson
Because it never stops being relevant, I'm re-sharing this piece I wrote in Time Magazine in 2023 about how surveillance of immigrants and xenophobic fears of immigrant crime re-made US policing into something more repressive for all people.
time.com
September 2, 2025 at 6:36 PM
Because it never stops being relevant, I'm re-sharing this piece I wrote in Time Magazine in 2023 about how surveillance of immigrants and xenophobic fears of immigrant crime re-made US policing into something more repressive for all people.
Reposted by Jeff Lamson
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz after touring "Alligator Alcatraz": "These detainees are living in cages. The pictures you've seen don't do it just. They are essentially packed into cages. 34 detainees per cage...they get their drinking water & they brush their teeth where they poop, in the same unit"
July 12, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz after touring "Alligator Alcatraz": "These detainees are living in cages. The pictures you've seen don't do it just. They are essentially packed into cages. 34 detainees per cage...they get their drinking water & they brush their teeth where they poop, in the same unit"
Reposted by Jeff Lamson
Axon has gone out of its way to make sure you won't be able to know which parts of a police report were written by an officer and which were written by an AI. Their so-called "audit" trails are almost useless. www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...
Axon’s Draft One is Designed to Defy Transparency
Axon Enterprise’s Draft One — a generative artificial intelligence product that writes police reports based on audio from officers’ body-worn cameras — seems deliberately designed to avoid audits that...
www.eff.org
July 10, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Axon has gone out of its way to make sure you won't be able to know which parts of a police report were written by an officer and which were written by an AI. Their so-called "audit" trails are almost useless. www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...
Reposted by Jeff Lamson
From the Cato Institute; this one is worth reading.
Topline: "nonpublic data from ICE indicate that the government is primarily detaining individuals with no criminal convictions of any kind."
Don't let their lies dominate the narrative.
www.cato.org/blog/65-peop...
Topline: "nonpublic data from ICE indicate that the government is primarily detaining individuals with no criminal convictions of any kind."
Don't let their lies dominate the narrative.
www.cato.org/blog/65-peop...
65 Percent of People Taken by ICE Had No Convictions, 93 Percent No Violent Convictions
ICE’s deportation agenda is not what is being advertised to the American public. ICE is not interested in prioritizing public safety, yet it constantly pretends that anyone who objects to its tactics ...
www.cato.org
June 23, 2025 at 1:53 AM
From the Cato Institute; this one is worth reading.
Topline: "nonpublic data from ICE indicate that the government is primarily detaining individuals with no criminal convictions of any kind."
Don't let their lies dominate the narrative.
www.cato.org/blog/65-peop...
Topline: "nonpublic data from ICE indicate that the government is primarily detaining individuals with no criminal convictions of any kind."
Don't let their lies dominate the narrative.
www.cato.org/blog/65-peop...
Reposted by Jeff Lamson
2) Trump has had the same impact on economic uncertainty as a global pandemic.
April 4, 2025 at 12:51 PM
2) Trump has had the same impact on economic uncertainty as a global pandemic.
Reposted by Jeff Lamson
Well this makes pretty clear what we've known since 1898, that wars abroad militarize police back home.
www.stephensemler.com/p/how-the-ir...
www.stephensemler.com/p/how-the-ir...
March 25, 2025 at 2:38 PM
Well this makes pretty clear what we've known since 1898, that wars abroad militarize police back home.
www.stephensemler.com/p/how-the-ir...
www.stephensemler.com/p/how-the-ir...
"The police department has enlisted William Bratton, a former New York City police commissioner, to review the city’s security plans and vulnerability to attacks."
Bratton never missing an opportunity to exploit tragedy for a high-paid consulting gig.
www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...
Bratton never missing an opportunity to exploit tragedy for a high-paid consulting gig.
www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...
How New Orleans failed to protect Bourbon Street from attack, block by block
An examination of visuals, witness accounts and city planning documents reveals that security lapses in New Orleans left crucial gaps on Bourbon Street on New Year’s Day.
www.washingtonpost.com
January 14, 2025 at 12:56 PM
"The police department has enlisted William Bratton, a former New York City police commissioner, to review the city’s security plans and vulnerability to attacks."
Bratton never missing an opportunity to exploit tragedy for a high-paid consulting gig.
www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...
Bratton never missing an opportunity to exploit tragedy for a high-paid consulting gig.
www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...
The insanity of police technological hubris: instead of limiting or ending high speed chases after killing two high school students, build an app to alert people when the police are putting the public in danger
www.wbrz.com/videos/famil...
www.wbrz.com/videos/famil...
Family of teenager killed in police chase introduces new Pursuit Alert System
www.wbrz.com
January 6, 2025 at 3:52 PM
The insanity of police technological hubris: instead of limiting or ending high speed chases after killing two high school students, build an app to alert people when the police are putting the public in danger
www.wbrz.com/videos/famil...
www.wbrz.com/videos/famil...
Reposted by Jeff Lamson
My last year in year-end review post for @eff.org is about this year's developments in police use of AI.
AI and Policing: 2024 in Review
There’s no part of your life now where you can avoid the onslaught of “artificial intelligence.” Whether you’re trying to search for a recipe and sifting through AI-made summaries or listening to your...
www.eff.org
December 31, 2024 at 11:22 PM
My last year in year-end review post for @eff.org is about this year's developments in police use of AI.
Winter vacation vibes
December 29, 2024 at 11:47 PM
Winter vacation vibes
Reposted by Jeff Lamson
everything is speech now, except for actual speech, which is unfortunately election interference.
Trump's lawyers call a newpaper publishing information that might affect the eleciton "Election Interference" and argue it's some kind of tort, as opposed to Consitutionally protected speech. Also a poll published in parnership with a paper is "leaked" to it? www.documentcloud.org/documents/25...
December 17, 2024 at 4:42 PM
everything is speech now, except for actual speech, which is unfortunately election interference.
A direct result of how police put maintaining their authority above public safety, even as they do so in the name of…public safety
“public safety” the Eric Adams way
In the first 11 months of 2024, an unprecedented 398 vehicle crashes were preceded by police pursuits, resulting in at least 315 people injured — up 47% from the 215 people injured over the same period last year
www.thecity.nyc/2024/12/16/n...
In the first 11 months of 2024, an unprecedented 398 vehicle crashes were preceded by police pursuits, resulting in at least 315 people injured — up 47% from the 215 people injured over the same period last year
www.thecity.nyc/2024/12/16/n...
More Than a Crash a Day as NYPD Keeps Pedal to the Metal on Car Chases
Police car chases and crashes spiked after Eric Adams promoted two allies to leadership roles in the NYPD.
www.thecity.nyc
December 16, 2024 at 9:01 PM
A direct result of how police put maintaining their authority above public safety, even as they do so in the name of…public safety
Reposted by Jeff Lamson
Very tempted to just roll with PowerPoint’s design recommendations
December 2, 2024 at 2:20 PM
Very tempted to just roll with PowerPoint’s design recommendations
Reposted by Jeff Lamson
We're Taco Bell Quarterly and we're ready to fight. We're more prestigious than the Dandy and the Paris Review, who we are violently choking on our latest cover. Our acceptance rate is less than 1%. Check out Poem in the Shape of the Poet Beating Henry Kissinger to Death with Their Bare Hands
November 7, 2024 at 2:32 PM
We're Taco Bell Quarterly and we're ready to fight. We're more prestigious than the Dandy and the Paris Review, who we are violently choking on our latest cover. Our acceptance rate is less than 1%. Check out Poem in the Shape of the Poet Beating Henry Kissinger to Death with Their Bare Hands
I hate seeing these explanations because (1) we don’t really know yet if that’s true and (2) it probably isn’t and (3) most importantly, it continues to assume non-white votes are a gimme for dems, which is both condescending and dangerous.
November 14, 2024 at 11:48 AM
I hate seeing these explanations because (1) we don’t really know yet if that’s true and (2) it probably isn’t and (3) most importantly, it continues to assume non-white votes are a gimme for dems, which is both condescending and dangerous.
Reposted by Jeff Lamson
"House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that the widespread voter fraud he’d warned about all year turned out not to be a problem in last week’s elections that Republicans happened to win."
Mike Johnson Pleased To Report Election Not Tainted By Fraud This Time
The House speaker said all the weeks and months of Republicans warning about supposed noncitizen voting had prevented it from actually happening.
www.huffpost.com
November 12, 2024 at 5:08 PM
"House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that the widespread voter fraud he’d warned about all year turned out not to be a problem in last week’s elections that Republicans happened to win."
I currently teach at Cheshire and am blown away every week by my students. If you are in CT or the area and can go see this work I strongly suggest it!
November 13, 2024 at 12:10 AM
I currently teach at Cheshire and am blown away every week by my students. If you are in CT or the area and can go see this work I strongly suggest it!