As someone who's been pleading with folks to stop calling 911 over every little thing for years, I just want to make sure we're completely real about something in the current dialogue: Calling the cops over every little thing is a gentrification tactic.
Calling the police over every little thing is not about fear or ignorance. It's about control. It's a means of enforcing unofficial segregation and supposedly abolished racial hierarchies.
Police don't enforce laws. They enforce social norms. Gentrifiers who chronically call police aren't concerned with safety. They want to dictate social norms and conditions. They want control. And they know what it could mean to call. They are simply prioritizing their own power.
I have talked to white ppl on the North Side of Chicago who've tried to reason w their neighbors. The neighbors say the alderman (their city counselor) tells them to call 911 if they are worried about something. You've never seen so much (highly selective) concern about loitering
Two examples: One person told me their neighbor called the police on a Black man who was sitting in the park in prayer. Another time, a mentor to some Black youth yard-share gardeners said the neighbors called the cops bc he thought the youth were burglars. Youth gardeners y'all.
The alderman and some of his friends came up w this thing called "positive loitering" where Very Respectable people wander around "loitering" to deter crime. As a young Black man said at a community meeting, "They don't think it's so positive when my friends and I are in groups."
I just want ppl to understand that most of these 911 calls have nothing to do with people feeling they're in danger. Most of the time, they're just bringing in people with guns to enforce their will and sense of order -- and the dominant order of this society is white supremacy.
Obviously, some ppl call the cops bc they believe someone's in imminent danger, but it's important to remember that serious biases affect those assessments. Americans are statistically more likely to misidentify objects as guns in the hands of Black ppl. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…
