Policing Politics: How Policing Affects Political Behavior in the Barrio

• In Event: Influence of Identity on Political Perceptions and Outcomes (Virtual Session)

Abstract

Recent high-profile police killings around the U.S. have brought international attention to American policing and the need for reform.
However, communities of color across the country, from Minneapolis to Detroit, New York City to Atlanta, have called for police reforms for decades. The remotely hidden community of Ramona Gardens, a housing project in East Los Angeles, is one such community.

Home to some of the most impoverished families in Los Angeles, Ramona Gardens has been economically and politically neglected for decades. This neglect made it a fertile ground for criminal activity, creating one of the city’s oldest gangs: Big Hazard. Big Hazard’s community stronghold has made it a constant focus of the city’s anti-gang policies, including suppressive measures such as gang injunctions and massive arrests, which led to tense police-community relations. To improve police-community relations, the Housing Authorities and the Los Angeles Police Department launched the Community Safety Partnership (CSP) program in 2011.

Recent studies in political science have found that those that come into contact with the criminal justice system are less likely to be civically active, and this includes citizens who are stopped, searched, or questioned by police officers (Petersilia 2003; Manza and Uggen 2008; Weaver and Lerman 2010; Burch 2013; Epp et al. 2014; Weaver and Lerman 2014). Furthermore, involvement with the criminal justice system leads to distrust in government and erodes the willingness to participate in the community (Petersilia 2003; Weaver and Lerman 2014). This paper explores how policing, and interactions with police shape political behavior in Ramona Gardens using a mixed-methods approach for data gathering and analysis. Has the shift in policing, from suppressive tactics to community policing, worked? This paper will report findings from a Public Housing Community Survey conducted in Ramona Gardens from January-June 2018, interviews with community residents, elite interviews, and field observations.

Author

• Yanira Gracideth Rivas Pineda, University of California, Santa Barbara