No Place on the Corner

by Jan Haldipur

  This was a resounding “humility check” for many who were expecting the previous momentum against stop and frisk to continue. Starting in January 2013, Federal District Court judge Shira Scheindlin ruled on a series of cases involving New York City residents’ right to public (and sometimes private) spaces. On January 8, in Ligon v. City of New York, Judge Scheindlin ordered the Police Department to immediately end the practice of unlawful trespass stops outside so-called Clean Halls29 buildings in the Bronx. Operation Clean Halls allowed the Police Department to patrol private buildings throughout the city, and, in many cases, residents were subject to arrest in their own buildings if they did not present proper identification.

  The most notable court decision came in August 2013, in the landmark Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al. case. Here, Scheindlin ruled that the rights of thousands of black and Latino New Yorkers had been violated by current stop-and-frisk tactics, calling for an independent monitor to be appointed. Around the same time, Scheindlin also granted the Davis v. City of New York case what is known as class-action status, thus allowing other cases to be included and become so-called class members in the lawsuit, which challenged the use of discriminatory stops in Housing Authority buildings.

  Many of these milestone decisions coincided with and were perhaps motivated, at least in part, by a series of horrific events involving New York City residents and the police force. In 1999, the murder by police of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 22-year-old Guinean immigrant, in the Soundview section of the Bronx, sparked significant media attention and would later prove to be the impetus for the Daniels lawsuit. Seven years later, in 2006, the death of 23-year-old Sean Bell, an African-American Queens native, struck a similar chord.

  The murders of two New York teenagers, Ramarley Graham in 2012 and Kimani Gray in 2013, provide still more recent examples of the sharp disconnect between police and communities of color. Graham’s case was particularly startling as he was murdered in his family’s Bronx apartment, unarmed, at the age of 18. Officer Richard Haste, who was charged with manslaughter, was ultimately acquitted of all charges.

  In the summer of 2014, just a few months into Bratton’s tenure, the death of Staten Island resident Eric Garner led to a universal rallying cry for the transformation of policing in New York City. Garner, 43, was suspected of selling loose cigarettes, or “loosies,” in the street. When confronted by the Police Department, one of the officers put him in a chokehold.

  Garner repeatedly told the officers “I can’t breathe” before losing consciousness. He was pronounced dead later that day, and the entire episode was caught on film that went viral instantly. A few months later, in December, a grand jury declined to indict the officer who had imposed the chokehold. This proved to be a tipping point as thousands of protesters took to the streets in New York City and beyond. “Black Lives Matter”30 became a rallying cry, drawing national attention not only to the Garner case but also to the larger issues surrounding the deep-seated mistrust between police and minority communities.

  Unequal Policing

  Recent data suggest that the 40th, 42nd, and 44th Precincts of the Bronx, and New York City on the whole, have become safer in recent years. In his 2006 book, Downsizing Prisons: How to Reduce Crime and End Mass Incarceration, the sociologist and former New York City corrections commissioner Michael Jacobson cites New York as one of the first cities that, counter to national trends, effectively decreased prison use while simultaneously lowering the crime rate. The Police Department’s CompStat data support this claim. In the 44th Precinct, for instance, offenses such as burglary and rape have decreased, reportedly by more than 40 percent each between 2001 and 2015, and the murder rate has decreased by 64.5 percent during this period.31 The aggressive use of “stop, question, and frisk” in communities deemed “high crime” was mandated by several directives issued by the NYPD from the mid-to-late 1990s through roughly 2014. Yet departmental statistics gathered over the last 20 years confirm that assessments of suspicious behavior are highly discretionary and prone to a considerable margin of error.32 In New York State, a 1964 piece of legislation (Code Crim. Pro. 180-a) gave law enforcement the authority to “stop, question, and frisk” an individual without a warrant based solely upon “reasonable suspicion” that he or she has committed or might be in the process of committing a crime. This statute marked a notable change from prior legal standards33 that required officers to have a higher level of proof of potential criminality (probable cause) before stopping a member of the public.34

  In 1968, along with its landmark decision in Terry v. Ohio,35 the United States Supreme Court considered two New York City cases arising under this legislation. In Sibron v. New York, the Court ruled in favor of the defendant, and against the validity of an NYPD officer’s use of “stop, question, and frisk.” In Peters v. New York, the Court ruled in favor of the state—affirming the officer’s right to stop the defendant based on a reasonable suspicion that he was involved in criminal behavior. The Terry decision validated “reasonable suspicion” stops as an acceptable police practice across the nation. At the time the New York legislation passed, and in a powerful dissent to Terry v. Ohio, civil libertarians and defense attorneys expressed concerns about how this expanded police authority might be used.36

  Scholars like Bernard Harcourt and Tracey Meares37 note that due to the socioeconomic and racial discrimination that often accompanies this type of discretion, the costs of policing are unequally distributed throughout society. African American adolescent males from economically disadvantaged areas, in particular, often feel targeted by police regardless of their involvement in delinquent behavior.38

  To help explain why this happens, some psychologists point to a phenomenon known as “implicit bias,” whereby unconscious attitudes and stereotypes permeate one’s actions. Put simply, officers who may not be overtly racist may still hold subconscious racial biases, which in turn affect who they decide to stop. For young black and Latino men in the southwest Bronx, this means there is often a presumption of guilt. Moreover, America continues to be intentional with its policies that have, in no uncertain terms, targeted particular groups. This is not a new phenomenon. Rather, this history of criminalizing race, as noted scholars such as Michele Alexander,39 Khalil Muhammad,40 and more recently, Paul Butler,41 have illustrated, can be traced back centuries.

  In a study published in 2007, Andrew Gelman, Jeffrey Fagan, and Alex Kiss found that black and Latino New Yorkers were disproportionately stopped and frisked, and “more frequently than whites, even after controlling for precinct variability and race-specific estimates of crime participation.”42 The study also showed that among blacks and Latinos, these stops were actually less likely to lead to arrest than with whites.

  Data from the Police Department’s Stop, Question and Frisk Report Database, which is available to the public, demonstrate steady increases in documented stop and frisks in the 2000s. Yet only a small fraction of these stops (less than 12% in most years) resulted in a summons or an arrest.43 For those arrested or issued a summons in the Bronx, the problems were likely just beginning. The borough has developed an unsavory reputation as having a tremendous backlog of cases, resulting in sometimes excruciatingly long court delays. People accused of lower-level offenses often spend a considerable amount of time making arrangements for tending to work and family responsibilities in order to attend court proceedings, only to have the case postponed to another date.

  For those accused of higher-level offenses, the situation gets worse. In 2013, when this research took place, the Bronx led the city in having the most felony cases pending for two years or more. For those who were denied or could not afford bail, this translates to their being detained on Rikers Island, New York City’s jail, until their court date, which in some cases could be years away.44 The human cost of an inefficient court system is vividly demonstrated by the travails of a young Bronx resident named Kalief Browder. Browder was arrested at the age of 16 and detained for more than two yea
rs, much of which was spent in solitary confinement, on robbery charges that were ultimately dismissed. In 2015, a few years after his release, unable to escape the trauma of his incarceration, Browder committed suicide.45

  In 2007, there were a reported 472,096 stops in the city. By 2011, stops increased to a peak of 685,724. In 2015, stops declined to 22,565, due largely to the 2013 Floyd v. New York decision. Yet even as documented frisks began to decline to presurge numbers, the crime rate continued to decrease. In 2011, for instance, a year marked by a historically high number of stops, there were 515 murders citywide. In 2015, that number had dipped to 352, thus seemingly bolstering the argument against the overuse of the tactic (see table on the following page). Still, the impact of these stops is still felt on both the individual and community level. Those stopped over this period were overwhelmingly male and predominantly people of color; in 2015, approximately 83 percent of those stopped identified as either black or Latino.

  Politicians continue to place a substantial amount of the responsibility for crime reduction on street-level policing. Yet, for so many, the decrease in crime does not necessarily translate to greater community safety. Rather, in many cases, police have done nothing more than add an additional layer of community insecurity, with the effects often lasting far longer than the actual encounter.46

  Figure I.5. NYPD stop and frisks, 2002–2016. Source: New York Civil Liberties Union, 2017.

  Figure I.4. New York City Murders, 2002–2016. Source: New York Police Department, 2017.

  In the southwest Bronx, it is easy to see how pervasive and influential the criminal justice system has been for its residents. For countless young people in the neighborhood, negative encounters with the police have become a rite of passage. To borrow from the words of the eminent sociologist Max Weber, the aggressive policing tactics adopted by the New York police are yet another form of the state’s “monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.”47

  The current system is seen as one which works to “manage” those on the “margins” of society—in other words, the poor, immigrants, single mothers, stigmatized minority groups, and the formerly incarcerated.48 While what the sociologist Elijah Anderson49 described as more “street-oriented” youth often become intimately acquainted with the criminal justice system at an early age, other local residents remain fully outside of its realm. This is no accident. Rather, as my findings suggest, many residents have developed a keen, localized sense of how to navigate their everyday lives in the face of aggressive policing tactics.

  Neighborhood Effects

  On the ground, scholars like Mary Patillo, David Weiman, and Bruce Western argue for a more holistic understanding of the criminal justice system and its effects on family and the community.50 Beyond mere latent consequences of mass incarceration, the criminologist Todd Clear urges us to understand mass incarceration as having a profound impact on what he describes as “destabilizing communities.”51 Specifically, he seeks to look beyond the consequences for the individual to explore the impact for the community—tearing families apart, eroding the community’s economic strength, and weakening informal social control mechanisms.

  In her 10-plus years of fieldwork in the Bronx, the journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc illustrated many of the deleterious effects incarceration can have on a family over generations as the revolving doors of jail and prison dramatically alter the relationships and bonds created with both family and friends.52 In this book, I argue that aggressive policing, regardless of whether it results in incarceration, can have a similarly transformative effect.

  As men and women born in the early to mid-1990s, many of the young adults I spent time with find that they have inherited the devastation of the “crack generation.” They are the daughters, sons, nieces, and nephews of a generation that, in large part, was systematically removed from society as part of the “War on Drugs” that defined the years under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.

  While this crusade had limited effects on crime, it effectively worked to incarcerate a disproportionate number of young black men in inner-city communities across America.53 As the sociologist Bruce Western puts it, “Young minority men with little education bore the brunt of deindustrialization in the inner cities and experienced the largest increases in incarceration.”54 Further illustrating this phenomenon, a Pew report famously declared that 1 in every 36 Latino men 18 and older, and 1 in 9 African-American males between 20 and 34, are currently behind bars.55

  For the young men and women on College Avenue, this often translated to the loss of a father, uncle, neighbor, or friend to the criminal justice system. And while many of these young people have not and likely will never experience long-term incarceration, as members of the previous generation did, they are all too familiar with its consequences. Herein lies a primary distinction. While past generations experienced the ill effects of mass incarceration, present-day black and Latino youth in New York City are subject to a form of widespread harassment. While this is considered progress in some circles, as many of these police interactions result in nothing more than a ticket, the aggregate effect of this form of aggressive policing can be just as insidious.

  Searching for a Place to Stand

  For young adults in the southwest Bronx, there is a pronounced shortage of places in the area to socialize or pass time. Local residents, particularly young men, are losing their right to the city.56 The public parks, stoops, streets, and corners once emphasized by social scientists as spaces to congregate and create meaningful associations are no longer available to members of the community.57

  Nowhere is this issue more critical than in a place like New York City, where space is at a premium. In densely developed neighborhoods in which a person can easily go stir-crazy in a cramped apartment during the hot summer months, New Yorkers increasingly rely on these public spaces as an escape. Yet instead of allowing residents in areas like the southwest Bronx to enjoy nearby public areas, an increased police presence has only helped deepen the wedges between local residents, thus hastening neighborhood disintegration. Perhaps more than any individual horror story or tale of distress, this is the most devastating, and most enduring, effect of the Police Department’s pervasive use of stop-and-frisk tactics.

  Among other negative outcomes, stop and frisk has also helped to intensify a greater culture of mistrust among residents of a “system” they have grown weary of. This has very real consequences, as local residents are far less likely to comply with a police force they view as unjust and not having their best interests in mind. Although a somewhat unorthodox source, I found a particularly telling excerpt in Decoded, the 2010 memoir of the music mogul Jay-Z, in which the rapper speaks to a weariness experienced by so many on the margins:

  Poor people in general have a twisted relationship with the government. We’re aware of the government from the time we’re born. We live in government-funded housing and work government jobs. We have family and friends spending time in the ultimate public housing, prison. We grow up knowing people who pay for everything with little plastic cards—Medicare cards for checkups, EBT [Electronic Benefit Transfer] cards for food. We know what AFDC and WIC stand for and we stand for hours waiting for bricks of government cheese. The first and fifteenth of each month are times of peak economic activity.

  We get to know all kinds of government agencies not because of civics class, but because they actually visit our houses and sit up on our couches asking questions. From the time we’re small children we go to public schools that tell us all we need to know about what the government thinks of us.58

  For a disproportionate number of young adults in the neighborhood, police are one of the first ways they are introduced to the government. As Michael Lipsky notes in his seminal work, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services, “Most citizens encounter government (if they encounter it at all) not through letters to congressmen or by attendance at school board me
etings but through their teachers and their children’s teachers and through the policeman on the corner or in the patrol car.”59 Acting as an extension of the state, he continues, police are expected to “convey expectations [about] behavior and authority.”60

  How does this translate to neighborhood residents who are continually stopped for no other reason than the color of their skin and the neighborhood they live in? As I shall show, this form of aggressive policing affects one’s sense of agency, eroding faith in both local and state institutions. Moreover, this policing regime actively discourages the formation of social ties in the neighborhood—the very networks often needed to get ahead.

  A Note on Methodology

  In working on No Place on the Corner, I was able to develop relationships and build rapport with four primary groups: achievement-oriented young adults, young adults involved in the criminal justice system, local parents, and recent immigrants (1.5 and second generation included). I settled on these delineations after spending extensive time in the neighborhood. Although it is an imperfect classification system in some respects, these became the most logical subgroups for my analysis. Still, seeing as we all occupy different roles in our day-to-day lives, these distinctions were far from “clean.” For instance, some of my contacts who were recent immigrants also may have been justice-involved or achievement-oriented, or both. They were consequently grouped by which identity I felt trumped the others and was most useful for my analysis.

  While these categories do not fully embrace the rich diversity of the neighborhood, each group contributes to a better understanding of both the shared and divergent experiences of people living in the area, capturing the everyday realities of a cross-section of the community across race, gender, age, socioeconomic status, and immigration status. Sensationalized accounts of poor neighborhoods often fixate on the lives of those involved in underground economies like the drug trade, making it easy to conclude that these neighborhoods are nothing more than penal colonies. Spending even a little time in the southwest Bronx, it becomes clear that this couldn’t be further from the truth. During my fieldwork, I spent time with a number of young men who are involved in the criminal justice system. But while these young men are certainly a part of the human ecology of the neighborhood, they are also, in many ways, outliers. Most of the people I met are hard-working men and women trying to get ahead and make better lives for themselves. Due to their busy schedules—juggling work, school, and other appointments—they often become less visible in the neighborhood. Moreover, as my findings support, these residents are often driven further indoors due to neighborhood conflict and an overactive police force. Although they are probably less likely to be found socializing by the bodega on a Saturday afternoon, they are still an integral part of the community’s story.