November 9, 2001

Community Policing as Civil-Rights Subterfuge

By D.W. MILLER

Foot patrols, saturation policing, and other crime-fighting tactics known collectively as community policing are part of an "insidious" policy that "keeps the black man down," says Neil Websdale, a professor of criminal justice at Northern Arizona University. For Policing the Poor: From Slave Plantation to Public Housing (Northeastern University Press), he spent a year interviewing black residents of Nashville housing projects. Under the guise of building rapport, he says, community policing