ABSTRACT
This is a short chapter, but a very important one. Growing up in the suburbs or rural areas of America, many police are not intimately familiar with dire urban poverty. Coming from an environment of relative affluence and raised by a two-parent family, it is almost unimaginable to take cognizance of the despair, violence, mistrust, and chaos in which some are raised. When an officer from the suburbs is suddenly thrust into an environment where the walls move with roaches, tenants urinate in the hallways, and a walk to the corner store can be a perilous journey, that officer quickly succumbs to an “us-versus-them” mindset. But, as many wise men and prophets throughout history have pointed out, being poor is not a crime.
