The impact of stop-and-frisk policing on a South Bronx community What’s it like to be stopped and frisked by the police while walking home from the supermarket with your young children? How does it feel to receive a phone call from your fourteen-year-old son who is in the back of a squad car because he laughed at a police officer? How does a young person of color cope with being frisked several times a week since the age of 15? These are just some of the stories in No Place on the Corner, which draws on three years of intensive ethnographic fieldwork in the South Bronx before and after the landmark 2013 Floyd v. City of New York decision that ruled that the NYPD’s controversial “stop and frisk” policing methods were a violation of rights. Through riveting interviews and with a humane eye, Jan Haldipur shows how a community endured this aggressive policing regime. Though the police mostly targeted younger men of color, Haldipur focuses on how everyone in the neighborhood—mothers, fathers, grandparents, brothers and sisters, even the district attorney’s office—was affected by this intense policing regime and thus shows how this South Bronx community as a whole experienced this collective form of punishment. One of Haldipur’s key insights is to demonstrate how police patrols effectively cleared the streets of residents and made public spaces feel off-limits or inaccessible to the people who lived there. In this way community members lost the very ‘street corner’ culture that has been a hallmark of urban spaces. This profound social consequence of aggressive policing effectively keeps neighbors out of one another’s lives and deeply hurts a community’s sense of cohesion. No Place on the Corner makes it hard to ignore the widespread consequences of aggressive policing tactics in major cities across the United States.
HĂ€ufig gestellte Fragen
Wie kann ich mein Abo kĂŒndigen?
Gehe einfach zum Kontobereich in den Einstellungen und klicke auf âAbo kĂŒndigenâ â ganz einfach. Nachdem du gekĂŒndigt hast, bleibt deine Mitgliedschaft fĂŒr den verbleibenden Abozeitraum, den du bereits bezahlt hast, aktiv. Mehr Informationen hier.
(Wie) Kann ich BĂŒcher herunterladen?
Derzeit stehen all unsere auf MobilgerĂ€te reagierenden ePub-BĂŒcher zum Download ĂŒber die App zur VerfĂŒgung. Die meisten unserer PDFs stehen ebenfalls zum Download bereit; wir arbeiten daran, auch die ĂŒbrigen PDFs zum Download anzubieten, bei denen dies aktuell noch nicht möglich ist. Weitere Informationen hier.
Welcher Unterschied besteht bei den Preisen zwischen den AboplÀnen?
Mit beiden AboplÀnen erhÀltst du vollen Zugang zur Bibliothek und allen Funktionen von Perlego. Die einzigen Unterschiede bestehen im Preis und dem Abozeitraum: Mit dem Jahresabo sparst du auf 12 Monate gerechnet im Vergleich zum Monatsabo rund 30 %.
Was ist Perlego?
Wir sind ein Online-Abodienst fĂŒr LehrbĂŒcher, bei dem du fĂŒr weniger als den Preis eines einzelnen Buches pro Monat Zugang zu einer ganzen Online-Bibliothek erhĂ€ltst. Mit ĂŒber 1 Million BĂŒchern zu ĂŒber 1.000 verschiedenen Themen haben wir bestimmt alles, was du brauchst! Weitere Informationen hier.
UnterstĂŒtzt Perlego Text-zu-Sprache?
Achte auf das Symbol zum Vorlesen in deinem nÀchsten Buch, um zu sehen, ob du es dir auch anhören kannst. Bei diesem Tool wird dir Text laut vorgelesen, wobei der Text beim Vorlesen auch grafisch hervorgehoben wird. Du kannst das Vorlesen jederzeit anhalten, beschleunigen und verlangsamen. Weitere Informationen hier.
Ist No Place on the Corner als Online-PDF/ePub verfĂŒgbar?
Ja, du hast Zugang zu No Place on the Corner von Jan Haldipur im PDF- und/oder ePub-Format sowie zu anderen beliebten BĂŒchern aus Social Sciences & Criminology. Aus unserem Katalog stehen dir ĂŒber 1Â Million BĂŒcher zur VerfĂŒgung.
I donât want this following me around, you know? Itâs like they got my picture and fingerprints now. For what? They took them when they brought me in the precinct. I donât want it to follow me like a stigma or whatever. I hate knowing itâs there and could mess my whole life up. Iâm not no criminal.
âLos
On a cool June morning, I arrived on 161st Street in the Bronx. My watch showed 8:15 a.m. as I exited the subway turnstile, still groggy from waking up at 6:00 in the morning and making the trek from the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The usually busy thoroughfare was much calmer than it is when games are being played at the ballpark just down the hill. Yankee Stadium was closed save for a handful of security guards manning the perimeter.
As I neared the Bronx Hall of Justice courthouse, on 161st Street and Morris Avenue, I could see a line beginning to form between two steel dividers, with people waiting either alone or in pairs. The line was filled with black and Latino faces, and the group was overwhelmingly male, although a handful of women were scattered about, many of whom seemed to be the partners of those waiting in line.
The courthouse is a modern, multilevel glass building with a new outdoor cement atrium toward the back. Armed officers in uniform monitored the line. About 40 people were already waiting to enter when I arrived, but because the buildingâs main doors were not yet open, the line was not moving. Within minutes of my arrival, however, the line began to grow quickly. A loud Puerto Rican man could be heard talking to a black man behind him; they did not seem to know each other but appeared to be swapping stories. Many of the faces looked anxious, and justifiably so.
Across the street, the Concourse Plaza shopping center looked almost entirely empty, devoid of cars and people. The few stores that were not boarded up for good had yet to open for the day. At about 8:30, the front doors to the courthouse opened up and those waiting in line began to file in.
***
Los texted me to let me know he was on his way. I anticipated he would bring a member of his family, but when he showed up, a shade after 8:40, he was alone.
Los is a dark-skinned Dominican male in his early 20s. He wears glasses and has an athletic build, with neatly cropped hair faded into a small Afro. He arrived to the courthouse wearing a pair of green army fatigues, T-shirt, a gray hoodie, and black and green Nike Air Penny shoes on his feet. As we waited to pass through the metal detectors, he apologized for his tardiness and looked visibly nervous. This was hardly surprising.
Today was Losâs long-awaited court date for an incident that had taken place six months earlier, in January 2013, near his grandmotherâs apartment, a few blocks north of Yankee Stadium in the 44th Precinct. In addition to working full-time at a major department store in Manhattan, Los is a full-time student at a community college in Queens. It was on a break between classes that he decided to stop by his grandmotherâs place.
Although Los lives with his mother and sisters in the nearby Morrisania Air Rights Houses, a public housing complex, he often stops by his grandmotherâs home to check up on her. Near her building, he was stopped by police for the first time:
They patted me down and they actually found my pocketknife. In order for them not to injure themselves, I told them that there was a pocketknife in there. It wasnât taken out, it was actually folded. I noticed that I had my knife that day, but, on January 1st it was New Yearâs. I was working the whole day. I had a 12-hour shift from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
I was working with my knife [a blade used to open boxes in the stockroom] the whole day. Itâs something that I always leave at home. I donât carry it with me in public, I donât take it anywhere because I donât want to get stopped and all that. That day I intended, well I actually didnât intend at all, I just forgot to leave my working knife at work. It was no intent for me to take it out in public to show off or nothing like that. On Thursday, I happened to have the same sweater in which I worked on January 1st. Thatâs how the cops got me with the knife. I was arrested. They actually charged me with possession of a weapon in the 4th degree, in which . . . the cop actually gave me a DAT, which is a âDesk Administrative Ticketâ [Desk Appearance Ticket] in which I have to see a judge and confess my crime, to see what I plea.
Despite Los having a spotless record and insisting multiple times that his âweaponâ was in fact a work knife, the police continued to process Losâs arrest. Shocked and embarrassed, he called me the day after he was released from the precinct. A few days later, I walked him over to the nearby office of the Bronx Defenders, a community-based organization that provides legal help for Bronx residents. As we walked down Courtlandt Avenue, toward his motherâs apartment, Los, who usually seems jovial and carefree, was sullen and withdrawn. He said:
Right now, Iâm feeling like the criminal justice system is viewing me as a criminal. Iâm not aâfirst of all, this is my first offense. Iâve never been arrested in my life before. I donât think I should be treated this way because Iâm actually studying criminal justice and itâs something that I loveâand just because I forgot to leave my working utensils at work, Iâm now being viewed as a criminal. Itâs something that I donât actually like to be viewed as, by the society or public. Thatâs not the kind of person I am. I donât hurt people. I donât rob peopleâIâm just not that kind of person.
In his seminal 2000 work, Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City, the sociologist Elijah Anderson makes a distinction between âdecentâ and more âstreet-orientedâ residents in a Philadelphia neighborhood.1 Although no one truly falls neatly into a single category, itâs clear that Los aligns himself more with the former group. Still, many residents must endure a DuBoisian âdouble consciousnessâ2 that involves at least two primary categories: the way many of the young people in the community categorize themselves and the way others, namely the police, do.
In this chapter, I will focus on the experiences of those who fall on the more âdecentâ end of the spectrum. Because this group is by no means a monolith, I shall seek to reflect the rich diversity of their experiences. Their active schedules, combined with an aggressive police presence and conflicts in the neighborhood, often preclude these residents from frequently socializing in public spaces. Thus, to outsiders, they are largely invisible. These are the young men and women that Iâve identified as achievement-oriented, both in terms of the way they define themselves and by their actions.
The young people discussed in this chapter do not have a criminal history. They were typically enrolled full time in high school or college, or were working toward this goal. Or they had a job or were looking for one. It is important to separate so-called decent youths from so-called street youths, because the mechanisms used to make sense of and cope with police surveillance differ greatly among the two. Furthermore, many of the policy implications diverge in a similar manner.
During the first 20 years of Losâs life, he was able to remain out of the reaches of police in a highly monitored neighborhood.3 While many people have been able to avoid police contact in a similar manner, countless other âdecentâ young men were less fortunate. I met Octavius, or Tae, as he likes to be called, while playing basketball over the summer at a local junior high in the 44th Precinct, a site for the Big Apple Games.4 Tae, who is 18, is a tall and wiry light-skinned African-American male who prides himself on his basketball prowess. He lives up the street from the school with his grandparents. Although he dropped out of school when he was 16, he is currently attempting to get his general education degree (GED) while working part-time at a Target near his motherâs apartment in New Jersey.
Unlike Los, Tae had his first contact with police when he was in elementary school. â[I was] eight when I first got stopped,â he told me. âIt was like five of us and they thought we was throwing rocks off the roof because someone was complaining. It wasnât us, though.â According to Tae, such interactions became much more frequent in his teens. âThirteen, 14, thatâs when I get stopped at least three times a week,â he said. âEven if itâs not around my block, if Iâm going to walk somewhere, Iâm always getting stopped.â
Stories like Taeâs show just how common this type of police interaction can become for young men in places like the southwest Bronx. For some, police interaction in the early teens has become a rite of passage. Yet others who live in the same neighborhoods and attend the same schools remain largely out of the reaches of local officers. Why is this? How can we account for the different experiences of Tae and Los?
Is It the Shoes?
The excitement is palpable in Taeâs voice as he describes the newly released âSouth Beach LeBronâs.â Priced at a hefty $250 ($200 if you âgot the hookupâ), the sneaker is the ninth edition of National Basketball Association player LeBron Jamesâs famed line, and the first to be released in pink, teal green, and grayâhomage to the unofficial colors of the city of Miami, where James was playing at the time. At length, Tae explains to me what sets these shoes apart from the others, and regretfully explains that they sold out before he was able to purchase a pair. His disappointment is short-lived, as he then tells me excitedly about his newly discovered inside connection at House of Hoops, an athletic shoe retailer, which could aid in him getting a pair of âFoamsâ (Nike Air Foamposites, priced at $250).
I was 27 when I began this research project, still not far removed from my days as a âsneaker head.â Growing up, sneakers were a form of currency for me and my friends. To have a pair of Nike Air Jordans even just a few days before their official release date signified an increase, however brief, in oneâs social status; to have a pair of âexclusives,â or hard-to-find sneakers, meant something even more. Regardless of where you came from or how much money you made, sneakers, in their own distorted way, were the great equalizer. How you dressed, and especially what you wore on your feet, could counteract nearly everything else about you.
The so-called sneaker culture is alive and well in the Bronx, as it is in most urban and increasingly suburban centers around the country. This is not a new phenomenon, however, and it is well documented as a form of personal expression.5 Young adults meticulously construct outfits from the ground up, coordinating sneakers with pants, tops, hats, and even belts. For some, the imperative is simply to matchâgreen with green, brown with brown, and so on. For others, the goal is to set themselves apart, wearing more flamboyant color schemes, hard-to-find âvintageâ pieces, or, in some cases, high-end brands.
Regardless, the common underlying factor is that most young people seem to understand the significance of presentation in how one is perceived by their peers and, increasingly, by the police. As a result, these young adults are forced to regulate and monitor their choice of clothing in ways that other Americans simply arenât.6
A number of young men and women I spoke with emphasized the importance of clothing in explaining their perceptions on why police did or did not elect to stop them. Many were acutely aware of how personal choice in dress could draw unwanted attention from the police. Choice in color, style of accessory (for example, a beaded necklace versus one that was silver or gold), or even the logo on a hat or a shirt are all subject to misinterpretation and can serve as an entry-point for police contact. As Louisa, a Puerto Rican high school junior, said of her brotherâs recent interaction with police:
My brotherâI guess it was the way he was dressed, I think. He was just stopped for no reason. I mean, I was there and I saw him from across the street and I asked him, and he was like, âOh, he just stopped me.â He was just walking because he was meeting up with me . . . and I guess it was just the way he was dressed.
Although this particular stop did not result in an arrest or a ticket, both she and her brother walked away angry and confused. Shelley, a classmate of Louisa, offered a more detailed attempt at an explanation. âItâs the saggingâthe hoodiesâthe big coats they wear now,â she said. âYeah, itâs called a âBiggie.â7 Itâs like a big Merm . . . yeah, and itâs, like, yellow, bright colors.â In pockets of the South Bronx where there is greater perceived racial homogeneity, items like a âBiggie,â hooded sweatshirts, beads, and sagging pants can provide sufficient âreasonable suspicionâ for officers to stop black and Latino youth.
A number of the young women I spoke to gave poignant examples of how clothing affects how they are perceived by police. Suzanne, a Puerto Rican woman in her late teens, often wears clothing more closely associated with contemporary menâs fashion. During summers, this consists of white T-shirts and shorts; come colder months, itâs hoodies and jeans. As part of her personal style, her hair is neatly braided into cornrows and often covered by a fitted hat. She described an incident that occurred earlier in the summer in which her choice in clothing led to her being both inappropriately stopped and improperly identified as a man:
I had this one time I was walking home when it was getting dark and these two officers jumped out on me and started asking me questions or whatever. This one officer asked me to turn around and started frisking me. Iâm like, âYou know Iâm a girl, right?â Iâm thinking, they think Iâm a boy or something. So, he says, âYeah, I know.â And continues searching me! He didnât get a female officer or nothing.
Similarly, Tika, an African American high school senior in her late teens, recalls a recent time when she was frisked. In her opinion, the jean jacket she was wearing served as a trigger for the improper search of her and her friends:
Tika: Last year, summertime, I had a jean jacket on and when I dig in, I hold my jacket ...