Summary: With many of our inner cities decaying – crime rising, police hated – San Diego tries a bold experiment. Their police will patrol less in high-crime areas. If successful, it might change the destiny of our cities. If unsuccessful, we will learn a lot so we can try something else.
“For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction, are most suitable.”
— Advice in Amorphisms by Hippocrates (the father of medicine). Short form: desperate times call for desperate measures.
“Report: San Diego chief told his officers
not to patrol minority neighborhoods.“
Law Enforcement Today, 7 September 2019.
“Political pressures in San Diego have led to police backing off and rebranding their gang units to be more community friendly. Since those decisions, gang violence has skyrocketed. But sources within the unit, who are not authorized to speak to the media but whom we personally know and have vetted, have told us that the drama goes even deeper.
“According to those sources, who must remain anonymous for obvious reasons, pressure from the progressive leaders in the California city has led the San Diego police chief {David Nisleit} to bow down and change how the department operates when it comes to crime, including a complete overhaul to the Gang Suppression Unit, which leaders say were stopping too many people of color. …
“’He came to roll call and flat-out said he couldn’t have white officers stopping people of color. He also gave orders not to patrol minority neighborhoods in general,’ the sources told LET.
“{Also} a new 60-officer unit was formed to deal with the vast homeless population, pulling police off their normal proactive patrol. …
Gangs & police in San Diego
San Diego, like other major cities, has grappled with the increasing power and size of gangs. Its first gang unit began in 1972, when gangs emerged as a major problem in the African-American and Hispanic communities. The unit was disbanded around 1995 as part of the Department’s new focus on community policing.
Dissatisfaction with the results resulted in the creation of the Gang Suppression Team (GST) in 1996. Composed of uniformed officers, it focused on identifying gang members, gathering intelligence, monitoring hot spot locations and controlling the overt street activities of gangs. GST has retained the same basic form since then. See this report for details about San Diego, its gangs, and police efforts to control them.
The San Diego experiment
The San Diego Union-Tribune of September 2 has a more detailed and more neutral description of this experiment: “Gang crimes spike in San Diego.”
“{The GST} patrolled neighborhoods where gangs were active. Though department leaders have credited the team with keeping gang crimes in check, the presence of the officers and their work was criticized by some neighborhood residents who complained of heavy-handed tactics and aggressive policing. Over the years some activists have called for disbanding the team. …
“In April, police leaders renamed the {GST} the Special Operations Unit and tasked it with responding to any source of violent crime across the city, including but not limited to violent gang activity. …There is still a group of detectives focusing on gang crimes exclusively, Takuechi said, while the officers in the former gang team now have a broader responsibility to assist investigating violent crimes throughout the city. He said the department was hopeful the team would be able to manage both tasks of investigating violent crimes and gang crimes. …
“Around the same time when the Gang Suppression Team was redeployed, the department also created the Gang Intervention Unit. Established in March, the group aims to work closely with community members and young people to prevent future gang violence. But they do not conduct the intensive street patrols that was the hallmark of the suppression team. The rise in gang crimes began in the same month that the Special Operations Unit was inaugurated, according to a month-by-month breakdown of gang incidents provided by police.
“A spate of shootings, retaliation attacks and other crimes has put the raw number of gang-related crimes this year far ahead of the number through July 2018. Police statistics show there were 463 gang-related crimes committed through June, up from 385 during the same period last year. That increase of 78 crimes {20%} is reflected in nearly all categories. There have been 10 gang homicides this year, compared with five at the same time last year. There were six gang homicides recorded in all of 2018. …
“{Recent killings} prompted community leaders to start “The Peace Movement: Let’s Live, Let’s Love,” unveiled at a news conference July 23. The plan detailed 10 steps that could be implemented by residents and city officials to promote peace in their communities. They include ensuring streets are well lit by reporting outages through the city’s Get It Done app, making sure young people participate in positive activities outside of school, and developing and sharing a phone list of local organizations that provide counseling, job training and other services.”
This is good news
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said his dissent to the decision in New State Ice Co. vs. Liebmann that “a state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” (See Wikipedia.)
That applies even more so to a community. Its elected officials, speaking for its people, and civil servants can respond to intractable problems by thinking outside the box – trying bold new solutions. Like the crime problem in Hispanic and (especially) African-American communities. Many in these communities lionize their violent criminals and consider the police to be their enemies. This puts police in an ugly spot, both morally and operationally.
America has a long deep tradition of localism – aka community democracy. It is only right that minority communities get the opportunity to live life as they want to – with less presence by the police. Chief Nisleit is right, in a sense, to follow instructions from San Diego’s elected officials and give those communities that opportunity to take their own path. Given them what they want; see if they like it.
The situation is getting worse in some of our inner cities. I doubt anyone has better ideas.
What about the individuals who get hurt?
Reduced patrolling might more crime. What about the people who get hurt? This is an example of the inevitable conflict between community and individual rights. People do not have a right to police protection. That is a government service provided to the degree and manner chosen by their elected officials.
Let’s see how this works out.Let’s watch and learn.
Why is this happening?
In our time, the news cannot be understood unless you see the big picture. America is in the midst of institutional collapse. One after another, like falling dominoes. Welcome to ClownWorld, the final meme for America!
For More Information
Ideas! For shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
Do Americans believe police treat them fairly? Do they want more or fewer police? See Gallup’s 2015 survey showing the answers by race. A 2019 Gallup survey provides more information about this.
What is life like for those living with America’s history of racism, baked as it was into America at the start. See “What It’s Like to Be Black in the Criminal Justice System” by Andrew Kahn and Chris Kirk at Slate, August 2015 – “These eight charts suggest there are racial disparities at every phase of the justice system.” There is good news: “The gap between the number of blacks and whites in prison is shrinking” by John Gramlich at Pew Research, April 2019.
To learn more about mass incarceration in America, see the website of The Sentencing Project. For detail see the FBI’s 2015 “Crime in the United States“.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about racism, about crime, about prison, about our criminal justice system, and especially these…
- Our prisons are a mirror showing the soul of America. It’s not a pretty picture.
- More about the collapse of the American Criminal Justice System.
- Final thoughts about America’s Criminal Justice System.
- The Disgrace of Our Criminal {in}Justice System, and hints of reform in the air.
- Can We Fix Our Shameful Prisons? Why they should be, and why we might not do so.
- Since 9-11 we have less crime but more fear of crime. A win-win for our rulers!
- Hard data from Harvard about police violence & race – An eye-opening study at the NBER.
- Important – America’s unspeakable problem: African-American’s crime rates.
- Harsh truths about mass incarceration in America.
- Ways to reform our criminal injustice system.
- Why do we lock up so many at great cost & for no gain?
Books about this vital subject
Prison Break: Why Conservatives Turned Against Mass Incarceration
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
Locked In
The Collapse of American Criminal Justice
