World News: BLM makes demands and Chicago starts to bend

The top things you may have missed about policing this week

Inmate smuggling has gone high tech

Newer technology is being used to smuggle contraband into prisons across the nation, and prison systems are lagging in their ability to stop it from happening. Drones have delivered everything from cellphones to drugs, pornography and tobacco onto prison grounds.

In Florida, where inmates have worked with folks on the outside from at least two prisons in the past 30 days to smuggle in goods via drone, legislators attempted to place prisons on a list of prohibited drone locations, but failed. More on Florida's fight to ban drone flight in the Tampa Bay Times.

BLM makes demands and Chicago starts to bend

De-funding police and criminally charging Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, are among the proposals from Black Lives Matter, and the city may be in a more receptive position to push those changes through. Emanuel's administration has agreed to allow BLM and other activists to consult on police department reforms. The agreement is part of a consent decree and comes after a lawsuit from state Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who is leaving office next year.

Black Lives Matter states that Emanuel was part of police "cover-ups of ... murders." More on the Chicago consent decree, the suit and the involvement of activist groups in the Chicago Tribune.

Is there a war on cops? Or should policing as we know it end?

Central questions two authors debated during a panel discussion at New York's Brooklyn College. Sociologist Alex S. Vitale's book The End of Policing argues a version of the latter. Vitale doesn't want to do away with law enforcement entirely, but certainly wants an end to destructive practices such as "broken windows policing" and the militarization and expansion of law enforcement seen over the past few decades. Manhattan Institute fellow Heather Mac Donald's The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe argues the opposite. The author praises practices such as "stop and frisk" (which targets folks of color more than anyone else) and data that pushes cops into certain neighborhoods. Mac Donald states that people in poor communities want greater police protection. Vitale argues that greater police presence is useless and unwanted. Jobs and opportunity are crucial. More on that debate and each book in The Nation.

For more on policing and the justice system across the country, visit policing.usatoday.com.

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