Lorenzo Dajlani
Walkability Essay
Prof. Singleton.
3/18/2018
Walkability Essay
Walking down the street, a pulse of red and blue light blasts blindingly from behind, then the sirens come, and out of nowhere, you’re under arrest! 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, back then, and even today, tend to profile people based on their appearance. This is a real issue in the United States; this overbearing fear of being “booked” and beaten by those meant to protect individuals is arguably one of the most severe threats to walkability in our civilization. Although this issue is one of a very large scale, being continent-wide, 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 populated area. Examples of things that would reduce the walkability of a place are events such as gang fights, terrorist threats, unlit, dangerous streets, and unfriendly neighbors; overall a place where going out would endanger the walker. On the other hand, an area with good walkability has adequate safety measures; maybe police patrolling, welcoming neighbors, many shops and places where people can interact and different cultures diffuse, and 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.
Unfortunate for many areas of America, there are not enough “cops” that take consideration when performing their duties, and often go overboard with their authority, instead using their position with malice in order to abuse their power over others due to personal beliefs. One such case is the one of Mike Brown, a teenager who was shot by 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 way of thought can be fixed 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.
On the topic of hiring officers, another good way to raise walkability is to place more officers in places where they lack numbers, for instance, my neighborhood has two police departments within ten blocks of it, and while it is not the main reason for it, my neighborhood also 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, in addition to that one person 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). It is in places like these where 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 patrols deterring offensive acts.
There are, of course, those who disagree with embolstering law enforcement in the ways described above. 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 chaos and nervousness of everyday pedestrians, this issue could be easily remedied by having police, as stated at the beginning, go through training on how to be more friendly, approachable, and fair to everyday citizens, which would cement a positive relationship with law enforcement and make them one step closer to being a perfect piece of the puzzle that is having a walkable area. As a personal anecdote, one of my walks consisted of a short trip around my neighborhood, followed by a 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’ve been to, 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 there are still muggings every once in a while (Dajlani 2-6-18).
In conclusion, in order to increase walkability there are countless things we need to fix and reform. A good place to start would be law enforcement, because they are the backbone of peace and security around any area with any amounts of people. Though police officers are often prejudiced and act different based on the race of the person they are interacting with, they are necessary to maintaining order, and as a community we need to push to make sure these people in charge of our well being are selected from the fairest, most reasonable groups of individuals in order to secure a walkable, interactive community. But in addition to stricter selection of those who protect us, we need more facilities to aid these people in aiding 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 what will give us walkability in areas deemed dangerous or unsafe.
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