Police Scrutiny Linked to Crime Rise, FBI Chief Says:  FBI Director James B. Comey said Friday that he believes heightened scrutiny and criticism of police officers brought on by highly publicized incidents of police brutality over the last year has led to less aggressive policing, resulting in an increase in violent crime in some cities.  Michael S. Schmidt and Matt Apuzzo of the NY Times report that though Comey acknowledges that he lacks hard, specific data at this time to back up his assertion, he has been told by many police leaders that their "officers, who normally would have stopped to question suspicious people, are opting to stay in their patrol cars for fear of having their encounters become worldwide video sensation."  Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O'Toole also notes that after being accused of discriminatory policing and excessive force, the Seattle Police Department instigated less stops, resulting in an uptick in crime in the city.  Comey will address the issue at the International Association of Chiefs of Police this week in Chicago.

The Sentencing Trap:  Mandatory minimum sentences and proactive policing born out of the Reagan era were the greatest public policy successes of the last two generations, according to Paul Mirengoff and William G. Otis in this article in the Weekly Standard, but now a group of senators is attempting to slash many of those mandatory minimums for federal crimes.  The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015, sponsored by Sens. Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee and Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley, would shorten mandatory sentences for repeat drug offenders, end the federal "three strikes" mandatory life provision and give federal judges greater license to exercise their discretion.  Mandatory minimums "succeeded spectacularly" in curbing the discretion of federal judges and contributed to 25 to 35 percent of the decline in crime, acknowledged even by some of the policy's harshest critics.  Mirengoff and Otis note that "criminal law exists to protect society from crime, not to protect criminals from jail."  

DHS Will Obey Order to Halt Detentions:  The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said, without releasing details, that it is complying with a court order severely limiting its ability to hold illegal immigrant children and families in detention, which required compliance by last Friday.  Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times reports that the court order was the second blow to DHS following Pennsylvania officials' announcement that they will not be renewing the license for one of the key facilities used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to hold families.  The two moves together "will curtail the few remaining get-tough parts of President Obama's immigration policy."  Last summer marked the beginning of a huge surge of immigrant parents and children from Central American crossing the southern border, peaking at over 20,000 a month in early summer 2014 and spiking again at 10,000 a month in August and September of this year, and the policy of holding illegal immigrant families was a key response to the overwhelming wave.  Judge Dolly M. Gee, however, found that ICE's detention policy violated a decades-old court settlement, ruling that children and their mothers must be sped through the system and released as early as possible, and cannot be held in secure jail-like facilities.  

OSU Crash Suspect Charged With Murder:  The woman arrested after driving her car into the homecoming parade crowd on the campus of Oklahoma State University on Saturday, killing four people and injuring several others, is set to face a judge Monday on a charge of driving under the influence and four charges of second-degree murder.  Fox News reports that 25-year-old Adacia Chambers allegedly plowed her vehicle through a large crowd gathered at the OSU campus in Stillwater for the homecoming football game, killing 23-year-old Nakita Prabhakar Nakal, married couple Bonnie Jean Stone and Marvin Lyle Stone, both 65, and two-year-old Nash Lucas, all of whom died of multiple blunt-force injuries.  Chambers' lawyer told the press that Chambers neither smelled of alcohol when he met with her hours after the crash nor did she appear to be intoxicated, but asserted that "she's suffering from mental illness."  A witness reports seeing Chambers leaving her job at a fast food restaurant only one hour into her shift Saturday morning, but there are mixed reports on her mental state at the time that she left.  She reportedly has diabetes that she doesn't treat as well as insomnia.  In addition to the four fatalities, 46 others were injured, including four critically.