A Few Hard Facts About Inner-City Law Enforcement

Pretty Lady is taking the splendidity of Mr. Obama's Father's Day sermon as read. She would like, instead, to take issue with an instance of sloppy thinking, evidenced by one commenter on such:

Where are the absent black fathers? Have you read anything about the incarceration rate of black males in this country?

Since the "more cops on the street" tactic has been tried before many times, you can just read the race and incarceration statistics from that and extrapolate.

More cops on the street mean more absent black fathers, not fewer.

The obvious rebuttal, made by another commenter, is that visible patrol cops tend to discourage crime, meaning that in the long term, fewer persons will go to prison; this increased patrol cop/reduced crime rate paradigm has been tried and tested in New York City, and has worked so well that Pretty Lady feels completely comfortable taking the subway to Brooklyn after midnight.

However, it is instructive to understand that all police patrols are not created equal. Most of us city dwellers intuitively understand this, but in fact, the difference in patrol zones is actually codified, if informally, by the police department. Ergo, a person has a radically different understanding of the purposes and temperaments of cops, depending upon which neighborhood a person grew up in.

In brief: Middle-class communities, such as the one where Pretty Lady was raised, are termed enforcement zones. Cops patrol them, in a friendly and casual way, and when they observe someone bashing in the windows of a car, or beating someone up, or if they get a phone call to this effect, they show up and arrest the perpetrators. They write reports, issue speeding tickets, and generally keep an eye out. They tend not to harass people for fun and profit. This is why, as a child and a young adult, Pretty Lady held cops in basic trust and respect; they never gave her any reason to do otherwise.

Wealthy communities, on the other hand, are termed enhancement zones. Patrols in these neighborhoods, if not actually private security armies, are known for their paranoia and intolerance. If one happens to go for a drive in these neighborhoods in a shabbyish car, or dares to appear in one on foot, one is quite likely to be stopped, severely questioned, and warned away in strong terms. If one's attitude at being so questioned is not deemed sufficiently submissive, one is quite likely to find oneself handcuffed in the backseat.

Really Bad Neighborhoods, finally, are known as containment zones. They might as well be war zones. Cops do not patrol them, out of equal parts laziness, cowardice, and cynicism. Garbage collection and mail delivery is spotty to nonexistent. Criminal activity rages unchecked; drug deals go down, bullets fly, muggings occur, without remonstrance on the part of the city or of the cowed resident citizens. If cops do appear in response to a summons, they are likely to shoot or arrest everyone in sight, and sort them out later.

Thus, persons who had the misfortune to grow up within a containment zone may possibly be forgiven for referring to cops as 'pigs.' This, in their view, is an accurate description of the role of the police officer in their lives. Cops, in our non-egalitarian society, still exist to protect the interests of the ruling hegemony, not those of every citizen.

So when Mr. Obama calls for the presence of 'more cops on the street,' it is to be hoped that he means to make the entire country an enforcement zone, without regard to the wealth or poverty of the zone in question. It would be such a lovely thing if only criminals went to jail!