Gascón - The Limits of Community Policing: Civilian Power and Police Accountability in Black and Brown Los Angeles

The Limits of Community Policing

Civilian Power and Police Accountability in Black and Brown Los Angeles

Luis Daniel Gascn and Aaron Roussell

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York

www.nyupress.org

2019 by New York University

All rights reserved

References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gascon, Luis Daniel, author. | Roussell, Aaron, author.

Title: The limits of community policing : civilian power and police accountability in black and brown Los Angeles / Luis Daniel Gascon and Aaron Roussell.

Description: New York : New York University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018030569| ISBN 9781479871209 (cl : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781479842254 (pb : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH : PoliceCaliforniaLos Angeles. | Police-community relationsCaliforniaLos Angeles. | PoliceComplaints againstCaliforniaLos Angeles. | African AmericansCaliforniaLos Angeles. | Hispanic AmericansCaliforniaLos Angeles.

Classification: LCC HV 8148. L 55 G 37 2019 | DDC 363.2/30979494dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018030569

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ABBREVIATIONS

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Map of the four LAPD bureaus

Tree-lined street in South LA

Helicopter over house in South LA

Latin@ kids playing soccer on a tennis court

One of many no soccer signs on tennis court fences in South LA parks

LA socioeconomics 19702007

Community policing organizational chart

Community room arranged in presentation style

Lock It, Hide It, Keep It flyer

Image of the TEC-9 machine pistol belonging to a suspect shot by LAPD

Cars parked on Ms. Carters street

Street vendor on a busy sidewalk in South LA

Street vendor in front of a corporate restaurant chain

A warning notice to street vendors

Photograph of our shadows

PREFACE

We wrote this book to deepen traditional understandings of community policing and police-civilian partnerships. Community policing became our focus specifically because it is a politically sound response to complicated questions surrounding protest, police brutality, racism, and problems that seem endemic to policing. After yet another public revolt against police practice, community policing remains the buzzword, but what does it really look like? Words like community and partner are thrown around in policy circles as well by well-intentioned reformists, but what do these ideas mean in practice?

Although weve presented some of these ideas in other places, ethnographies are best presented in book format, where the characters have room to express themselves and the setting can be presented in all its complexity. Our motivation was to get experience at the places where community and police come together (particularly in the place most associated with community policingSouth Los Angeles), elevate perspectives from the communities most affected, and amplify the voices of the often-unspoken challenges of and to policing in this context. More than distributing surveys or counting bureaucratic output, this meant getting close and looking at social interactions on the ground. We spent a lot of time watching, talking, volunteering, and immersing ourselves in the spaces of community policing. We hope The Limits of Community Policing provides a rich and multifaceted look at the project, offering data that raises questions and produces conversations, even for those who may disagree with our conclusions.

This book begins with a history of the present of South LA, focusing on several specific themes: the evolution of LAPD, LAs key moments of mass violence, Black and Latin@ communities, and economic and demographic shifts. The remainder of the book outlines the social organization, key actors, routines, and challenges of community policing in LA. We start by looking at the police-community crime prevention meetings in one South LA neighborhood we call Lakeside. By the end of the book, readers will have met the diverse cast of characters who shape the community policing regime in Lakeside. Longtime residents of some of South LAs oldest Black neighborhoods, Gerry Torrance and Teresa Mayfield, offer these discussions much-needed historical context. Repeated heated exchanges between group leaders, the irrepressible Vera Fisher and commanding Hector Mendoza, illustrate South LAs contemporary racial and political landscape. Their contests, negotiations, and collaborations with a multiracial cast of police officers and administrators like the enigmatic White Senior Lead Officer Phil Hackett, the nepotistic Latino Sergeant David Guevara, and administrators like the relatable Asian American Captain Albert Himura, make up what LAPD calls the Community-Police Advisory Board (CPAB). Within the rich vein of legal and urban ethnographies, we explain the everyday work of the people in South LA who attempt to use community policing to improve their neighborhoods.