Jeff Asher
Vox
New Orleans, LA, United States
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Past articles by Jeff:
The FBI’s murder rate mystery
Good luck figuring out what happened with crime in 2021. → Read More
One possible cause of the 2020 murder increase: More guns
Police are pointing fingers at protests to explain the murder increase. The data suggests the story is more complicated. → Read More
Why There’s Not Much Data on Anti-Asian Violence
The FBI’s hate crimes data is better than nothing, but the numbers produced by the bureau each year are not particularly useful. → Read More
What Drove the Historically Large Murder Spike in 2020?
The pandemic, police violence, and more guns all contributed to an unprecedented rise in murders across the United States. → Read More
Spying Doesn’t Pay — Unless You’re Really Good At It
Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced the arrest of Ron Hansen, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer. Hansen is accused of receiving at least $800,000 from Chinese sources in exchange for information he learned from “military and intelligence conferences in the U.S.” and for sensitive technology that the U.S. government had banned from being shared with China. → Read More
Former CIA analysts: We can't trust Devin Nunes
By voting to release the Devin Nunes memo, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee are letting political motives infiltrate their work, say Jeff Asher, Nada Bakos and Cindy Otis. → Read More
Fewer Crimes Get Counted When Police Are Slow To Respond
A 911 call was made at 11:09 p.m. on October 15, 2015, to report a battery incident involving a relatively minor use of force. Police arrived nearly a half-hour later, found no evidence of a crime having occurred, and went on their way. → Read More
The Saints Have The Best Rookie Class This Century
After three straight years of finishing 7-9, the New Orleans Saints seemed headed to another year of mediocrity when they began the season 0-2. But since Week 3, when New Orleans routed a 2-0 Carolina Panthers team on the road, the team has peeled off 12 wins in 15 games, including another win over the Panthers in the wild card round last Sunday. → Read More
Why We Can’t Be Sure If Violent Crime Is On The Rise
The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report shows that murder rose nationally for the second straight year in 2016, and we can feel fairly confident in that assessment becau… → Read More
The FBI’s Explanation For Why It Released Less Crime Data Doesn’t Add Up
Late last month, FiveThirtyEight published an article that noted that the FBI’s most recent accounting of crime data in the United States was missing almost 70 … → Read More
Gang Stats Aren’t Remotely Reliable, But Voters Keep Hearing About Them Anyway
Ed Gillespie, Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, has made the gang MS-13’s alleged role in rising violent crime in his state a major facet of his ca… → Read More
The First FBI Crime Report Issued Under Trump Is Missing A Ton Of Info
Every year, the FBI releases a report that is considered the gold standard for tracking crime statistics in the United States: the Crime in the United States re… → Read More
Gun Laws Stop At State Lines, But Guns Don’t
Soon after the tragic mass shooting in Las Vegas, the White House batted down the idea of enacting more gun control with the argument that many cities with stri… → Read More
The U.S. Murder Rate Is Up But Still Far Below Its 1980 Peak
The number of murders rose 8.6 percent nationwide in 2016, according to the FBI’s newest round of crime statistics, released Monday. There were an estimated 17,… → Read More
Murder Is Up Again In 2017, But Not As Much As Last Year
Big U.S. cities saw another increase in murders in the first half of 2017. → Read More
A blueprint for murder reduction in New Orleans
Crime analyst Jeff Asher offers a four-point prescription to curb the violence → Read More
A Handful Of Cities Are Driving 2016’s Rise In Murders
Last year’s dramatic rise in the number of murders appears to be continuing in 2016 — but at least so far, this year’s increase is slower than last year’s and is more concentrated in a few bi… → Read More
Gun Violence Spiked — And Arrests Declined — In Chicago Right After The Laquan McDonald Video Release
CHICAGO — The severe spike in gun violence Chicago is experiencing can be dated to the release of the video in the Laquan McDonald case, a FiveThirtyEight analysis of crime data shows. The sa… → Read More
Pivotal question for New Orleans police: How many officers should it have; how big should it be?
The question of how many police officers New Orleans should have has been debated since long before Hurricane Katrina. In researching this article, I came across discussions from the late 1990s of NOPD’s recruiting goals, and how large city leadership thought the force should be. Among the problems with looking at this question are that 1) there … → Read More
Good news: New Orleans Police response times starting to dramatically improve
Much has been made of NOPD’s response time struggles over the last few months. Increasing response times had both systemic and life-or-death consequences on New Orleans and spurred immediate policy changes from the police department. It has been three months since The Advocate and WWL-TV debuted the “NOPD: Call Waiting” series, and a dramatic drop … → Read More