Thread by @PatBlanchfield

(quietly) it's OK to be ambivalent about how the rhetoric of "bodies and spaces" can erase agency while also acknowledging that it's super clarifying when it comes to fundamentally dehumanizing institutions and practices like discretionary stops or the very idea of an "arrest"

which is to say: the sense of the verb "arrest" as used in the history of policing is the same as the verb in basic physics: bringing a body in motion to a stop, restraining its progress. and the history and practice of Terry Stops, Interdiction Zones, etc. is all about 1/2

2/2 proclaiming entire areas - zip codes, de facto and de jure segregated neighborhoods, Business Improvement districts, "gang hotspots," etc - spaces where officers have superadded license to stop whoever they want to deem "suspicious" just for simply being there

like at the point at which a cop can pull you over with equal legitimacy for (1) driving too slow, (2) driving too fast, (3) driving incautiously, and (4) driving too carefully (yes) it's just a post-facto accommodation for the fact they can profile whomever on the fly

It's not even controversial; police are incredibly candid about this in their memoirs, informal guides, etc. For a systematic treatment of
the function of vehicular stops I can't recommend this book more emphatically l press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book…