The Importance of Place

When thinking about the importance of place in Memphis, elements like economic segregation, globalization, and suburbanization are blatantly evident are crucial to understanding the problems in the city. Clearly there is a disparity between rich and poor, black and white, that leaves Memphis tangled in dichotomy. The shells of factories and warehouses loom over the impoverished ruins of former cites of production and current unemployment. The roads are full of potholes, until reaching Germantown and the segregation, still erodes the public education system, and no efficient public transportation system. There are no production sites and jobs for many impoverished areas, leading to obscene concentrations of poverty. Overall, if place is so important, Memphis is drastically unimpressive, despite it's natural transportation location and resources.

So here is my question, if there are all these issues in Memphis, how does a city go about shifting from a desert to the "Creative Class" to a successful, attractive urban entity without gentrifying or afflicting the urban poor? Is this possible? 

Color Blind: White, Black, Blue

The idea of police officers not being two races but just one; blue, is a very noble idea but the article by Moskos proves this to be very false. Yes, at the end of the day all these people are united by the fact that they are a part of the police force, but blacks and whites exhibit very real and tangible differences. Not by nature, but by the effect of society on them. This is very relevant to the color blind ideology that at first seems like a great idea, but once examined on a deeper level proves to be very problematic. Assuming blacks and whites in the police force to share the same ideas about race and location and other issues that police officers have to deal with is very idealistic. As we have seen in class, blacks and whites are on such opposite sides of the opportunity spectrum because of institutions such as these very law enforcement agencies that it's just absurdly unreasonable to not acknowledge the differences. Yes, we are all human beings. Yes, all these people are police officers. But saying that these officers are one color; blue, completely ignores all the injustices that have happened and are still happening in the country. Acknowledging race and acknowledging the fact that one race is systematically disadvantaged does not mean one race or group people is naturally dominant or inferior. Within the police force, race plays a huge factor and as long as the color blind card is played none of these injustices will be reversed and headed towards justice.

Cops: Pathology, Decency, and the Ghetto

I thought it was especially interesting that Moskos discussed Anderson's work so much in "Two Shades of Blue: Black and White in the Blue Brotherhood." Moskos seemed to clearly echo what Anderson said about how whites seem to view all poor black people through a single stereotypical lens, and have trouble differentiating the "ghetto" (or "street") people from the "decent" people. Moskos claimed that unlike the white officers, black officers made a clear distinction between different types of people in "ghetto" areas. I found Moskos' observations about the different uses of the word "ghetto" to be particularly interesting. Both groups used the term to refer to majority black impoverished regions, but white officers were more likely to label people themselves as "ghetto", whereas black officers identified people's behavior as "ghetto" by claiming that people were "acting ghetto." Both groups of officers tended to subscribe to a pathological view of social problems. White officers seemed to see social problems as resulting from individual decisions which, for them, were strongly tied to race, class, and location. The black officers, on the other hand clearly differentiated themselves as "decent" from "ghetto" blacks whose problems resulted from personal character defects. All of the officers made statements about how living in the "ghetto" was a personal choice (one which they had little or no sympathy for), and in some cases, black officers used their own lives as evidence of other people's moral shortcomings. In light of what we read in Anderson about how the code of the streets is centered on violence, I found it particularly interesting that nearly all of the officers, regardless of race, were disciplined with corporal punishment. It would seem that violence plays an important role in the socialization both urban police and the people they arrest. Furthermore, in light of Anderson, I would assume that much of the success that Smith discusses was made possible because the members of Lifeline, as former residents of the "ghetto" and former participants in "street" culture have a knowledge of the "code of the streets," and are better able to discourse with members of the oppositional culture.

Gas for Guns and Community Policing

Last September, I distinctly remember hearing advertisements on the radio for a gun trade-in program taking place in Memphis. On a specified day, Memphis police officers spent hours collecting guns from local residents--without paperwork or questions--in exchange for gas cards and tickets to see the Grizzlies. As someone genuinely interested in the well being of the community, I was glad to hear that such a program exists in the city. However, the happiness was short lived as I began to think about how gun control (or lack thereof) is only one of many problems urban areas face every day. Surely we could do more.

I thoroughly enjoyed Chris Smith’s article on the criminal justice reform program in Oakland, CA. In addition to the great decrease in overall crime in the area, the program is fantastic because workers “negotiate truces, act as mentors, and offer criminals a future--that doesn’t involve prison or death--through jobs, counseling, or a face-saving way to return to school” (Smith 1). This is the kind of program that the idealist in me believes could really save Memphis; at the very least, it could positively influence and even change the lives of a large number of urban residents. I think that one of the most important aspects of this is the fact that the main workers are not police officers, but citizens eager to live in a safer, happier community. It has to be easier to give up an illegal activity knowing that you will be supported and encouraged instead of condemned by the legal system.

All of this is not to belittle the success of Gas for Guns in Memphis, which reportedly resulted in nearly 500 guns off of our streets (cited below). It just seems that Oakland and the other mentioned cities have a good idea about the next step up from our program, and I know Memphians would love to see that kind of favorable outcome in our own backyard. http://www.wmctv.com/story/19553949/gas-for-grizzlies-big-success

A Path to Some Alleviation of Bigoted Police Attitudes

            As I was reading through “Two Shades of Blue”, I was struck by the depth of the bitterness held by many of the interviewed police officers. I had not expected them to be particularly virtuous or pleasant, but I had assumed that they would feel sympathy for most of the victimized people and high-crime communities they work with. What instead seems to be true for these Baltimore police officers is that their frequent exposure to the most socially dysfunctional areas of their city—especially during their earliest, formative time as police, when they are all assigned to work in these places—causes many of them to maintain or develop discriminatory views of the people who live in them. They come to see residence in high-crime neighborhoods and exposure to the illegal activities that go on within them as personal choices, and become frustrated that their aggressive methods of law enforcement do not tend to root out the sources of criminality.

            If these are attitudes that police officers in other American cities hold as well, initiatives like Street Outreach and Operation Ceasefire may be even more beneficial than they initially seem. Smith indicates that these initiatives can sharply curb crime rates in unstable communities; by therefore lightening the work load of local police forces (which are often understaffed) they could help to erode the resentment that some police officers develop when they begin to see high-crime communities as ‘hopeless’. The discriminatory attitudes that individual officers held before police work may not be changed, but Moskos’s article left me with the impression that much of the bigotry that policepeople hold toward the citizens that they are bound to protect stems from frustration with the unchanging landscape of crime that they necessarily witness.

Moskos/Smith

I come from a neighborhood where "the boys in blue and red"  (cops and fire fighters) are about the most respected of us all within the community. A lot of kids where I live and whom I grew up with, particularly males, hope to follow in the footsteps of their fathers and uncles and become police officers or fire fighters. Because 'cop culture' has been so present in my own life, I was particularly invested in these readings.

I wish I could say I am shocked about white cops responses to questions about their black co-workers, but sadly I'm not.  Something along the lines of , How much you wanna bet they were hired because they are black was stated by a white officer. To say that one thinks that hiring standards are lowered for an African American officer sends a clear message of superiority, which will only make matters worse within the police force.

Programs like Lifeline sound like a good idea to me. I don't know enough about them to make any claims really, but from the looks of this article, it seems to have done some good in Oakland. I'm wondering what other cities versions of this looks like, or if they even have any (I was trying to look into Chicago's programs but was pretty unsuccessful). Binary thinking is dangerous. By this I mean, high crime and poor living conditions and lifestyles cannot be "cured" by police simply arresting "bad people". That's not the answer. Just like Jordan mentions in the article, "Traditional police work hadn't done the job" (Smith, 4).  There has to be more, and it sounds like the people who started Lifeline acted on their knowledge and understanding of this. Perhaps programs like this, with people other than police officers, working within communities can provide a more trusted outlet for residents and community members.

Crime prevention vs crime fighting

After watching the wire and reading about the "Blue Brotherhood," it does not surprise me that black and white officers share some similar views while also having many dissimilar views.  What I was shocked to see however was policing has changed over time.  Being white myself, I have always seen the role of police officers as more of "crime fighting" rather than a role of "peacekeeping" (Moskos 58).    But, what interests me most is the history of the reform era that "shifted away from crime prevention and toward a more narrow focus on law enforcement and reactive crime fighting" (Moskos 57).   Reactive crime fighting says to me that police officers accept crime as a norm and never expect it to go away.  This was also really apparent in the wire, where often times the police turn a blind eye to small crimes and only focus on major crimes like murder.  What the police are failing to see is that all crime is part of the bigger picture of system failure.  While it may not be the police's job to fix the system that is causing many people to participate in criminal behavior, their arresting people is not solving any problems and crime will still exist in inner cities despite some criminals going to jail for a little bit of time.  The system that is keeping people in situations where crime is one of the best solutions to poverty  needs to be addressed and in that way crime prevention should be at the forefront rather than crime fighting.