No Place on the Corner
Page 14
As far as tickets, there’s a quota . . . as a rookie you come in, you need 40 summons. It could be parking summons, it could be, you stop a car, you give them a ticket summons, or it could be arrestable summons—they spit in the street, they jaywalk, they have warrants. Those are C summonses. They’re all combined. You need a total of 40 summonses if you’re a rookie. Per month. When you become unrookie [get seniority], it goes down to 20 summonses. How do you become unrookie? Like in Manhattan . . . first nine months you’re walking by yourself. You don’t have a partner. You need that 40 summonses.
In New York City, rookie officers are often assigned to so-called high-impact precincts. Upon taking office in January 2014, Commissioner Bratton vowed to discontinue the practice, instead opting to either pair rookies with more seasoned officers or to send them to different precincts altogether. Yet, only months into Bratton’s stay, 28-year-old Akai Gurley was shot and killed by an officer in the Louis H. Pink Houses, a public housing development in the East New York section of Brooklyn. Peter Liang, an officer with less than 18 months experience, was ultimately convicted and sentenced to probation and community service—effectively evading any time behind bars.
Community relations are further jeopardized by constantly rotating personnel (officers often await a transfer to “more desirable” jurisdictions). What is perhaps most detrimental, however, is how the New York Police Department has parceled out its police force into individualized units that too often function in silos. The police force would benefit from teams of foot patrol officers who develop a rapport with a given community and are then accountable both to their unit and to the residents of that neighborhood—with an added emphasis on deescalating situations and granting second chances when possible, instead of relying on more punitive actions such as citation or arrest.
The San Diego Police Department has continually been cited for its ability to reconcile community safety with residents’ rights. Experiencing a similarly dramatic crime decline throughout the 1990s, San Diego did not rely on aggressive policing tactics to achieve this. Instead, the city’s program is based upon the idea that “police and citizens share responsibility for identifying and solving crime problems and that law enforcement is one important tool for addressing crime, but it is not an end in itself.”12
In other words, the city implemented a collaborative form of policing, incentivizing participation in the community safety process. Whether or not this model could be effective in a complex megacity like New York, it goes a long way to shift the discussion toward community members reclaiming both their neighborhoods and their fundamental rights as citizens.
Epilogue
Kwesi and I stood quietly in front of an ice cream shop near 149th Street, a few short blocks from the epicenter of “the Hub” commercial district in the Bronx. From our location on the curb, the faint sound of sirens was being drowned out by a bass-heavy song coming from an older model Honda Accord a few feet away. Our cones hopelessly melted away in the summer heat.
As we spoke, the sweat was beginning to show through the base of his tan hat. Kwesi was feeling anxious from all of the planning and coordinating he would have to do in the upcoming days. Next week, he would be graduating from college with his bachelor’s degree. Family he hadn’t seen in some time would be coming in from Brooklyn and Staten Island to help him celebrate. His mother, still in citizenship limbo in Ghana, would not be able to make it.
Despite this notable milestone, Kwesi’s affect seemed flat. “The free ride is over,” he said under his breath. Now that he was done with school, his father would be expecting him to contribute to the monthly rent. A few weeks ago, Kwesi secured an internship at an area nonprofit that would pay him $4,000 for the summer. This, he believed, could sustain him through the early fall. “But what about after?,” he wondered.
***
After relocating to Southern California for work a little under a year prior, I returned to the southwest Bronx in the summer of 2016. Only so much can change in a year, I told myself. And while this statement held true for the most part, there would be a number of seismic shifts in the upcoming months that would dramatically alter things in the southwest Bronx and nationally.
While critics warned that crime in New York City would surge if the NYPD were to ease its reliance on stop and frisk, the data show otherwise. Crime continued to decline in Mayor Bill De Blasio’s first term as mayor, as he seemed to double down on some of his campaign promises to change the culture of the police department. In September 2016, De Blasio tapped James P. O’Neill to succeed New York Police Department commissioner William Bratton, who would step down from office. This selection was made in part due to O’Neill’s commitment to “neighborhood policing,” a system designed to build stronger ties between police and the community and marked by neighborhood coordination officers, or NCOs, who serve as a bridge between the community and the police force.
A little over two months after O’Neill’s appointment, Donald J. Trump was elected America’s 45th president. As with much of the country, in the southwest Bronx there were equal parts shock, confusion, and uncertainty. What would the ripples effects be for young people in the area? In the months leading up to the election, Trump had continually restated his firm commitment to “law and order” policing. In a September debate with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, for example, he made a special point to acknowledge how effective he believed aggressive policing tactics had been in New York City. “Stop and frisk had a tremendous impact on the safety of New York City,” he stated. “Tremendous beyond belief. So when you said it had no impact, it really did. It had a very, very big impact.”1
In early 2017, Trump appointed Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, a politician with a history of racism accusations, as the 84th United States attorney general. Despite declining crime rates nationwide, Sessions has seemed keen on a return to the very same “tough on crime” policies that marred previous decades. Shortly after being appointed attorney general, Sessions signaled his intention to stop monitoring law enforcement agencies with histories of civil rights abuses, a move that could, of course, have huge implications for police departments in places like Ferguson, Baltimore, and New York City. At the time of this writing, no new consent decrees, legally binding agreements designed to curb police misconduct and reform departments, have been issued by the Justice Department under Trump, while existing consent decrees are subject to review under the new administration.2 The ideals embodied by Trump and Sessions often seem diametrically opposed to the Obama-era attempts to ensure some semblance of police accountability to residents.
While local leaders and community members have begun to mobilize against many of this regime’s proposed policies, it remains to be seen how effective this resistance can be.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, this manuscript is dedicated to the people whose lived experiences fill these pages. Thank you for entrusting me with your stories.
A special thank you to Philip Kasinitz, Michael Jacobson, Bill Kornblum, and Barry Glassner—my mentors in the discipline who provided me with unparalleled guidance and honest feedback from the start.
I’d also like to thank my editors, Ilene Kalish and Maryam Arain, for their care and attentiveness throughout the publishing process. Additionally, I want to acknowledge Michael Partis, Kevin Brooks, Connie Rosenblum, Will Shaw, Lauren Dewey, Jennifer Bryan, Peter Moskos, Maria Torre, Brett Stoudt, Delores Jones-Brown, Juan Battle, Jennifer Wynn, Charis Kubrin, Demond Mullins, Calvin-John Smiley, Kevin Moran, Peter Ikeler, Sarah Martucci, David Monaghan, Melanie Lorek, all of my colleagues in the California State University at Long Beach Sociology Department, and the entire Morris Justice Project for their tremendous support at the various junctures of this project.
I have been fortunate to have an incredible (global) support system of family and friends: Sita, Justin, Anneka, and Simon Feinberg, Naren Rau, Bep Dekker, Gertruud Buur, Betsy Amster, Felecia German, Robert Mitchell, Damien
Davis, Maddox Davis, Adam Braveman, Isaiah Pickens, Raymond Hutchison, Ademola Kierstedt, Daniel Guisbond, Michael White, Thijs Mientjes, Kwame Johnson, David Duncombe, Javier Vergara, Nicholas Bolt, Mathieu Saint-Louis, Treyer Mason-Gale, Dequan Howard, Daniel Hammer, and anyone else I wasn’t able to fit on this page, every day you all inspire me. Your loyalty, patience, and incredible sense of humor help keep me grounded.
To my parents, Cornelia Buur and Chaitanya Haldipur—you created an environment when I was growing up that allowed me to be curious, ask questions . . . and just be silly sometimes. Thank you for always being there.
Lastly, to my brilliant and caring wife, Donna, this book is a product of your love and unwavering support.
A version of Chapter 3, “Parenting the Dispossessed: Raising the Children of ‘Stop, Question, and Frisk,’” appeared in a special issue of Race and Justice 8 (1): 71–93.
Notes
Preface
1 This is a name local residents have given the frequently occurring event. Though most are unclear as to why police come down particularly hard on Thursday afternoons, there is some suspicion this may be due to some combination of a change in shifts, as well as the neighborhood’s proximity to the courthouses.
2 Rivera 2012.
Introduction
1 Jones-Brown, Gill, and Trone 2010.
2 Merton 1936.
3 Glaser and Strauss 1967.
4 Semuels 2015.
5 Williams and Kornblum 1985.
6 A pseudonym for one of the mothers on College Avenue.
7 A pop-culture reference to the borough that alludes to its history as being the birthplace of hip-hop.
8 Petrie 1981.
9 Small 2007.
10 Gonzalez 2004.
11 US Census Bureau 2010.
12 Jonnes 2002.
13 City of New York, Department of Planning 2013.
14 US Census Bureau, 2008–2012 American Community Survey (a).
15 US Census Bureau, 2008–2012 American Community Survey (b).
16 Wilson 1990.
17 Massey and Denton 1993.
18 See Venkatesh (2002); Brotherton and Barrios (2004); Bourgois (2002); and Anderson (2000).
19 Police Department, City of New York (2012, 2017).
20 White (2014); Kane and White (2013).
21 Raab 1993.
22 Bratton and Knobler 1998, 195.
23 It should be noted that crime had already begun to decline under the Dinkins administration.
24 Bratton and Knobler 1998, 198–199.
25 Wilson and Kelling 1982.
26 Estimates vary widely as to the number of stops that are not documented by police officers.
27 Conlon 2005, 13.
28 Kelly 2015, 271.
29 Under the Trespass Affidavit Program, landlords could authorize police to patrol private buildings without the consent of tenants.
30 The Black Lives Matter movement was created in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin homicide case.
31 Police Department, City of New York, NYPD CompStat Unit 2016.
32 Jones-Brown et al. (2013); Jones-Brown, Gill, and Trone (2010).
33 The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by requiring probable cause before an officer can stop a citizen in a public space. In the Terry decision, Justice William O. Douglas issued a strongly worded dissent questioning whether the probable cause standard could even be changed without a constitutional amendment, a role outside that of the federal judiciary. “Probable cause” has been described as evidence that makes it “more likely than not” that the suspected person is involved in criminality.
34 Jones-Brown, Gill, and Trone 2010.
35 Criminal Procedure Law 140.50, effective September 1, 1971, governs all Terry stops in New York City.
36 See Terry v. Ohio, dissenting opinion by Justice William O. Douglas, in Ronayne (1964) and Kuh (1965).
37 Harcourt and Meares 2010.
38 Brunson and Miller 2006.
39 Alexander 2010.
40 Muhammad 2010.
41 Butler 2017.
42 Gelman, Fagan, and Kiss 2007, 1.
43 Jones-Brown et al. 2013.
44 See Glaberson 2013.
45 See Gonnerman 2014.
46 Stoudt, Fine, and Fox 2011.
47 Weber 1946, 78.
48 See Wacquant (2009) and Young (1999).
49 Anderson 2000.
50 Patillo, Weiman, and Western 2004.
51 Clear 2007.
52 LeBlanc 2003.
53 Tonry 1996.
54 Western 2007, 129.
55 Pew Center on the States 2008.
56 The right to the city, as the renowned scholar David Harvey notes, is marked by “the freedom to make and remake ourselves and our cities” (2012, 4).
57 See Whyte (1943); Liebow (1967); and Anderson (1976).
58 Jay-Z 2010, 154.
59 Lipsky 1980, 3.
60 Lipsky 1980, 11.
61 See Goffman 1959.
Chapter 1. The Invisible
1 Similar distinctions have been utilized in past studies. Most notably, William F. Whyte distinguished between “College Boys” and “Corner Boys” in his study of Italian immigrants in Boston, Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum (1943).
2 DuBois 1996.
3 The area has been subject to a series of drug- and gang-related investigations, culminating in multiple indictments over the past five or more years.
4 During the summer, New York City opens up various schools and recreation centers for young adults to play basketball and other sports. In areas like the southwest Bronx, these are some of the few local outlets available to youth during the hot summer months.
5 Garcia (2003) details the evolution of the New York City sneaker culture from the 1960s through the 1980s.
6 Pattillo-McCoy (1999); May and Chaplin (2008) further elaborate on the intersection of race and clothing in different settings.
7 A puffy, down-filled winter jacket produced by Marmot. These jackets cost upwards of $500 and are highly popular among youth in the Bronx.
8 Kasinitz and Rosenberg 1996, 194.
9 Smith 2005.
10 Sammy was murdered attempting to break up a fight “Uptown” in the northern Bronx; the case garnered a significant amount of media attention.
11 A mutual associate who resides near 164th Street.
12 Rios 2011.
13 New York City School-Justice Partnership Task Force 2013.
Chapter 2. Growing Up under Surveillance
1 See Gottschalk (2015) for a discussion of the growth of the carceral state.
2 Police Department, City of New York 2013.
3 LaPlante, Dunn, and Carnig 2014.
4 Public Science Project 2013.
5 Justice Mapping Center 2006.
6 Justice Atlas of Sentencing and Corrections 2008.
7 ATI/Reentry Coalition 2010.
8 Measure of America of the Social Science Research Council 2012.
9 See Bushway, Stoll, and Weiman (2007); Pager (2007); Patillo, Weiman, and Western (2004); Uggen, Manza, and Thompson (2006); and Trimbur (2009).
10 N.Y. Criminal Procedure Law § 720.10—Youthful offender procedure designated for young adults ages 16–19. This is not awarded to everyone; rather, this depends heavily upon the presentence investigation of the defendant and is typically reserved for first-time offenders.
11 Tuttle and Schneider 2012.
12 See Merton 1938.
13 Garland 1993.
14 Bloomberg 2013.
15 Rosenfeld and Fornango 2014, 2017.
Chapter 3. Parenting the Dispossessed
1 Comfort 2008.
2 See Brunson and Weitzer (2011) for an additional discussion on the conventions of having “the talk.”
3 Riggs and Kilpatrick 1990.
4 Data suggest some of these stops may actually be
repeat stops of the same person.
5 New York Civil Liberties Union 2012.
Chapter 4. Policing Immigrant Communities
1 City of New York, Department of Planning 2013.
2 City of New York, Department of Planning 2013.
3 Portes and Rumbaut 2001.
4 Portes and Rumbaut 2001, 10.
5 See Mittelberg and Waters (1992) and Kasinitz et al. (2008).