[wigl]

Grew up in Harlem though not black.

While I'm sure there are good police out there, broken windows policies effectively act as a safe haven for a subset of cops to enforce arbitrary (usually racial) bias whenever they feel like it. There's no impetus to actually do the neighborhood policing they claim aspire to--just a universal excuse to allocate resources and attention in the name of making neighborhoods "safe".

Metric gaming is real. Ex. strapped for money or not meeting your quota? Stop some drunk teens on a weekend night before the end of your shift and you can make time and a half because your lookup is "still processing" well past 5 PM. End up writing a citation for the kids, tell yourself that they can afford it, tell them that they should be grateful, and wash your hands clean of it all because you're doing "neighborhood policing".

What if there's an actual crime to report in these neighborhoods?

Two squad cars pulled up to my building. The first thing said to me: "OK who was it? Black? Hispanic?"

They have me ride with them as they stopped every non-white group of kids, at least 30 over the course of ~2 hours despite my repeated remarks that no one had actually seen the perpetrator(s). I wanted to back out at this point, but they had to have a case to justify their time. Frustrated, they took me back to the station and had me go through a photo book of juvenile delinquents in the neighborhood they had compiled. It was photos of entirely black and hispanic youth captioned by their name, address (at which they could be arrested), and some minor crime that was enough to put them in the book. They were practically begging me to just point out any dark face. I just wanted to report a stolen phone.

[ericjang]

This is horrific. When did this happen? Was this in Harlem?

[wigl]

9-10 years ago. Spanish Harlem during peak stop and frisk era/doctrine.

What I remember most was how routine it all was for everyone involved. Driver would sometimes pull the car up on kids drug raid style, swerving into the sidewalk. They'd turn on the high-beams and within a few words and seconds, it was a pop-up police lineup.

The only description of the suspects was this: a group of kids, one of them was wearing a bright hoodie. No one had even seen their faces. I was adamant about this as well but these cops didn't believe me. They instead kept asking me to "be real" with them and that I shouldn't "feel the need to be PC" around them. They acted as if I was self-censoring for virtue signalling instead of being honest. I just wanted them to log my IMEI and keep a lookout for my phone on CL/eBay because they had been doing press releases about it at the time. Apparently that was the less accessible option.

It scares me to think how much negative impact that one group of police might've had. When I think about how frustrated they became when I told them the truth over and over. Maybe they're used to more central park Karen type of crime reports.