- by Christian-Sean Monteclaro
Last week in lecture we discussed the concept of hybrid law enforcement practices. Hybrid practices came about to combine different tactics of styles of policing in order to form its legitimacy with the people. Examples of hybrid law enforcement practices are lever pulling or ceasefire, which is a hybrid of problem solving and professional policing tactics, and gang injunctions, which is a hybrid of hard and soft brands of community policing. Unfortunately, creating legitimacy for these practices within a community is not always the case. For example, there has been resistance for gang injunctions in the city of Santa Barbara, California. An article from The Santa Barbara Independent explains the reluctance of imposing gang injunctions in the city by realtors and city council members. The main argument is that the gang injunctions would create a “stigma” on large portions of the city designated as “safety zones.” It is because of this stigma that would create the prices of homes in the area of the injunction to fall, which is not good business for anyone. The article states that the injunctions would cover about 30% of the entire city’s area. The realtors all support the reduction of gang crime and violence; however, they believe there is a more effective way to do this. They suggest that the police have ‘other tools at their disposal to deal with gang violence.’
Similar issues of legitimacy were raised when we discussed the gang injunctions imposed in the city of Oakland. The gang injunctions had only minimal effectiveness in reducing crime, which is why the realtors of Santa Barbara question its legitimacy and are looking for other ways to decrease gang crimes. In Oakland, the short term effects did show less visible gang activity with its citizens being less intimidated in the streets. However, in the long run what actually was happening was that gang violence just displaced. It really was not significantly reduced, just moved. Gangs just continued their activities somewhere else or were just more careful to not get caught. This ended up in no real qualitative improvements. The conditions of the Oakland neighborhood did not really change. This is a huge concern for the citizens of Santa Barbara. By creating gang injunctions, the police would have more power and ‘with a “special events provision” that would expand the scope of the protected zones to include much of Shoreline Park and the Mesa during such events as Fiesta and the Fourth of July.’ However, the question is whether or not giving the police these powers is legitimate and really worth it if the results are minimal at best. Injunctions could be hurting the community and lowering its value instead of increasing it. This article is a great example of the continued resistance and counter-resistance of post-industrial cities, gentrification, and the production of “community” order.
Source:
http://www.independent.com/news/2014/feb/27/realtors-oppose-gang-injunction/
Interesting Post Christian! I think this article provided a fantastic example of one of the obvious downsides created by the implementation of gang injunctions. Prior to reading your response, I never took into account the possible effects gang injunctions create. In relation to the housing, it makes perfect sense that areas in or near the gang injunction would be negatively effected. As you stated: "Injunctions could be hurting the community and lowering its value instead of increasing it." I guess the question then becomes, is it worth it?
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that gang injunctions only move the problem elsewhere, rather than actually solving it. Beckett and Herbert explain how these prohibitions begin as civil orders, but once the individual person trespasses it becomes a criminal offense, thus the hybridity of law enforcement is revealed.
ReplyDelete-Dash Oliver
I like your point about the economic disadvantages to gang injunctions. In lecture, we've mainly discussed the negative social impacts of gang injunctions, like the police losing legitimacy and community pushback. Before reading your post, I hadn't considered other types of consequences. My question is are the realtors actually concerned with lowering crime, or are they mainly worried about losing business/money?
ReplyDeleteChristine Prior
I also agree with you that gang injunctions have minimal effectiveness and it further hinges on the rights of these youths. Gang injunctions are supposed to be targeted at specific members of a group, but in truth, front-line workers have difficulty implementing these gang injunctions and do give the police officers more power to stop and frisk and arrest innocent youths. In additional to the economic disadvantages, I believe that these youths have the right of assembly and the right of expression and there is a potential that police officers may target innocent youths who aren't in gangs but my 'appear' to be associated with them. While gang injunctions is a form of community policing to eliminate 'nuisance' since the youths may be considered 'disorderly' I agree that gang injunctions is only a short-term solution that is not effective.
ReplyDelete-Brenda Lee
I think this example really echoes what we have discussed in lectures. It's interesting to observe the community's resistance from a utilitarian principle that realtors want to minimize the disutility gang injunctions have brought to their business. Thus, it perfectly demonstrate why gang injunctions are ineffective in a creative way.
ReplyDelete-Yu Fu
Nice post! Not only did it encapsulate much of Professor Musheno's lectures on gang injunctions, but it also expanded on what we learned in class, i.e. how gang injunctions are indirectly used to attract developers. The article that you cited definitely looks beyond what we discussed in class at the current situation that has progressed since gang injunctions became a regular tactic, demonstrating the realization by realtors of the truth behind gang injunctions.
ReplyDelete-Chey Iwamoto
Great post. I like how you tied the concepts of hybrid policing and gang injunctions. When something as controversial as gang injunctions is used by a branch of law enforcement it's legitimacy should be taken into question immediately, because these injunctions will not only have a negative impact on gangs as they are designed to, but they can also have a detrimental impact on the community. Nonetheless, when looking at the legitimacy of gang injunctions, its effectiveness must also be evaluated. Not only are these gang injunctions just slightly effective on gang crime, it's merely a facade, it just displaces gang activities as you mentioned in your post.
ReplyDelete- Jarred Boone
What I enjoyed most from your post is that you provide us an example of hybrid policing's effect not just on residents of the safe zone by also businesses and realtors. This demonstrates a larger pool of individuals having vested interests in the safety zone and are against gang injunctions despite having different reasons. Business are opposed because of the effects on the property value. Aside from this, the injunctions merely displace the gang and criminal activity. Thus raising the question, are injunctions effective? And if they are, how can we explain that when the effects visible are declining property values(naturally leading to crime) and temporary displacing gangs?
ReplyDelete--Jose Estrada
I think you're making a valid point in illustrating how gang injunctions strategy can be discussed with the effectiveness of policing itself. As we watched the video of Oakland court's public hearing on gang injunctions in Oakland, it is very controversial to authorizing the local police to make this restraining order targeting the gangs. It can result in many negative aspects of the community as the community can be divided when it should be equally treated and protected; in addition, I did not really think about the housing issues in the realtors' perspectives before I read this posting. However, though we can certainly question the effectiveness of gang injunctions itself as we do not have very proven strategies to deal with the gang criminal activities when we know they can always move around, I don't think we can conclude it as if this has NO effect in developing the community nor having to do with the legitimacy of policing. I think it is more on the question of how we connect this policing strategy issue with the local policing as a community. It is still too hasty to conclude that the policing is not effective in controlling the gangs' criminal activities just because we do not have concrete measures/tools to evaluate how the future crimes can be reduced or not.
ReplyDelete- Sophie Park
I think the issue raised by the realtors in this article has little merit. Gang injunctions get a bad rap, but the fact is they are used to reduce crime, not to serve the private businesses of real estate professionals. The safety of the city should be put far before that, and even if the police have other tools at their disposal to deal with the issue, generally they can apply these in addition to the injunction. Even if the reduction in crime is 'minimal', which I question, a small decrease is still worth the possible drop in home prices, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteAtli Thorkelsson