Selective Prosecution and Enforcement, part II

As if right on cue, my Google Reader leads me to Pandagon, who brings home the issue of understanding structural violence and instututional bias right here in L.A.:

Uh huh. Here’s yet another reason why there is distrust out there about law enforcement “protecting and serving” everyone equally.

Los Angeles Police Department officials announced Tuesday that they investigated more than 300 complaints of racial profiling against officers last year and found that none had merit — a conclusion that left members of the department’s oversight commission incredulous.

It is at least the sixth consecutive year that all allegations of racial profiling against LAPD officers have been dismissed, according to department documents reviewed by The Times. I’m sure the vast majority are claims that cannot be proven since you have to prove the officer’s intent to say, pull over a black driver more often than a white one. But the LAPD has a sorry history, and that makes it difficult for some to believe the outcome of the report.

In February, the inspector general released a report that concluded investigators frequently failed to fully investigate citizen complaints against allegedly abusive officers, often omitting or altering crucial information.

The report, and extensive media attention, sparked calls by commissioners for a review of the complaint investigation process. The issue of racial profiling reaches back into one of the department’s darkest periods. Since 2000, the department has been working to implement scores of reforms included in a federal consent decree that stems from the Rampart corruption scandal. As part of the decree, the department is required to gather and analyze racial data involving vehicle and pedestrian stops.

But conclusive figures that might indicate whether systemic racial profiling is a problem in the LAPD have remained elusive. Department and city officials early on acknowledged that the raw data collected by officers when they make a stop are unhelpful because they do not include factors such as the race of the officer, the predominant race of the neighborhood in which the stop was made, and whether the stop resulted in an arrest and conviction.

Of course it’s hard to prove, but none of the cases had any merit? Come on, let’s be real. The problem here is that the profiling is less about race in some instances, but a focus on a particular demographic (dressed in hip-hop wear, in the “wrong” neighborhood, etc.), and in that case, you will end up with young minority youth getting pulled over or searched more often. When does a law enforcement officer’s “hunch” cross the line into straight-out bias — remember, as Francis Holland pointed out in an earlier post, you can be a black police officer and be color-aroused. Check out the comments in the LAT article’s thread — they run the gamut.

The question here is about the effort to curtail the bias. Collecting all the data about the officer and the suspect/victim doesn’t

More police: It can be a good thing sometimes

How many times have I written about the dangers of a police state? I don't know, but quite a lot. With all the caveats that go along with the subject, I am happy to report for once an instance where policing is good.

Le Monde is reporting today on the return of "police de quartier" in Saint-Denis, a banlieue (suburb) just on the edge of Paris. They write:

Quarante-huit policiers formant les trois premières unités territoriales de quartier (UTEQ) ont pris leur poste dans trois communes de Seine-Saint-Denis, lundi 14 avril. Les fonctionnaires, déployés en unités de quinze à dix-huit agents, seront chargés de couvrir les quartiers du Chêne-Pointu, du Bois du Temple et des Bosquets à Clichy-Montfermeil, le Franc-Moisin-Bel Air à Saint-Denis, et la cité des 4 000 à La Courneuve.

A terme, une soixantaine de policiers volontaires, possédant au minimum deux ans d'ancienneté, seront rattachés à ces trois UTEQ. En annonçant leur création, le 14 janvier, la ministre de l'intérieur Michèle Alliot-Marie avait ainsi défini leur mission : dissuasion, renseignement, contrôles d'identité et interpellations des auteurs d'infraction. Le premier ministre François Fillon a quant à lui prévenu que la police de quartier n'avait "rien à voir avec la conception du policier copain, animateur, assistante sociale".

UNE "DIFFÉRENCE DE PHILOSOPHIE"

Pour Frédéric Péchenard, directeur général de la police nationale, la "différence de philosophie" avec la police de proximité, créée par la gauche et supprimée par M. Sarkozy alors qu'il était ministre de l'intérieur, tient au fait que la mission de ces nouveaux policiers sera "plus axée sur le côté répressif". La "philosophie" des UTEQ reste toutefois, comme c'était le cas pour la police de proximité, d'établir "un lien de confiance" avec la population.

Les policiers ont suivi deux semaines de formation spécifique et appris les "techniques de communication dans la relation police-population", "la gestion des publics difficiles", "la connaissance du territoire, de la population, des problématiques et des populations étrangères", indique un document officiel.

Le deuxième département à tenter l'expérience des UTEQ, après la Seine–Saint-Denis, devrait être la Haute-Garonne.

Why is this a good thing? Reducing the number of police units in the troubled suburbs only creates more problems. The officers don't know the area as well and don't develop long-term relationships with the inhabitants. This causes them to swoop in, make arrests and leave. This lack of local knowledge and understanding works to the detriment of the inhabitants and the police since it undermines natural affinities and mutual respect.

Now, I'm the first one to admit that I have an inherent distrust of authoritarian measures, in particular when they come from the police. But here's an occasion where study after study has shown that policing is most effective not because of armor, weapons and surveillance, but because of community relations and communication. Given this, I hope that they put the right people on the job and that this "experiment" is given a chance to succeed. Of course, without similar investments in jobs, schools and public spaces, the police and the "troubled youth" will both fail.

Still more correlations...

The NBER, of whom I can be suspicious at times, has an interesting paper out:

http://papers.nber.org/papers/w13097

Environmental Policy as Social Policy? The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime
Jessica Wolpaw Reyes NBER Working Paper No. 13097
Issued in May 2007

Abstract : Childhood lead exposure can lead to psychological deficits that are strongly associated with aggressive and criminal behavior. In the late 1970s in the United States, lead was removed from gasoline under the Clean Air Act. Using the sharp state-specific reductions in lead exposure resulting from this removal, this article finds that the reduction in childhood lead exposure in the late 1970s and early 1980s is responsible for significant declines in violent crime in the 1990s, and may cause further declines into the future. The elasticity of violent crime with respect to lead is estimated to be approximately 0.8.

If it is true, even partially, let's put one more nail in the coffin of "tough" law enforcement and high-incarceration rates of non-violent criminals as the cause for dropping crime rates. Like so many things, crime is a complex system with phyical and social environmental factors. Three-strike laws are easy sells, but they are hard to prove effective.