When economic interests and the criminal justice system intersect it often creates problems for poor people in urban areas. To the poorer residents of California’s Bay Area this is becoming more evident with the increasing growth of the technology businesses in the city of San Francisco. San Francisco is a densely populated city and is a difficult place to find a home. The employees of the growing companies would have to move to surrounding cities and slowly move people of lower income out. This process, called gentrification, is the renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents. In Eric K. Arnold’s “Oakland Gang Injunctions: Gentrification or Public Safety?” he describes how growing trends in law enforcement are merely justified structural racism which target the disenfranchised populations in areas of most desired real estate. In times of gentrification, policing and controlling the populations of the poor becomes harder and more aggressive. The aggression leads to profiling and unfair treatment of the poorer populations.
One example which Arnold details in his article is the Oakland Police Department’s “hotspot enforcement strategy” which is intended to flood areas with the highest and most frequent violent crime rates. West Oakland’s District 3 and the 6th and 7th Districts of East Oakland had the highest violent crime rates according to the Oakland Police Departments records but instead targeted an area in Northern Oakland. This is due to a gang injunction placed upon the North Side Oakland Gang (NSO) which is predominantly Latino. Although the area where the NSO gang resides is not the most frequent for violent crimes it is the best suitable for creating more expensive living as it is directly situated next to the Temescal District, which has been dubbed by the Wall Street Journal as a ‘yupster magnet’. The gang injunctions would allow for the police to embrace more aggressive and proactive tactics while policing those who fit the gang member profile, which means Latino people in the Northern Oakland Area will experience more harassment from the police. It becomes the ‘hard version’ of community policing style for certain populations and ignores the soft version, or problem oriented policing style which would address the poverty and lack of employment in those areas.
In Franklin E. Zimring’s “The City That Became Safe” he explains that proactive policing, or a ‘predictive offense’ may be the moral equivalent of racial profiling due to a justification for selective enforcement. African Americans have been stopped at a higher percentage than non-African Americans for marijuana despite reports of equal use between the different communities. The obvious reason behind this disparity in stops is that the communities which the African Americans live in are poorer communities. Also African Americans, like the Latino people in North Oakland, would look exponentially more suspicious following the gang injunctions because gang members are described as Latino or African Americans.
Policing in areas of gentrification is not meant to keep the entire population of that area safe, but instead to accommodate to the requirements and economic standards of the people who wish to push the less powerful population out. Through more aggressive and proactive policing poorer populations are given very little option other than to accept the harassment or move to another area with low income. Gentrification policing may take on names like ‘tough on crime’ and ‘public safety’ which seem to help and promote peace for the entire population but in reality it creates systematic discrimination and justifies racial profiling.
Sources:
Arnold, Eric K. “Oakland Gang Injunctions: Gentrification or Public Safety?” Welcome to Urban Habitat. N.p., n.d. Web 21 Feb. 2014
Zimring, Franklin. 2012. The City that Became Safe. N.Y.: Oxford University Press. Pp. 100-152.
Alex, I think this blog post importantly highlights how law enforcement can function to protect the interests of the wealthy and discriminate against the poor. This is a significant factor fuelling the cycle of systemic discrimination and social inequality. This reminds me of the ‘big idea’ from Supervision, ‘inequality in the surveillance society’, and how systems of surveillance fuse with embedded social distinctions connected to racial and class inequalities. And serve to control those with less power/minority groups, whilst simultaneously protecting the interests of the wealthy and preserving the status-quo. I also like how you link this to the idea of ‘hard policing’ of minority populations.
ReplyDeleteOops, forgot to attach my name! previous comment was from Madeleine McGlade:
ReplyDeleteAlex, I think this blog post importantly highlights how law enforcement can function to protect the interests of the wealthy and discriminate against the poor. This is a significant factor fuelling the cycle of systemic discrimination and social inequality. This reminds me of the ‘big idea’ from Supervision, ‘inequality in the surveillance society’, and how systems of surveillance fuse with embedded social distinctions connected to racial and class inequalities. And serve to control those with less power/minority groups, whilst simultaneously protecting the interests of the wealthy and preserving the status-quo. I also like how you link this to the idea of ‘hard policing’ of minority populations.
Madeleine McGlade
Alex, poignant blog post. Specifically enjoyed the distinction you made between policing for public safety vs. policing for the protection and continuation of gentrification. As I said in class Thursday, I think Beckett and Herbert offer us excellent insight into the stratification of police tactics. The act of banishment allows room for the fruition of gentrification. Police seem to place special emphasis on the removal of "undesirables" to maintain a neighborhood's cultural, social, and thereby economic value. So, it is no wonder how this schema compounds the racial inequality reflected in our geography.
ReplyDelete- Chelsea Goddard
This is an excellent post that brings up a lot of questions, at least for me. While it is obvious that the gang injunctions in Oakland's northside were put in place as a reaction to the gentrification, to try and make the area more "safe" for the new population of people. This, in effect, can have negative consequences for the original inhabitants of the area. As Alex pointed out, it seems like these injunctions are meant to empower the people who wish to push the less powerful populations out. This, obviously, is not a good thing. But the thing is, if these injunctions had any kind of positive effect, such as if they actually lowered the rate of crime (and if they were put into effect in areas that needed them, not just newly gentrified areas), I don't think I would have any problem with them? Arguably they are designed to make the neighborhood safer, to cut back on crime. Unfortunately that leads to a lot of the negative consequences that Alex pointed out above. However, I think the theoretical idea of these injunctions are sound, they have just been put into practice in the wrong manner, furthering the inequality faced on our society.
ReplyDelete~BriAnne Lynn
After watching in class to how the gang injunction was sold to the public as an utmost priority for crime reduction in North Oakland, I am very jaded about the legitimacy of the Oakland Police Dept. Instead of attempting to improve the quality of life for existing residents and listen to their complaints, they choose to respond foremost to the calls of real estate developers and agents to drive out crime.
ReplyDeleteShiwei Chen
Gentrification might be a good thing. Like 7 years back they built a train line in my neighborhood. While this facilitates travel it also brings in curious non-Latino people. The last 7 years condos, which I assumed would be governmental housing, have been built. In the last 7 years I've also seen more community focused programs. In the last 7 years I also discovered we had a city hall because a building was being rebuilt across form the nearest library and we had a council member move his office nearer to where I live in Los Angeles.So many good things have happened to my area thanks to gentrification.
ReplyDeleteIn reality, like this article suggests, gentrification is not a good thing for the local community. My mother's goddaughter once described being in my area almost like being in Mexico because Mexicans and Latinos make up more than 80% of the people living there. And lately I see many non-Latino or non-minority people and I feel threatened. Threatened that the gentrifiers would want to "clean up the area", force many to seek cheaper housing, and the personality of my hometown being white washed, and after reading this article, fear that racism will affect more Latinos when dealing with police. Gentrification on the long run seems to hurt people who have been there the longest than actually help.
Liliana Guerrero
It is easy, and in my opinion lazy, to attribute increased police presence to a desire by oppressive white policemen to drive out minorities. Gang injunctions are, as we learned in lecture, a response to dangerous living conditions complained about by the people living there. As we discussed in lecture, they serve to address these problems and keep people safe, and really the only evidence I saw that it was deliberate gentrification taking place rather than legitimate law enforcement was that the area that saw increased police presence wasn't the single highest crime area in the police's jurisdiction, and that it was near a neighborhood that was in the process of developing.
ReplyDeleteIf Temescal is a 'yupster magnet', isn't that a great thing for the area? High-income earners moving in an holding high-powered jobs isn't the worst thing for the city, and it isn't going to continue if the area develops a reputation for being unsafe. Many decisions made by public officials have to be economic, regardless of whether they are legislators or law enforcement, and it seems like a stretch to me that the efforts of law enforcement are really to push out Latinos and African-Americans, rather than to keep a flourishing area safe from gang violence and continue the growth of their city's most economically explosive neighborhood.
Atli Thorkelsson
This relationship between gentrification and gang injunction connects to banishment. After all, the purpose of the gang injunction in the gentrification area is not necessary to prevent crimes but to exile unwanted people out from the community. Banishment as well, it is not exactly a punishment but exile of people from certain areas. So the policing in such areas become primary to move unwanted people, black people and Latinos out of the community whether they really committed crimes or not. I think your post really describe the real life example of banishment in our neighbor.
ReplyDeleteSansui Iwamoto
I think your post, gives a direct example of the consequences of gentrification and the effects on the minorities who once lived in the area. With gentrification comes the effects of the new population who moves in. These wealthier middle class citizens who have more power and clout with the city and local police can ask for more protection in their neighborhoods and a closer eye on the lower class, minority groups who once lived in the area. The minority residents of the area, now become the targets of police "hotspots" and suspicious activities. This over policing process which occurs in these newly gentrified areas, is affecting innocent African Americans and Latinos of the neighborhoods as they are constantly stopped because they may look suspicious to police or match the stereotypes of criminals.
ReplyDeleteMichaela Acebedo
I think gentrification is a natural effect when an area has an influx of more wealthy citizens. The social fact that areas where poor residents reside in have a greater crime rate is unescapable. This is something that policing cannot solve. Affluent people in affluent neighborhoods expect the eradication of rift raft with the high prices they are paying for housing. Police cannot help that it is certain minority groups that are always causing trouble and in an attempt to isolate and prevent crime, stereotyping certain races are inevitable if statistically, those races have been known to commit more crime. Sharlene Djuhari
ReplyDelete