Over-Policing and Under-Policing—Two Very Related Problems

Reposting this popular post because our community continues to grow nicely (thank you) and therefore many haven’t seen it. Apologies to those who have.

The link below will take you to the discussion of Jill Leovy’s book Ghettoside. Leovy knows from experience (she covered crime for the Los Angeles Times for many years) that poor minority communities are too often policed in brutal ways. But she also laments that the majority of poor minority residents of these communities, who are law-abiding souls just trying to live life like the rest of us, must live among murderers and other predators, and that our society has been unable to provide them with something so basic to a civilized society as personal security. Leovy also argues that the alienation in many poor black communities is as much a result of under-policing as over-policing, and the failure of the state to provide safety and security in these communities, as it does in less impoverished communities throughout the United States.

Both the brutalized policing and the mortal danger to the residents of the communities Leovy describes are shameful. As is the fact that so many Americans only seem to see one or the other of these two, very related problems.

Click the following link to read more:
https://theloneliberalrepublican.com/reference-materials/keller-bill-ghettoside-author-jill-leovy-on-what-we-have-learned-since-rodney-king-the-marshall-project-new-york-ny-mar-3-2016/