The Politics of Partnership

This chapter explores how power struggles with police and racial antagonisms between Blacks and Latin@s problematize the goals of community policing and diminish the influence community leaders could build to shape police action. The crisscrossing conflicts that the authors observed between Black and Latin@ meeting leaders, Vera Fisher and Hector Mendoza, and the conflicts between another Black meeting leader, Julie Coleman, and Captain Himura frame this chapter. The discussion of a community policing “power struggle” between Blacks and Latin@s takes place within a compromised field, premised on the idea that police devolve authority to the community. Together, these characters demonstrate the ways in which members of the CPAB have only a contingent authority in meetings—given to them at the Captain’s behest—and how the local racial order and legal status of many HO participants undermine their authority as well. Leaders, if they choose to remain, must volunteer to comply with police authority. LAPD has erected a community policing apparatus that has provided rhetoric of community accountability, but, at least in Lakeside, has also succeeded in platforming divisive community politics.

No Place for the Mom-and-Pops

This chapter extends from the previous, further examining police service delivery with respect to Lakeside’s business community. The authors open with a discussion of the Lakeside Boosters, a police charity where corporations can sponsor CPAB-led events and programs or provide general use funds. The Business Car is the primary unit responsible for all business relations, however SLOs regularly patrol these establishments in the course of their patrol routines. The chapter follows SLO Phil Hackett as he regulates the racial and moral boundaries of local liquor store patrons and sees SLO Marge Sierra advocate for the deservingness of a new 7-Eleven convenience store in the neighborhood, despite public resistance, because its corporate ties ensure elevated security and regulation. She contrasts this store with the area’s Black-owned businesses, whose continuing closures signal a positive shift for the maintenance of social order. The Lakeside Division’s relationship with local businesses, as the authors found, was not unusual. Rather, this is a normative institutional alignment. Coupling community policing with LA’s post-1992 urban redevelopment scheme, Rebuild Los Angeles, ensures that divisions can support local enforcement strategies in a time of declining city budgets, while also maintaining a hospitable environment for business growth.

Organizing the Division

The chapter examines the captaincy of Albert Himura and his academy trainer, Rick Patton. Together, these Captains defined the organizational structure of the two groups the authors observed—the CPAB and the HO—throughout their fieldwork. The authors explore the community meeting structure under Captain Himura, whose main goal is to cultivate the capacity for community crime control. This begins with recruiting pro-law-enforcement thinkers. They also discuss how Captain Patton controlled the symbolic boundaries of meetings—who could participate, the agenda, and what messages should be circulated within and outside meetings—and show how police shape and restrict the role of the citizen in crime prevention. Regular meetings demonstrate that LAPD wishes to collaborate, but at the same time the Captain and SLOs favor LAPD’s traditional crime-fighting project.

The Making of Lakeside

This chapter looks through the eyes of Ms. Mayfield, a longtime resident and CPAB member, at the formation of the Lakeside community. Similar to the previous chapter, here the authors examine how social, economic, and demographic changes have shaped the former heart of LA’s “Black Belt.” Rather than frame each section around events of violence, the authors look back at Ms. Mayfield’s experiences topically. They begin with Ms. Mayfield lamenting the loss of the neighborhood’s “old ways,” highlighting the sociological path that Lakeside has taken to arrive at its present state. Readers also encounter a revolving cast of community people, from Ms. Stacy, who resents Latino migrants for taking jobs away from school-age Blacks, to Ms. Sanchez, whose community organizing work focuses on bridging the collective struggles of Black and Brown people. These actors give voice to the various groups that make up the Lakeside community.

Introduction

This chapter opens with an exchange in a community meeting about the Rodney King riots, which raises questions about the nature of these meetings, the role of police in civil disorder, and the nature of police-community relations. The authors trace the origins of community policing as key liberal reform premised on the maintenance of legitimacy. They outline the “eyes and ears” function civilians are expected to play in meetings and explain how neighborhood disputes can limit the mobilizing potential of community partnerships. The authors also discuss the setting where this study takes place and outline their methods. This chapter ends with an outline of the rest of the book.

Conclusion

This chapter opens with the CPAB asking to be a part of the investigation into the Dorner incident but being denied that ability given LAPD’s existing (internal) review structure. Using this scene, in the lobby of a local McDonald’s owned by a Black former LAPD administrator, the authors show how even the CPABs, meant to be platforms for the community to shape law enforcement policy, are alienated from the process altogether. The authors look back at community governance strategies since the civil rights era and show how community policing is just the latest formulation of these. They show that without attempts at formally aligning community groups, they devolve into conflict with one another seeking the little power available in police-civilian partnerships. The authors call for activist strategies for police reform, which ensure that community interests become institutional priorities.

Complaint Encounters

This chapter examines the negotiations over resident complaints—or what the authors call complaint encounters. In most meetings participants report complaints about crime and disorder in a specific and detailed fashion that can be part of a long series of discussions about recurrent problems over the course of months or years. The authors frame this chapter around three complainants to illustrate how officers define the likelihood of police service delivery in complaint encounters. Police will often cooperate with Mr. Palmer, whose complaints are clear and concise and have an existing police solution. Police will often control Ms. Carter, whose complaints emerge from racial antagonism as an underlying current of her perception of social disorder. And Sra. Santos is persistent in her resistance to police. Police rarely act in defense of Sra. Santos and her community, so her resolve is to hold police accountable at every turn. Police responses to these residents demonstrate how strictly police define the public’s “eyes and ears” function. Only when public and institutional interests align are complaints policeable. The entire collection of exchanges defines the Lakeside Division’s enforcement policy.

Roots, Rebellion, and Reform

This chapter closely examines three of LA’s biggest violent disturbances—the 1943 Government Riot (popularly known as the Zoot Suit Riots), the 1965 Watts Rebellion, and the 1992 Rodney King Uprisings. Each section begins with a brief recounting of the circumstances of the outbreak of each disturbance. Following this, the authors discuss the preconditions of each event: from the social, economic, and political changes to the role of LA police and government in each period. Each section culminates in an analysis of the reports produced by each “riot commission.” The final section highlights what the authors found. Tracing LA’s history of violent disturbances, they show that community governance discourse has time and again been used as part of a larger public confidence-building project.