ABSTRACT
Over the last 25 years, New York City has experienced dramatic reductions in serious crime across categories. While many people report the existence of gangs in their communities, they were not the focus of policing-based interventions. Instead, the city relied on widespread “stop and frisk” practices, intensive “broken-window”-oriented enforcement, and targeted “hot spot” policing. These forms of policing came under intensive pressure from communities and legal advocates concerned about the widespread criminalization of youth of color and civil rights violations, leading to a series of lawsuits, legislative changes, and political mobilizations. In this chapter, we analyze the New York City police department’s use of gang suppression policing and its consequences for young people of color in some of the city’s poorest and most underserved communities. Based on public statements and documents from police officials and interviews with young people targeted by police as well as their families and other community members, we conclude that using police to solve the problems of young people is a misguided strategy. Rather, we need to defund police-led interventions and reinvest that money in the kinds of services that will create healthier and more resilient individuals, families, and communities.
