San Francisco is the inclusive city. San Franciscans love everybody, except conservative and religious people. San Franciscans have always been in the vanguard of progressive thinking. That’s why San Francisco is surprised to find itself grappling with a big statistical problem: It’s arresting African-Americans at a rate disproportionate to any other city in California:
San Francisco police arrest African Americans for serious crime at a much higher rate than officers in California’s other biggest cities.
Black people in San Francisco are arrested for felonies at nearly twice the rate they are in Sacramento. They are arrested at twice the rate of black people in Fresno, three times the rate in San Jose, Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Diego, and four times the rate in Oakland.
The disparity between San Francisco’s black felony arrest rates and the seven other largest cities’ — measured by the number of African Americans arrested per 1,000 black residents — is so large that many experts and civic leaders who reviewed the numbers said they are “disturbing” and require an investigation.
The female, Chinese Chief of Police Heather Fong, offers one rational explanation for the situation:
While Fong said the arrest numbers merit review, she suggested that the disparity exists in part because the perception that sometimes San Francisco is “soft on crime” may draw criminals from out of the city who feel they can come here and “not be held accountable.”
Fong’s staff said they hand-counted arrests made by the Tenderloin Task Force last year and found that more than 60 percent of the African Americans arrested were listed on booking cards as “no local” — a term often applied to transients — or gave addresses outside San Francisco. The department does not have similar data for other districts besides the Tenderloin, which police looked at because they believe many nonresidents are involved in drug dealing and other crimes there.
San Francisco officers arrest criminal suspects as they find them, not based on the color of their skin, Fong said.
“I don’t think just by looking at the numbers, you can prove or disprove that there is any targeting,” she said, adding that factors such as repeat offenders and out-of-town criminals influence the numbers.
Police offers also suspect “immigrant” criminals:
San Francisco police cited several factors they say contribute to African Americans accounting for about half of all felony arrests in the city, where they are less than 8 percent of the population. In 2005, 1 out of 3 arrests of black people involved narcotics.
Officers interviewed by The Chronicle said most of the dealers coming from out of town by BART or car to sell drugs — primarily crack cocaine and sometimes methamphetamine — are African Americans. Moreover, said Capt. Timothy Hettrich, head of the narcotics division, black drug dealers often sell out in the open on street corners, thus increasing their chances for arrest.
Fong also has said that some of the offenders are arrested time and again, thereby increasing the black arrest numbers.
Also, she said, the department has had to devote a lot of resources to combatting gangs of youths responsible for many of the city’s black-on-black homicides. William Whitfield, an African American officer who has worked in the department for more than a decade, said factors such as out-of-town criminals do affect arrests.
You can read the rest of this very long article here.
I’ll toss in my own ideas here, based on knowing the City and knowing the geography.
Theory number one is to agree with the police, but to expand upon it. Richmond, California, is eighteen miles from San Francisco, and connected by an easy BART train ride. Richmond is a majority back city. It’s also a very scary place. Several years ago, when I had to make a court appearance there, the (black) sheriff at the courthouse insisted on walking me the one block to my car because he said it wasn’t a safe neighborhood for someone like me (white, female). He was right then, and he’s right now — Richmond is considered the most dangerous city in California. It also exports its crime. I too live near Richmond, and to the extent there’s any larceny in my community, I have it on good authority (very good) that the likelihood is that a Richmond resident came to visit.
San Francisco is also twelve miles from Oakland. Oakland is a much more complex city than Richmond. It’s huge and its demographics range from black to white, and from exceedingly wealthy to appallingly poor. Nevertheless, it’s also got one of the most significant black slums in California and blacks comprise the majority of the population. The African American community grew during World War II, when Oakland was a major industrial port. (Indeed, some of you may be familiar with the famous Port Chicago explosion, which disproportionately affected black Oakland men working the ports during World War II.) Oakland has long struggled with a crime problem, and is considered the 8th most dangerous city in California. Oakland, too, is an easy BART ride away from the City.
San Francisco itself has very different demographics. It’s a highly Asian, highly Caucasian, highly gay, highly educated city, with the fewest children of any city in America (which also means a low concentration of teenagers). This is not the type of population that commits violent crimes. It is the type of population that uses drugs (Caucasians, gays, and yuppies), and that is a sitting duck for crime (no weapons, military kicked out, progressive politics, etc.). In addition, San Francisco’s African-American community, though small, is a horrible concentration of generations of poverty, welfare and crime. The old slums (Bayview/Hunter’s Point and the Western Addition), though smaller than, say, Watts or Compton, are some of the scariest, most demoralizing neighborhoods you’ll ever see. Well-intentioned people keep trying gentrification, and keep being driven out. (One of the gentrifiers I knew had rocks thrown at him every time he left his house).
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that, if you have cities such as Oakland and Richmond in close proximity to a city like San Francisco, San Francisco is going to be an irresistible magnet for criminal entrepreneurs. In other words, my belief, knowing the area is that the police in the newspaper report are almost certainly correct: there are more black arrests in San Francisco because there are more black criminals preying on San Franciscans.
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Book,
It is amazing how history not only repeats itself but continues along the same left track.. incessantly.
When I was politically active in the 60’s there was a campaign from the left (maybe you in those days) to hogtie the police with “citizen review boards.” These boards were made up of those citizens (or non-citizens) who had been “oppressed” by the police and were designed to blunt proper enforcement and lobby for a national federal police force, far removed from the local, average citizenry..
We had bumper stickers which read “Support Your Local Police.”
Policing is best accomplished by local folks who know their citizens as they do their neighbor. Or am I living back in the 60’s?
ExP(Jack)
The first question you always have to ask when confronted by a demographic anamoly is does it reflect reality?
If one group is being arrested at twice the rate in SF as they are elsewhere, the first question ought not to be are they being discriminated against, that’s off the point. The first question ought to be: are they in fact committing twice the crimes in SF as they are in the elsewhere? Or, are they only half as bright about it, so therefore they get caught twice as often.
SF, an odd and strange sort of place to begin with, seems to have answered both these latter questions affirmatively. It is a place to which people travel to commit crimes; and indeed they are idiots about it, standing on street-corners inviting even the most dimwitted plainclothes cop to pop them.
But Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, of course, won’t see it that way. It’ll become another weapon in the campaign to keep the two of them personally wealthy.
I don’t much like most cops, and I don’t much like their world-view, but it seems to me they have advanced sufficient justification in this matter.
He was right then, and he’s right now — Richmond is considered the most dangerous city in California. It also exports its crime.
Nothing a Marine Corps division can’t clean out, Bookworm. Is it worst than Fallujah? hah. I say this half jokingly because I am making fun of the people who say that “there are limits to military solutions”. There are no limits, there is only the lack of will. People aren’t willing to do it, they are willing to tolerate it.
When there is a problem, Bookworm, whether of terrorism or crime or whatever, and people aren’t willing to pay the costs and do what is necessary to end the problem, the problem will persist. This is regardless of where you are at in this fallen world of ours.
This is true for Iraq and it is true for Richmond. The only difference is one of scale. Which means, Iraq is so high on the scale, that the US military has problems keeping law and order. Where if you send them to Richmond, it would be silenced of crime. Try sending the police in Richmond to deal with Iraq, and that’s basically what the Iraqis are doing with their police. It is unrealistic to expect police to maintain law and order when the military has problems doing so. you must purge the city first, then get the police in after folks have learned not to fight.
Most of the time, Bookworm, regular citizens are willing to pay the costs and have the will to do what is necessary. If you asked a regular joe in Richmond if he would like to see less to no crime, wouldn’t he say yes? But the problem always is not the citizens, Book, it is the leaders and politicians. Because the citizens suffer from problems predominantly, citizens have the most willpower and desire to solve problems. Politicians and leaders, believe that they are safe, and can stall and pevaricate or procrastinate. In extreme situations, this strengthens criminal elements, because if the politicians won’t offer protection, citizens will go looking somewhere else (mob or gangs) for protection.
The fake liberals can’t even comprehend how to deal with crime. No longer they are clueless in Iraq.
I make no guarantees Book, but if Bush did these three or 5 things, his popularity would be above 66% in my view.
Sent the military in to New Orleans, and used the military to remove from power the Governor and Mayor. Relocate all federal reconstruction and benefit to the military, remove it from FEMA jurisdiction.
Sent the military in to relieve the humanitarian crisis on the border, and to give shoot on sight orders if any identified criminals are located crossing the border one way or the other.
Sent the military in to black slums to reconstruct and rebuild, in response to criticisms that America needs help, not Iraq. Propaganda message is that what the Marine Corps learned in Fallujah and Baghdad, benefits Americans right now, right here.
People really don’t care about how you do things, Book, people only care that you do it. Cause they are looking out for their interests. The same lessons you learned in Iraq concerning how to fight the insurgency, applies double to internal crime.
By the by, Bush would have needed to repeal certain laws after 9/11, which means that Bush needed to be what he was criticized for, which is taking too much Executive Power. And Executive Power is executed through the military, by repealing laws on the military concerning where the military may be used inside the United States, the President accrues amazing efficacy and power to deal with internal and external problems.
But, if you don’t want to be popular, if you prefer traditional in a way or you respect the Supreme Court, just follow Bush’s steps in this version of reality.
Historically, the military has been salvation for blacks. Either in WWII because of how it helped convince America that Civil Rights was justified, or after the Civil War in which federal troops protected blacks from Democrat reprisals in the South or at the voting booths.
What is true for Iraq, is true for anyone and anything. It becomes a synergy. If you can demonstrate progress using the military to alleviate poverty and crime, then you are in a better situation to say “have faith in me, being in Iraq is the right thing to do”. Humans don’t have infinite patience, you got to demonstrate some “material benefits”, not just some kind illusionary progress. Nobody cares about progress unless their own pockets are being filled or they somehow benefit, that is just human nature, you can’t change it.
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are good examples of why we can’t deal with Al Sadr. If you can’t provide for your OWN people, then there will come charlatans and ambitious power brokers to fill in the gap. We can’t deal with Al Sadr because Bush doesn’t believe that dealing with folks like Jesse Jackson is about taking his power away from. Taking Al Sadr’s and Jackson’s power away, means providing for the security and spiritual needs of the black community. It takes a large propaganda operation, with good funding, as well as armed propaganda teams that go into black neighborhoods and alleviate problems directly (military units). It isn’t about bribes. People need material and spiritual benefits. People need hope, they need to believe, not just social welfare checks. Jesse Jackson has a belief system that his followers believe in. Propaganda is there to counter this, along with material benefit teams.
I believe that you can win the loyalty of humans by showing them that they have material benefits, if they ally with us. More material benefits than they would get if they allied with anyone else. “Not dying” is a material benefit, by the way.
It all comes back to this. Some people believe that there are limits to the military solving problems, I don’t believe in that. I believe that limitations to how problems are solved, is inherent in a particular human being. I believe a person who is open minded and knows how to solve all kinds of problems, can use any kind of power to do so. Whether military or political or police or etc.
The role of the government and of leaders is to decrease chaos, crime being chaotic. By decreasing chaos and controlling it, you bring balance to the lives of innocents, of those who simply want to go through life working for their lively hoods. But the people who are able to decrease chaos the most, also are those who BRING the most chaos, who DON’T obey traditions or laws or limitations. That is the paradox. To uphold law, sometimes you must bend or even break it. There are many paradoxes in the human condition, Total War being one of them.
[...] revealed that San Francisco arrested blacks faster than did other major cities in California. I considered the ideas the police advanced and concluded, based on my own lifelong knowledge of the City, that the police were probably correct: San [...]
I don’t think you can deal effectively with crime at all if you don’t have fathers actively involved in family life and the raising and disciplining of their children. This may sound old fashioned, or just horse sense but its the key.
Fathers more than anything else, can teach children to delay gratification and work towards a goal, ignoring counterproductive distractions, learn team effort and finally in taking pleasure in achieving it. This is key to the success of anyone in our culture.
If you have a single parent home, usually a working or welfare mom, trying to raise a bunch of children themselves it just doesn’t work well in our consumerist culture. If the children only learn immediate gratification, whether it be a sugary, fat laden, fast food diet as a preschooler, or a drug user and premature sex in their early teens, and the purchase of a designer wardrobe by their midteens they are already spoiled for a productive adulthood.
Add to this the 24 7 self-indulgent narcissism peddled by an ever present media, the promise of being a sports, model, or television star you create a background for a lot of disaffection among the majority less gifted who have been set up as consumers and social failures before they hit 17.
If all the elders can offer them is the explanation that racism is the fault, and the criminal justice system is their future, and they fall into gangs, bad encounters with the police and court and juvie hall a bad future is cemented. Even worse they run into cynical freshly minted psychopathic mentors, often older males in the nieghborhood and relatives, who are in the revolving door of “the system” who come as close to a father(the wrong kind) as they have ever known. This in fact duplicates the Charlie Manson model for inducing sociopathy in the damaged willing.
You basically then have alienated criminalized teens working with the mentality of an undeveloped child falling into a bleak world that offers no avenue of growth. And these are precisely the ones having children out of wedlock with no means of visible support and no intention of getting married or raising their children. It then just repeats and ultimately the police become the clean up crew when it gets so out of hand that society just has to step in and provide them with a surrogate discipline because they were never fathered. They never internalized a sense of self or a sense of worth other than a false consumerist narcissism.
What Brian describes here is what i called “social re-engineering” over at Neo’s site. It is designed to shatter the bonds that bind people together, the bonds that would have made them stronger through trust and mutual support. This is also known as Balkanization or endless clan warfare; or just Romeo and Juliet, blood feuds.
Not something that progresses humanity or society in a sense.
Thinking further, I really don’t understand why so many men impregnate single woman and mothers they aren’t married to. The rate of out-of-wedlock pregnancy in the inner city is estimated in the 80% range which is incredible and apparently there are no feedback mechanisms in this environment to inhibit this. Its a broken natural system and in nature when this happens disease biologic or social invades to limit the population to match the available resources. This isn’t a moral or religious statement, its just really bad sense that has tremendous social costs since they are not born by the persons involved. So what is a man thinking who creates this kind of situation in such high numbers that it destroys the very roots of a culture into becoming a pathologic one? You have men creating flocks with no intention of sheparding and feeding them. The woman are not naive in this either. So what gives? From this start, crime evolves, and metastasizes itself out into the greater society.
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