Lorenzo Dajlani
Walkability Essay (Final)
Prof. Singleton.
4/8/18
Officers Gone Overboard
Strolling down the street, a pulse of red and blue light shines blindingly from behind, then the howling of the sirens come, and before you know it, you’re under arrest, pinned against the cold metal of the police car! So sudden, so violent, unexpected; this is the reality that minorities, mainly African Americans, have faced, and continue to face today. Police officers are meant to protect citizens from danger, and subdue criminals, “So why are they arresting innocent people?” one might ask, and it is plain to see that police officers, tend to profile people based on their appearance. This is a real issue in the United States; this overbearing fear of being “booked” and battered by those meant to protect the individual is arguably one of the most severe threats to walkability in modern-day society. Although this predicament is one on a grand scale, which is continental, there are many ways to fix the way police handle their jobs against those on public streets, therefore helping improve walkability in neighborhoods. Some methods of making such improvements are having officers go through rigorous training to suppress discrimination, and having more police departments around the less-patrolled areas.
In order to explain how anti-discrimination training and increasing the police force would improve walkability, we first need to obtain a firm understanding of what walkability is. Walkability is the amount of freedom an individual is allowed when, and the ease of, walking through a town, city, neighborhood, or any other type of public, populated area. Examples of occurrences that would reduce the walkability of a place are events such as gang fights, terrorist threats, dangerously unlit streets, and unfriendly neighbors; overall a place where going out would threaten the walker’s well-being. On the other hand, an area with good walkability has adequate safety measures; possibly police patrolling, welcoming neighbors, many shops and places where people can interact and different cultures diffuse; overall clean, community-driven environments. In the case of this paper, walkability is reduced by violent, discriminatory officers that make the streets dangerous and put people’s minds at unrest, while officers that are kind to civilians, and handle crimes in civilized ways with no more than necessary force, leads to walkability becoming stronger.
Unfortunately for many areas of America, there are not enough of these aforementioned law enforcement troops that take consideration when performing their duties, and often, they go overboard with their authority, instead using their position with malice in order to abuse their power over others due to personal beliefs they may hold. One such case is that of Mike Brown, a teenager who was shot by a police officer, Darren Wilson. George Lipsitz, a professor of black studies and sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, states in his article, From Plessy to Ferguson, that police officers in the U.S. can get away with murder as long as they can make up a story of how they were defending themselves, and that racism and prejudice allow more leniency toward killing a person of color than anyone else (Lipsitz Para 1&2). I agree with Professor Lipsitz in that police officers often feel like they can, and actually do use over-the-top means to subdue criminals, and too often it is African Americans who suffer this activity. This unforgivable school of thought can be rectified very easily; a good way to get police officers to see everyone as equals is to have them work with officers of different races, creeds, religions and so on, in order to expose them to different perspectives in life and broaden their views to see everyone as on even ground in the eyes of the law. Similar to choosing a jury in court, police officers should be thoroughly tested before being hired to make sure they hold no prejudices and no group-targeted ill wills before they are placed in a position of power over them.
To further expand on the ideas of hiring at the end of the previous paragraph, another good way to raise walkability is to place more officers in areas where they lack numbers, for instance, my neighborhood has two police departments within ten blocks of it, and while it is not the only thing contributing to it, my neighborhood happens to be very walkable; people wave to officers, police cars do not slow to leer at pedestrians, and overall they seem to be just like other people, only in suits and with a badge. One of the main issues with officers, beside prejudices, is how they are perceived. Officers are usually rarely seen in the more remote areas of a population. Suburbs are a good example of this phenomena; often there will be only a sheriff to handle the troubles of a suburban complex, and while this is seen as a substantial amount of law enforcement for such a low-population area, it causes people to form opinions of law enforcement based on that one individual encounter gone sour, an issue additional to the one of that one sheriff not being able to interact with the entire community as they have other duties to attend to. Meanwhile, in cities, law enforcement is spread throughout widely, and because of this people have more interaction with officers and begins to see them not as monsters, but as what they are; people, just like them, assigned to keep the peace. A lack of officers leads to rumors and speculation, while daily friendly interaction with them puts those rumors to rest and encourages people to challenge what media conveys as the norm for a person of the law. As a last example to cement this argument of hiring more officers, Brent Staples, an author with a Ph.D from the University of Chicago, wrote in his article Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space the following; “-in Chester, Pennsylvania, the small, angry industrial town here I came of age in the 1960s-”, this quote being a part of his explanation of how he remembers reaching maturity, he inadvertently opens a portal to his past and shows the reader a small town full of gang fights, knife fights, shootings and murders; happenings which all severely destroy walkability, and ruin any sense of community (Staples 1). The fact that the town in this anecdote is an industrial one supports evidence of lack of police officers causing violence and discord among the community; industrial towns are fixated on one thing, and that is long hours, coupled with laborious work. Peace and philosophy are not the strong points of industrial communities, and as such they tend to fall into corruption and gang violence, as shown in the above quote. It is in places like these where more law enforcement is most needed, and would benefit a great number of people by limiting the amount of violent outbursts that occur, whether it is through arrests or through exposure to authorities to deter offensive actions.
There are, of course, those who disagree with embolstering law enforcement in the methods discussed prior. One might argue that we need less police officers because they are inherently abusive, and cause unease and panic within communities, having people second-guess every action to attempt to avoid an unjustified arrest. As well, others may also argue that filtering out officers more harshly based on prejudices will lead to law enforcement being virtually non-existent as many officers hold beliefs against one group of people that they do not hold against others. The problem with these refusals of the stated points is that one would fix the other; if police officers grow sparse due to how few people are truly unbiased against races, more police stations may be opened to increase the number of good-natured police. Conversely, if people are worried about the new police officers only adding to the numbers of chaos and unease of everyday pedestrians, this issue could be easily remedied by having police, as stated at the beginning, go through rigorous training on establishing friendliness, approachability, and fairness to everyday citizens, cementing a positive relationship with law enforcement and bringing them one step closer to being a betterment to the safety and walkability of communities all around the states. As a personal anecdote, one of my walks consisted of a short trip around my neighborhood, followed by a not-so-short trip through Manhattan. In this “weekly walk”, I had noticed that my neighborhood, with its two police stations, seemed rather peaceful and timid in comparison to some other ones I had visited; while Manhattan was absolutely gorgeous, there were many more police units than where I live but the streets were ordered, people walked in multitudes of single file lines, and there were seldom any conflicts, meanwhile at home, accidents such as muggings and robbery still happen (Dajlani 2-6-18). My brother, around November of 2017, was mugged just outside the subway station. This incident opened my eyes as to how danger can never truly be eradicated, but it hit me as a personal experience as to walkability being threatened on a daily basis in areas where there is less-than-average ‘eyes on the street’; observants forming a community in which people behave due to the involvement of civilians in their environment.
In conclusion, in order to increase walkability there are countless things we must revise and reform. A good place to start would be our law enforcement because they are the backbone of peace and security around any area people inhabit. Though police officers are often prejudiced and act different based on the races or creeds of people they encounter, they are a necessity to maintaining order, and as a community there needs to be a push to make sure these people in charge of our well being are selected from the most just, reasonable groups of people in order to secure a walkable, interactive community. Although, in addition to stricter selection of those who safeguard our freedoms, we require more facilities to help these people help us, to train them to be the best they can be, and to encourage harmony between authority and citizens, not chaos and mistrust; this is why training more and better police officers will increase walkability and reduce crime in our communities.
Works Cited
Lipsitz, G. “From Plessy to Ferguson.” Cultural Critique, vol. 90 no.1, 2015, pp. 119-139. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article586903.
Staples, B. “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space” Harper’s 1987. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u8A0M14PjG8ddx8wqbMgX0MqlaRi_EdJ/view
Dajlani, L. “Hoodology 2-6-18 Weekly Walk” [email protected]. Feb 6, 2018.
https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/englishspring2018blog222135/?p=6