DON't SHOOT: a Radical Approach to the Problem

aNNals Of cRimE dON’T shoot A radical approach to the problem of gang violence. BY JOHN sEaBROOK n April, 2006, two brutal street killings hot spots almost as fearful of the police as in the Over-the-Rhine section of Cin- they are of the criminals. As Whalen, a cinnatiI spread fear through the city. A big, bearlike man with a friendly Irish white suburban mother of three, who was face, put it to me recently, “You say, ‘O.K., trying to buy drugs at the corner of Four- we’re going to arrest everyone who jay- teenth and Race, got into an argument walks.’ So who do you arrest? Someone’s with the dealer, and was shot and killed. grandmother, or the milkman, or some A few days later, on the same block, four guy who has just worked a sixteen-hour white kids, also from the suburbs—a boy day and is trying to get home as fast as he at the wheel, three girls in the back—were can. It’s bullshit. Even in high-crime buying drugs when a black man walked neighborhoods, there are a lot of honest up to the car and shot the boy in the head. people living there. Meanwhile, the real These incidents, coming within days bad guys—they know a sweep is on, so of each other, contributed to the public’s they just stay inside until things cool off.” impression that violent crime in the streets The Cincinnati Police Department’s was out of control. In fact, much of the vi- relationship with the black community olence was occurring between people who had been a poisonous issue for years. In were closely connected. Young black men March, 2001, the A.C.L.U. and a local were shooting each other over drug deals civil-rights group filed a lawsuit against gone bad; in the majority of cases, the vic- the city for racial profiling and excessive tims and the shooters knew each other. force. Three weeks later, after a police Nevertheless, although the average Cin- officer chased and fatally shot an unarmed cinnatian had little chance of getting shot nineteen-year-old black man, the city was on the street, citizens perceived potential engulfed in three days of riots, arson, and killers everywhere. And that presented looting. Whalen was the commanding Chief Thomas Streicher and his assistant officer of the riot-response team, and he chief, Lieutenant Colonel James Whalen, saw firsthand the utter breakdown of trust of the Cincinnati Police Department, between the cops and the community. In with two problems: a crime spree and a 2002, as part of an agreement reached to public-relations crisis. settle the A.C.L.U. lawsuit and in re- The killings were perpetrated mostly sponse to a Department of Justice inves- by gangs, or “groups”—the expression tigation, a federal monitor was appointed preferred by Cincinnati civic leaders. “Not to oversee reforms in the police depart- real organized gangs such as your Crips ment. Some progress had been made and Bloods and whatnot,” Whalen told since the riots, but Operation Vortex me. “More like loose-knit groups of guys threatened to undo it. hanging out on street corners.” In the Vortex did reduce street crime, accord- summer of 2006, Streicher and Whalen ing to the police. But it had little effect on implemented a “zero tolerance” plan. the city’s murder count, which, with They assembled an élite sixty-man crime- twelve murders in September of 2006 and fighting squad code-named Vortex, which a deadly spurt over the holidays, finished began making sweeps of high-crime areas, the year at eighty-nine, the highest num- or “hot spots,” arresting people not just for ber since recordkeeping began. serious crimes but also for misdemeanors, like jaywalking and loitering. By the end fter the 2001 riots, the Cincinnati of September, more than twenty-six hun- police heard from dozens of aca- dred arrests had been made. Ademics and criminologists, who proposed The drawback of zero tolerance is that a variety of policy initiatives aimed at im- it tends to make law-abiding citizens in proving relations with the community. 32 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 22, 2009 TNY—2009_06_22—PAGE 32—133SC. Captain Daniel Gerard, who took over Vortex in the fall of 2007, didn’t put much stock in their ideas. As he said, “Aca- demia and law enforcement are at oppo- site ends of the spectrum. They like the- ories, we like results.” Therefore, when David Kennedy, a professor in the anthropology department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, in New York City, came to Cincinnati in the fall of 2006 to pitch a program he had devised to counter gang violence, the cops didn’t expect much. Kennedy was tall and slim, and in the dark clothes he favored there was something about him of the High Plains Drifter—the mysterious stranger who blows into town one day and makes the bad guys go away. He wore a grizzled beard and had thick, unbound hair that cascaded halfway down his back. “What’s some guy who looks like Jesus got to tell us about crime in Cincinnati?” was the line around police headquarters. Kennedy had been approached by Dr. Victor Garcia, the head of the trauma unit at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, who was seeing almost daily the effects of the city’s violent gangs: the stabbings, shootings, and beatings, and the injuries to innocent children caught in the crossfire. “Children with their eyes shot out, children paralyzed,” Garcia told me. “I started to wonder, in- stead of treating injuries, how can we prevent them from happening in the first place?” Garcia and a local councilman named Cecil Thomas arranged a confer- ence call between Kennedy and Mark Mallory, Cincinnati’s recently elected David Kennedy told Cincinnati that gang-related murders could be cut in half. mayor. Two months later, Kennedy out- lined his plan to the city’s officials and to attend a meeting. There the cops would “What you are doing is wrong, and we community leaders. deliver an ultimatum: the shootings must know you can do better.” Ceasefire, as Kennedy’s program is stop. “And if they do not stop,” Kennedy Like many politicians, Mallory was sometimes known, begins with the fact, said, “the consequences will be swift, and concerned about being branded soft commonly recognized by criminologists, certain, and severe, and punishment will on crime, especially at a time when that a small number of hardened criminals be handed out not just to the individual citizens were calling for more police, commit a hugely disproportionate num- involved in the shooting but to everyone longer prison terms for offenders, and ber of serious violent crimes. Often, much in that individual’s gang.” the construction of a new jail. But the of the violence is caused by gang dynam- The young men in the gangs would police seemed unable to reduce the ho- ics: score settling, vendettas, and turf is- also be given a phone number that they micide rate, and Ceasefire offered a sues, all played out according to the law of could call for help. The city would make fresh approach to the problem—Ken- the streets. Arresting the shooters doesn’t life coaching and job counselling available nedy all but guaranteed the Cincinnati generally stop the killing; nor does threat- to those who wanted out of the thug life. civic leaders that if they followed his ening them with long prison sentences. “We don’t promise them jobs—we prom- plan the city would reduce its gang- But one thing does work, Kennedy had ise to do the best we can for them,” Ken- related murder count by forty to fifty per discovered: telling them to stop. nedy said. Clergy, ex-gang members, and cent in a year. At the end of the meet- In Cincinnati, Kennedy explained, the victims and their family members would ing, the Mayor, the city manager, and police would first identify gang members be on hand to deliver the moral compo- the city council gave their support to the MARK ULRIKSEN on parole or probation and compel them nent of the message to the offenders: plan, and about five hundred thousand THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 22, 2009 33 TNY—2009_06_22—PAGE 33—133SC.—LIVE art—R 18568 dollars was budgeted over two years. with the first district. Cops were asked third of them had ten or more felony The police remained skeptical. To to draw on the map the location of any charges, and ninety-one per cent had a Chief Streicher, a blond and youthful gangs they were aware of, which would prior arrest for a violent crime. fifty-five-year-old with a military bearing, be represented by numbered circles. The whose demeanor and posture, and even officers relied on anecdotal information avid Kennedy is not a cop, or an ac- the ring of his name (pronounced that they had picked up on the streets. ademically trained criminologist, “striker”), signal a man of action, Ceasefire Engel and her students peppered them Dand his lack of formal schooling in either sounded like a social program promoted with questions. Where is the group lo- the practice or the theory of crime control by do-gooders. And the cops did not like cated? How many members does it have? may be his strongest qualification for his the idea of being on a team with social Is it allied with any other gangs? Does it job. In the bifurcated world of criminol- workers.

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