Riot prevention in Chicago

The 2011 summer riots in Britain that began in London and then proliferated to other parts of the UK, most notably Birmingham and Manchester, came as a great surprise to most of the general public. For days rolling news brought us pictures of the armies of youths looting shops, attacking the police and causing general panic and misery. Social networks and mobile messaging mobilised hordes of youngsters, who took advantage of an overstretched London Met and vulnerable shopkeepers. The Government was quick to crackdown on the criminals, keeping Magistrates’ Courts open throughout the night to deal with hundreds of cases. Those found with stolen merchandise or inducing violence were given tough penal sentences; all condoned by an unforgiving general public. It did not end there; politicians, commentators and victims debated and gave their thoughts on what was to blame. Most on the Left blamed Government cuts, the Right blamed the welfare state and the general public blamed the parents; whilst the outspoken historian David Starkey blamed it on the ‘blackification’ of white youths. It inevitably led to the resignation of senior police officers and a report to what happened. These riots were the first on this scale in Britain for around 25 years and have led to questions of what is happening in some of our communities and what preventative measures can be put in place. On BBC Four on Sunday was an excellent documentary called ‘The Interrupters – How to stop a riot’ highlighting the work of Cease-fire, a public health group that aims to prevent gun violence on the streets of Chicago.

The communities in South Chicago have had to deal with the day-to-day issues of gang and gun violence for decades. From the same streets where Barack Obama worked as a community campaigner, gun violence in 2008 claimed more lives in Chicago than US service personnel serving in Iraq (509 to 314). For generations, communities live in a poverty trap, the cycle of poor schooling and few job opportunities lead most youngsters to seek alternative sources of income i.e. drugs, that inevitably leads to violent crime. A local funeral leader said that 90% of the funerals he had overseen involved young victims. These murders are often trivial and not gang-related involved inter-personal spats or random attacks, teenagers murdered by other teenagers. There is a code of death over dishonour, which may seem odd to outsiders, but in a community where life is lived day-to-day, gun crime is the norm, hopelessness exists as reality. It is not unusual for people to have lost over twenty friends to death, drugs or prison.

The Cease-fire project is similar to schemes ran in Boston and Los Angeles; its aim is to reduce gun-violence in the neighbourhoods. Using data and statistical models to cite hotspots, their team roams the streets and interrupts potential scuffles. In a society, where violence is the release valve, people are often reprimanded with their lives. The interrupters have seen it all before, they too have been a part of gang culture and have seen their own lives affected by violence, prison or drugs. They speak aggressively to get the point across and to educate those on the street. It is clear that in the heat of the moment, no one thinks rationally. Their mediation is there to make people stop and reflect. They may not be able to stop gang beef but it allows them to coexist and who knows, possibly become a community. In targeted areas they have seen a drop in gun violence between 40-45%. What is most important is that Cease-fire is operating in schools, educating a generation to understand that by taking someone’s life will only cost you yours in prison, they speak of their own experience and the malaise of taking such decisions.

Community leaders recognise that ending the violence is the pathway for a better future. It will serve to create better schools and will attract businesses to the area, creating jobs. What many of these people want but have never seen are flourishing neighbourhoods and lasting peace. The interrupters help rehabilitate people, in one scene we saw a boy, who had served time for armed robbery, confront and apologise to his victims, he went on to find a regular job at a nursery, not on the street. The partnership in Chicago isn’t unique, similar successful schemes have been rolled out across other US cities. In the UK, Strathclyde Police introduced data-based policing and social measures to tackle gang violence in Glasgow. Like Chicago, generations had grown up in neighbourhoods where unemployment, dependency and substance abuse was the norm. The success is highlighted in the decline in the crime stats. This has now become a blueprint for police forces around the UK.

Much work is still required but perhaps what is most vivid in these neighbourhoods are the unofficial memorials dotted around the city. The victims, who died in undignified circumstances, leave a vestige of their passing on every street corner. One can only hope that these will serve as reminders of how far the communities have come.

In the Police I trust.

The public sector and local government will be bracing itself for the forthcoming budget given by George Osborne. If the coalition government’s plans to wipe out the fiscal deficit within this Parliament are to materialise then savings bringing spending to around 40% of GDP will be the main target for Treasury officials. It is on these occasions that public services feel the pinch and try to demonstrate their worth and mitigate any government cuts. Perhaps the most difficult, particularly from the Conservative’s perspective, is a reduction to the policing budget. Tough crime and penal policies have always been part of a Tory’s diet and a cut in police numbers would appear to be contrary to party beliefs. Under Mrs Thatcher, police recruitment increased by around 30% and was vital in her battles against striking miners.

David Cameron met recently with the former Los Angeles Police Commissioner, William Bratton, to discuss crime and policing strategy. Bratton worked for the Boston Police Department (BPD), the New York Police Department (NYPD) and, until recently, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). In all three posts he has managed to reduce crime in cities notorious with high drug and violent crime rates. His experience and judgements are intelligible and his justifications would make any politician stupid to ignore him.

For many years New York was ravaged by violent organised crime syndicates that disrupted the lives of its population. Bratton’s ideas were based on a criminology paper by George Kelly and Ray Wilson called the ‘Broken Window Theory’. Kelly and Wilson placed a brand new car in a rough neighbourhood and left it for 24 hours, when they returned they found there had been no damage at all. The next time, they broke a window and again left it for 24 hours. When they returned they found the car had been vandalised to the extent that nothing was retrievable, even the tyres had been stolen. The theory was that if the Police were ignoring minor crimes, and targeting serious criminals, then these petty crooks will be undeterred by the law and eventually fall into a life of tougher crime.

The ‘Broken Window’ was evident in many cities across America in the 1970s. In New York police didn’t stop drinking on the streets, gambling, graffiti or the infamous squeegee men that cleaned car windows at traffic lights. Statistics found that of the three million people travelling on the subway each day, 200,000 people were evading the fare. Bratton set out his taskforce to root out such delinquency by finding the source and stopping it in its track. As he stated, by stopping people from drinking on the streets you are stopping a potential fight or stabbing later on in the evening.

People were very critical of this style of policing because evidence suggested that ‘zero-tolerance’ policing was pushing crime to outskirts of the city. It is also seen as very authoritarian and suspicious of human behaviour. As Bratton put it, this style of policing is in the wider interest of society. The Police did not have a good reputation within ethnic areas of cities, and the violence directed at people like Rodney King did not help ameliorate such relationships. He suggests that Police need to control the behaviour of society because crime itself is only caused by one thing; human nature. These are influenced by the economy, demographics and racism but it ultimately derives from the individual. By placing Police on the beat it was repairing relationships in places historically deemed as no-go areas. Cops on the dots not only created compassionate policing but it helped to stop the source of crime.

Ideological lines are always drawn involving crime and punishment. Liberals despise the thought of giving up certain liberties for the good of everyone, but these theories have shown that they have been effective in driving down all types of crime in cities with unhealthy pasts. Putting people in prison is in fact a good thing for society. It not only removes certain people from society but endorses a combination of policing and the criminal justice system i.e. juries.

This is the dilemma Mr Cameron has. Crime is known to rise during recessions, particularly low level, but by cutting Police numbers he could be doing more damage than he wishes. Policing has evolved immensely in terms of technology and statistics, but these alone will not see people stop their errant ways.