Public Safety, Trust, and Efficiency

Is it possible to create policing strategies that identify the community as a major stakeholder and are efficient as well as effective? Policing is especially important to observe because it highlights a specific tension between the drive for efficiency and for government to establish trusting partnerships with its citizens. In light of the recent federal case over the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy, it seems that results-driven policing has alienated entire communities—particularly low-income minority communities. I find Meulman’s case study on the Dutch police force to offer a more inclusive (and desirable) alternative. 

The NYPD’s model of policing is celebrated nationally for its performance driven efficiency. Crime has gone down significantly in the last few years, with aggressive policing given much of the credit. No one can argue that lower crime is desirable, but those living in poor, high crime communities of color have a drastically different experience with the police than their white counterparts. The push for arrests and stop-and-frisk quotas has released a powder keg of frustration in these communities, with kids on their way to school reporting that police subject them to frequent pat downs in broad daylight in front of community members.

Police commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg publicly shun such behavior, chalking it up to a few bad apples, but the reality is that police officers are behaving badly because of intense pressure from above. During the recent trial over the controversial policy, one police officer testified that his precinct’s 

performance goals were 20 summonses, 5 street stops, and 1 arrest per month. The intense pressure coming from on high makes it difficult to establish trust within the community. How can you build a partnership and co-produce results rather than rule from on high when the community you serve refuses to work with you because of your management tactics?

In stark contrast to the NYPD stands the Dutch police force in the Netherlands. Louis Meulman’s work explores the consensus style of governance adopted by the Dutch, with a particular focus on its community policing style.  Establishing trust is a primary focus, as is integrating the police force into the community. In order to do this the police must “relinquish {their} monopoly on safety and crime” (Meulman 209). Rather than a hierarchical approach, the Dutch police realize that citizen support is crucial and seek to attain it by developing partnerships. They enable their police officers by allowing them high levels of discretion rather than soul crushing quotas. This may be in direct conflict with performance driven contracts and market oriented governance, but I think building relationships are more important than efficiency.

 Policy makers, especially Bloomberg, often create a false dilemma: if you don’t have aggressive, top down policing, you can’t have low crime rates, they say—even if certain communities are essentially living in a police state. The Dutch policing strategy proves that you can have public safety, cooperation and low crime rate.

My Review of "While America Sleeps" by Russ Feingold

This is a great look at the inside world of the Senate during the post 9/11 years. Considering Feingold's political leanings, I thought he was fair in his criticism of the Bush administration. If you want to get a better grasp on American foreign policy through the eyes of a Senator, this is a great read. Feingold understands that our global security threats transcend the nation state, and can no longer be dealt with in a purely territorial fashion. You get the sense that he has great respect for his constituents in Wisconsin and was able to balance their hot button issues with global issues on the national level. It's a shame he lost to a man that thinks global warming is a bunch of hog wash and is up for drilling "responsibly" in the Great Lakes.

Server Rant!

"Why did SHE get chips and salsa and not ME?"

You're probably thinking these words were uttered by a small child who hasn't developed an understanding of social norms, a child who is still in the ego-centric sociopathic stage known as ages 2-5. You would be wrong. These words were uttered by a grown ass woman at a restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

As most struggling actors in NYC, I waited tables to pay the bills and worked at a little southwestern style restaurant, Cilantro, on the Upper East Side. I hung my hat at a few restaurants in different parts of the city and I have to say that the customers at Cilantro had the distinction of being the 2nd worst of any of the restaurants where I worked (David Burke @ Bloomingdales had hands down the worst customers. ever.).

And when I say awful, I mean throwing chunks of ice at busboys because they dared to send them water that had ice in it awful. Most of my co-workers were from Mexico and, while they each had their own unique style, they all looked the same to the customers and so they never bothered to make the distinction between their server or a bus boy or the bartender. Instead they would just hand their check to any brown person that walked by (it got SUPER awkward when they handed it to another customer).

At Cilantro, chips and salsa were complimentary and were cranked out to new tables with assembly line precision. Granted, when it was really busy customers sometimes had to ask for the chips and salsa, but they would get them eventually--even assembly lines malfunction. And while it was understood that one table generally received one serving, we were more than happy to supply refills upon request.

On this particular day, there must have been a glitch in the matrix because it was a slow lunch and one of the servers had failed to deliver the sacred chips and salsa to an older lady sitting by herself. She flagged down her server after sitting at her table for maybe three minutes and, rather than asking for the coveted, complementary item she exclaimed, "Excuse me! Why does SHE get chips and salsa and not ME?" as she pointed at another lone diner who was chomping down on some chips, oblivious to the controversy.

Her server responded with, "Oh I'm sorry ma'am, would you like chips and salsa?" To which the woman replied,"I want to know why SHE got chips and salsa and not ME?"

At this point the manager noticed something had gone awry and went in to diffuse the situation. The woman was convinced that something conspiratorial had transpired. She was legitimately angry and, despite the fact that chips and salsa were quickly brought to her table, she believed that the mistake was intentional. This woman was upset because a complimentary item was not given to her the second she wanted it and someone else got it first.

I guess the reason this still stays in my mind is because this woman (who came in often and was usually pleasant) reduced herself to a petulant child over chips and salsa. I'm not going to offer platitudes like, there are starving children in Africa...but...why is that bitterness and anger and sense of being treated unfairly present in a wealthy white woman. And it's not like she's an isolated case. This sense of entitlement persists within the wealthy class.

On a broad level, the customers often mistreated the servers and staff so it was particularly frustrating when entitled customers acted as though they'd been wronged. I remember an older man who had ordered a cobb salad and was mistakenly sent a chopped salad. He flagged me down and demanded to know where the egg and avocado were. It was like he didn't understand that sometimes mistakes happen. He threw a fit and demanded this be sent back immediately. I obliged and asked him if it was in fact a cobb salad that he wanted (to avoid any further miscommunication). He looked at me incredulously and replied with, "Do you want to get paid?" This pissed me off to no end but I remained calm and explained that I wasn't his server to which he replied, "Oh right, so does he understand English?" You insult me, fine. You insult my paisano? No bueno. I explained to him that yes, his server does in fact speak English, but that even Americans often get cobb and chopped confused, especially in a noisy restaurant. THAT'S being wronged and mistreated.

These two examples of awful customer behavior weren't the norm, but there were a lot of terrible, terrible people who came into that restaurant. And while I'm not going to turn this into a 1% issue, it should serve as a reminder to treat people with respect and kindness, even if you think they've wronged you. You never know where someone is coming from or what they've experienced. I'm sure that the angry chips and salsa lady was experiencing fear of the inevitable prospect of dying alone or something and while, she was awful, mi paisanos and I were graceful and respectful. Plus, when you meet anger with kindness, the culprit can't help but feel like an asshole. It's such a satisfying feeling. So don't do it to be a better person, do it to make them feel like a worse person:)

Chik-Fil-A and the American Way

Chik-Fil-A

I'm not going to say what you think I'm going to say. I am a huge fan of consumers using their purchasing power to make a statement. It just sucks when it's used to support a fast food chain and for dubious reasons at that. P.S. I'm also a big fan of boycotting as well.

What if we used this...trying to be diplomatic here...passion to support companies that are doing great things. Our government is financed by.... well the financial sector and big business so the one ace in whole the middle class has is its buying power.

We can stop purchasing cheap crap made in China. We can! If it doesn't sell, then the manufacturers of our favorite products will stop outsourcing US jobs! We can demand that US jobs be repatriated.

We complain about the economy and our politicians' limited solutions like tax cuts and stimulus packages. We complain that American jobs have been shipped over seas but guess what? We are the ones buying the products! We are the ones who have sat on the couch, unemployed watching TV on a Samsung.

My significant other works for a construction management company. Right now they are in the process of buying plumbing fixtures for a particular project. One of the executives traveled to China to visit a factory that produced a certain fixture they were interested in purchasing. While visiting the site, he was unable to stand the noxious fumes and was informed that the men who worked at the factory had to work in 6 month rotations because their lungs couldn't take it. And he was unfazed.

He was unfazed because that's the way the world works in our buy cheap and throw away culture. It doesn't have to be this way. Congress has an approval rating of 17%, but what about the American public? What's our approval rating? We want easy platitudes that will fit on a bumper sticker, not real change. We don't want to pay $1,500 for an IPAD. So instead we buy it for $500 and sleep at night in willful ignorance. Who cares if they have to put netting on the sides of the building at the Apple factory so if people attempt suicide they won't DIE and can work in the morning. Can't be losing workers, when there's so much demand for bright shiny things.

I say these things not be dictating from on high. I write them because I have been attempting to fill out a wedding registry with American made or ethically produced items and it's not easy. But that's another blog topic for another time. The point is, rather than buying ourselves into type II diabetes, why not buy free range chicken and grass fed beef made in America. Let's put ourselves back to work by supporting local businesses. Let's do more than complain and fight over how "right" we are.

Best Practices and the NYPD

New York City and its Ray Kelly headed police force is regarded as a particularly successful model for crime control. The zero tolerance and quality of life policies that have been implemented, when coupled with the harsh sentencing practices of the Rockefellar Drug Laws have contributed to an exponential increase in the incarceration rate in New York State.

Contrary to the repetative discourse that bemoans ineffective government bureaucracies, local governments can be active when need be. City governments also frequently communicate and share best practices with each other. Agencies such as the publically funded MTA, for example, talk to cities that have similar transit systems like London and Paris. The head of the MTA will share what has proven effective, what is supported by the public, and how best to implement improvement projects. When discussing transportation initiatives, this all seems fairly innocuous, but when the subject matter is crime control and policing, this takes on an entirely different shade. What if the subject matter is less about adding more subway lines and more about effective ways to stifle protests?  And what if the supposed leader of innovation, the NYPD, is actually promoting an archaic, expensive, unjust and ineffective method of policing?

There is an insistent and oft repeated correlation between broken window policies and the decrease in crime that began to occur in the early 90s but the validity of this relationship has little empirical merit: crime rates dropped dramatically all over the United States and other industrialized nations. Not all of the cities that experienced this decrease in crime practiced the broken window theory and yet the public perception continues to accept that harsh sentencing and tough-on-crime policies were the reason—to the detriment of low level offenders of color. So if we have a model of policing that is nationally and globally celebrated as a success and is adopted by other municipalites, despite contradictory evidence, then we have a problem, and it’s a problem that has civil rights implications.

Very briefly, let’s look at Paris and the riots of 2005. The direct cause of the riots was linked to the deaths of two boys who were hiding from the police in a power substation and were electrocuted. That’s the basic premise, although I’m greatly shortening it for simplicity’s sake.

Nicolas Sarkozy was the Interior Minister at the time and he showed little empathy and insisted that the youths were possible suspects fleeing a crime scene rather than kids playing soccer. In the world that he lives in, there was no way that they were fleeing from what they perceived to be yet another frequent and unnecessary police interrogation where they would be forced to show their identity papers. The New York Times reported that many in the poor communities in Paris blamed Mr. Sarkozy for alienating young people with the way he has pressed a zero-tolerance anticrime campaign, which features frequent police checks of French Arabs in poor neighborhoods”

The Sarkozy administration did not acknowledged that youth in blighted and segregated regions of the city do not see themselves fully reflected in the promises of the republic of France. He has not acknowledged that the public visibility of youth of North African origin beyond the boundaries of the projects provokes discomfort, rejection, and relentless identity checks [by police] and fuels a powder keg of frustration.

It’s no accident that the constant identity checks bear an eery resemblance to some of the NYPDs tactics. These are “best practices” that have been shared and implemented with corporate precision. What is interesting is that the subjects of the abusive police practices whether they are French Arabs of North African descent or Black and Latinos in New York City, while they have varied and unique cultural experiences, they have one distinct commonality: those that suffer from these abusive policies are minorities who have historically experienced institutional discrimination in the forms of slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow, and other government mandated forms of human rights violations.  

The reason for sharing this background and scope and bringing up Jim Crow, slavery and colonialism is to highlight that the current punitive policies didn’t hatch themselves. Rather, they are part of a long-standing and substantial institutional lineage. Now is the time to break away from this inheritance. Now is the time to bring the issue of equitable justice to the public forefront. 

Whitney

“She didn’t even sing her own music”. That was a recent criticism I overheard in the wake of Whitney Houston’s death. I’m not here to talk about the death of Whitney Houston and her cultural significance--I’m more interested in the particular criticism that was overheard. I’ve always found it interesting that singers so often get maligned and their talent discounted by the fact that they don’t write their own music. Given that all artistic expressions have their own nuance, it’s difficult to adequately compare, but it seems that singers are one of the few artists that are given very little credit as musicians.

Granted the industry is flooded with marginally talented “singers” who are more famous for gyrations in skimpy clothing than for their vocal prowess but a good voice transcends gimmicks. A good voice will pull focus from a near naked spectacle. A good voice makes you cry, gives you chills, stops you in your tracks, makes you forget what you’re doing or where you are. Recently, I was exiting the A train at 125th when I heard a women singing gospel and had one of those moments where the itemized, neurotic tick tock of things swimming through my brain was cast aside. There was only a voice and a frozen moment. This women had a pitch perfect, powerful voice that defied her pedestrian speaker and microphone--she didn’t even need it. But I doubt she wrote the song so there goes her legitimacy.

Let’s break this down a bit. Do we expect for an actor to write their own material? Absolutely not. Sure, there are those that are playwrights AND actors but let’s face it, they are often much better at one. Nobody remembers Edward Albee’s Hamlet or Eugene O’Neil’s Kostya but I remember watching Phil Hoffman (we hang out so I can call him Phil) in a Long Day’s Journey into Night. Utterly magical. Despite the play being an autobiographical piece by O’Neil, I highly doubt Mr. O’Neil could have out-performed Mr. Hoffman.

An actor’s talent is judged by his or her ability to bring life and depth to a character. There are times when it’s apparent that an actor is much better than the material they are working with and then there are those rare, electric moments when an audience member witnesses the perfect union of actor and material. The part couldn’t have been written for anyone else and even if it was, that actor will forever be associated with that part and anyone who attempts to revive the play is doomed for failure. Think Marlon Brando and A Streetcar Named Desire. Think Whitney Houston and I Will Always Love You. Heck, think Whitney Houston and The Star-Spangled Banner.

Song writing is a glorious talent and I don’t mean to discount it. Bob Dylan is an amazing songwriter (“Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow’s not what it’s supposed to be” “I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul” etc.) and his style is unique and has its place. But I can’t see him belting out “And I am Telling You” from Dreamgirls. Actually that sounds amazing. I would definitely pay to see that.

Producing takes a specific talent as well. Kayne West is a great producer. Rapper? Not so much. He can turn some clever phrases, but his genius is his producing. Let’s not even go there with his singing.

My point, I think, is that it doesn’t make sense for singers like Celine Dion (oh I went there) to be regarded as invalid because they lack song-writing skills. Mock Celine Dion for her jumpsuits, carnival-like concerts, and chest pumps, but the chick can sing.

And finally, most of the naysayers are quasi-talented singer-songwriters that when viewed singularly are neither singers nor songwriters (discuss). They’re the people that are counter-cultural for the sake of being counter-cultural. They’re “in a band” and constantly “working on their music” and their music and their voice usually “sucks.”

I am not a big main streamer but I watched Kellie Clarkson sing the shit out of Aretha Franklin’s Natural Woman on American Idol. And I will continue to respect Kellie, Mariah, Aretha, Celine, and Christina (even though her vocal gymnastics detract) even if I don’t necessarily like their music. I respect them for those frozen moments when their voices met with a song and chill-inducing magic occurred. I will never forget Whitney Houston performing I Will Always Love You at the Grammy’s and her Star-Spangled Banner will live on. I’m sure Francis Scott Key is bitter because he was “in a band” and their original version was better but he can build a bridge and get over it (in heaven). Whitney OWNED it.

The Apple Store Has Come to Grand Central Station

And as it is written, "The fourth quarter may appeareth at first shakey as you still mourn the loss of your leader, but on the morning of the 9th day in the month of December, a light will shine on the house of Job." Apple 5:14