On the Frontlines of the Welfare State: How the Fire Service and Police Shape Social Problems 2016039174, 9781138124752, 9781315647975

Citation preview

Barry Goetz clearly demonstrates how public safety agencies function as welfare state agencies, responsible for a range of essential public functions including emergency service, regulatory oversight, and social service outreach. Amid cutbacks in other areas of the welfare state, public safety agencies are now asked to absorb even more social welfare functions. As Goetz cogently argues regarding arson control and community policing, public safety agencies not only protect our well-being, but also shape social problems and community inequities. This book has major implications for understanding institutional biases within society and the ways organizational structures, procedures, and cultures impact social outcomes. It not only offers brilliant insights for scholars and theory building, but a solid context for progressive social policy. I highly recommend it. Henry N. Pontell, Distinguished Professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY; Emeritus Professor, University of California, Irvine, USA Goetz has crafted a book that is both unique and timely. Through detailed analysis of what might seem to be two very different types of problems – fire and drugs – readers will be rewarded with rich insights into governmental responses to each. This book will be a welcome addition to the library of anyone with an interest in community safety and its relationship to issues of social inequality. Laura Huey, Associate Professor of Sociology, Western University, Canada

On the Frontlines of the Welfare State

Although public safety agencies protect our well-­being, they also shape social problems and community inequities. Public safety protections promote what T.H. Marshall called “social rights” of equitable citizenship. On the Frontlines of the Welfare State shows how public safety agencies function as welfare state agencies, responsible for a range of essential public functions including emergency service, criminal investigation, regulatory oversight, and social service outreach. Furthermore, this volume shows how public safety agencies are being asked to absorb more social welfare functions amid cut-­backs in other areas of the welfare state. Two areas of public safety are examined: arson control and fire prevention, especially within the contexts of urban change and gentrification, and community policing, especially as a mechanism of expanding drug treatment service and prevention programs. Facilitating a greater understanding of institutional biases within the state built around organizational structures, procedures, and cultures and their impact on social outcomes, this original and exciting book will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, and undergraduate and postgraduate students in the fields of Policing and Fire Control, Public Policy and Administration, Drugs and Substance Abuse, and White Collar Crime. Barry Goetz, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA.

Routledge Advances in Sociology

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/series/SE0511 198 Habermas and Social Research Between Theory and Method Edited by Mark Murphy 199 Interpersonal Violence Differences and Connections Edited by Marita Husso, Tuija Virkki, Marianne Notko, Helena Hirvonen and Jari Eilola 200 Online Hate and Harmful Content Cross National Perspectives Pekka Räsänen, Atte Oksanen, Matti Näsi and Teo Keipi 201 Science, Technology and the Ageing Society Tiago Moreira 202 Values and Identities in Europe Evidence from the European Social Survey Edited by Michael J. Breen 203 Humanist Realism for Sociologists Terry Leahy 204 The Third Digital Divide A Weberian approach to digital inequalities Massimo Ragnedda

205 Alevis in Europe Voices of Migration, Culture and Identity Edited by Tözün Issa 206 On the Frontlines of the Welfare State How the Fire Service and Police Shape Social Problems Barry Goetz 207 Work-­Family Dynamics Competing Logics of Regulation, Economy and Morals Edited by Berit Brandth, Sigtona Halrynjo and Elin Kvande 208 Class in the New Millennium Structure, Homologies and Experience in Contemporary Britain Will Atkinson 209 Racial Cities Governance and the Spatial Segregation of Roma in Urban Europe Giovanni Picker

On the Frontlines of the Welfare State

How the Fire Service and Police Shape Social Problems Barry Goetz

First published 2017 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Taylor & Francis The right of Barry Goetz to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Goetz, Barry, author. Title: On the frontlines of the welfare state: how the fire service and police shape social problems / Barry Goetz. Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2017. | Series: Routledge advances in sociology; 206 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016039174 | ISBN 9781138124752 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Public welfare–Moral and ethical aspects–United States. | Public safety–United States. | Discrimination in municipal services– United States. | Equality–United States. | Social problems–United States. Classification: LCC HV95.G564 2017 | DDC 361.973–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016039174 ISBN: 978-1-138-12475-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-64797-5 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

To Louise, Mario and Callum, and the memory of my mother and father.

Contents



List of Figures Preface and Acknowledgments About the Author

1 The Fire Service, Police, and the Local Welfare State

x xi xiv 1

2 Institutional Selectivity

27

3 Fire as a Social Problem

45

4 Fires, Arson, and Institutional Selectivity

93

5 Local Policing, the Welfare State, and Drug Control

137

6 Community Policing and Institutional Selectivity

177

7 Public Safety Agencies, Dimensions of Power, and the Shaping of Social Problems

233



247

Index

Figures

3.1 Fire Incidents in the United States, 1977 to 2014 3.2 Incendiary plus Suspicious plus ½ Unknown Cause Fires, 1964 to 1974, Frequencies and Rates 3.3 Fire Incidents in the United States by Property Type, 1977 to 2014 3.4 Residential Fire Cause in the United States at Four Time Points 3.5 Incendiary/Suspicious Fire Incidents in the United States by Property Type, 1980 to 2011 3.6 Changes in Incendiary/Suspicious versus Accidental Fire Causes in Structures at Five-­Year Intervals in the United States, 1980 to 1998 4.1 Fire Incidents in Hyde from 1960 to 1986, by Property Type 4.2 Incendiary Fire Incidents in Hyde, 1962 to 1986

47 51 71 73 76 77 94 95

Preface and Acknowledgments

I want to acknowledge a number of people and organizations that have helped me create this work. My research on fire control began long ago. I still remember the phone call I got from Al Lima, a city planner in Cambridge, MA, who offered me the opportunity to intern and assist the Massachusetts Arson Prevention Task Force to study the phenomenon of urban fires. Eventually my work on arson and fires, both as a researcher and consultant, would come to shape my professional life. I am indebted to Al and the others who inspired and lent me guidance along the way, including Ernie Garneau, David Scondras, and Mark Zangar. I also want to thank my workmates at the Hyde Fire Department. I cannot say their names because of promises of anonymity, but they accepted a “civilian” into their midst and were crucial to me not only as key informants, but they also became my friends, especially “Tom,” “Captain Day,” and “Bill.” I also want to thank the other colorful cast of characters that made up the Hyde Fire Department and Arson Task Force, including “Inspector Redmond,” who hired me as a consultant to the Task Force, and Chief “Brophy,” whom I served under while working at the Hyde Fire Department. I also want to acknowledge the support and cooperation of other Hyde city workers, federal agencies, community groups, and activists who served as key informants and research subjects for this book. Much of my work on policing began to take shape while I was a National Institutes of Health Post-­Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University. Here I and colleagues Roger Mitchell, David Duncan, and David Lewis, M.D., were able to procure a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Substance Abuse Policy Research Program entitled “The Role of Police in Helping to Reduce Substance Abuse.” I am indebted to this grant, which paid for me to complete the case studies on Norfolk, Baltimore, and San Francisco presented in this book. A special note of thanks goes to Roger Mitchell, with whom I published earlier material on policing and drug treatment outreach, as well as to David Lewis, former director of the Brown Center, for his mentorship and support. David Duncan and Patrick Clifford, public health scholars at Brown, were also key figures in supporting and lending assistance to this research. Acknowledgements also go to my cohort of NIH post-­doctoral fellows at Brown who critiqued my work, and Richard Longabaugh, emeritus

xii   Preface and Acknowledgments professor, who headed the NIH fellows program. The Brown Center also paid for me to go to England to look at policing outreach strategies in support of harm reduction services for drug users, and I want to acknowledge the support of the various health, government, and law enforcement officials that I met there, especially Inspector Mike Lofts of the Cheshire Police and drug enforcement officers in Merseyside. I also want to thank the Norfolk, Baltimore, and San Francisco Police Departments for allowing me to do in-­depth research on policing practices, including ride-­alongs and in-­depth interviews. I am also indebted to other city officials in Norfolk, Baltimore, and San Francisco, especially those from the public health and social service sectors, for participating in this research. Thanks also go to the various community-­based organizations and citizen activists in my three case cities who provided me with their unique perspectives on policing practices and drug policy reform. I also want to acknowledge the support I received as a National Institute of Mental Health Post-­Doctoral Fellow at UCLA, which allowed me to expand my work on fire control into a broader focus on mental health services and social outreach. Special thanks go to Oscar “Ike” Grusky, who headed the NIMH program when I was at UCLA. I also want to thank Richard Adams and the other members of the NIMH fellows’ cohort for their collegiality and comradeship. Special thanks also go to my current academic home, Western Michigan University, where I am now an Associate Professor of Sociology and member of the Criminal Justice faculty. Western provided sabbatical support and leaves to do research and writing. David Hartmann, the Chair of the Sociology Department at Western, commented on various parts of the manuscript. Thanks also go to my other colleagues and staff in the Sociology Department at Western for supporting my research. The Western Sociology Department also paid for former and current graduate students to help me with constructing the bibliographies and index for this book. Special thanks go to these students, especially Simon Purdy, Ph.D., and Anthony Frontiera. Acknowledgements also go to the University of Dayton, where I first taught full-­time, for allowing me leaves to do research. I also thank my former colleagues and staff in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work for their support and guidance. I am indebted to the anonymous reviewers that critiqued this manuscript for Routledge, and to the editorial and production staff at Routledge, especially Max Novick, Emily Briggs, and Elena Chiu, for their patience in seeing me through the publication process. Steven Matusz, an economist at Michigan State and fellow soccer dad and friend, helped me with my quantitative analysis. Eric Klinenberg was influential in helping me frame my analysis, and has provided important insights into the role of policing in social outreach dating back to the time that we were at the Brown Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies together. Henry Pontell has been especially supportive in my work on arson and white collar crime. A special acknowledgement goes to Michael Burawoy, my doctoral dissertation chair at the University of California, Berkeley, who mentored me in my work on the Hyde Fire Department and Arson Task Force. I was a member of

Preface and Acknowledgments   xiii Michael’s first class on participant-­observation research, and I want to thank my fellow graduate classmates for their comments on my research. I also want to thank Troy Duster and Todd LaPorte, members of my dissertation committee at Berkeley, who have been important influences on me intellectually. Todd’s class on administrative theory was one of the best classes I’ve ever taken, and I want to thank the students in the class for advising me in my work. I also want to thank Jerome Karabel, who advised me in the sociology of organizations. Thanks to Brian Powers and Katie Riggs who hosted me in San Francisco, and provided me with the opportunity to be with dear friends while doing research. Thanks to all my other friends and extended family for lending their support during this process, especially Sam Kaplan who has played a significant role in my intellectual development as a sociologist and teacher. My final acknowledgements go to my family. I am grateful to my parents, Al and Flo Goetz, who are no longer alive to see the publication of this book. I dedicate this book to them as well as to my children, Mario and Callum, who watched me sitting endlessly in front of the computer, never seeming to move except to take a walk or to make meals. My final acknowledgement goes to my wife, Louise Jezierski, the smartest woman that I know; her guidance, inspiration, and loving support have been essential in the publication of this manuscript. Her editing advice has made this a much better and clearer book. Thank you, Louise, for accompanying me on this long, fascinating, and arduous journey. Okemos, MI July 31, 2016

About the Author

Barry Goetz, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Sociology and part of the Criminal Justice Studies program at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI, USA. He has been doing research and writing on fire and policing issues for almost 30 years. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. He was the recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health Fellowship at the University of California at Los Angeles and a National Institute of Health Fellowship at Brown University. His research also has been supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

1 The Fire Service, Police, and the Local Welfare State

Urban governments are constantly faced with the need to solve or regulate social problems that may threaten community life. Fire is one such problem. In Detroit, firefighters respond to a major building fire on a daily basis, most of these in numerous abandoned properties and lots. These incidents endanger the lives and property of neighbors and can eventually decimate entire city blocks. Although Detroit’s fires appear to be fortuitous, they are predictable. Many of them, according to fire officials, are arsons, including those linked to fraudulent motives (Kinder 2014). Many occur simply because of deterioration or because of an inhabitant’s misuse of fire for heat or cooking after utilities have been cut off or no longer work (LeDuff 2008). Detroit’s government stands powerless in the face of the city’s fires. It can keep putting them out, but this does nothing to prevent them from occurring in the first place, or to address the underlying conditions that increase their likelihood (Kurth 2015). Furthermore, Detroit is not an anomaly. Its fire problem is analogous to fire outbreaks that have occurred in other cities, such as Boston and New York, often in response to socio-­economic changes and breakdowns in government regulation or service. Much like fire, drug use and misuse can run through a community like a wildfire and it is hard to contain. The most recent concerns over drug use have to do with methamphetamine use and heroin addiction, said to have reached crisis levels in some communities.1 Again, we are faced with the question of what to do about these problems. Since the 1980s, incarceration has been the primary policy used to regulate the use and flows of illegal drugs. Such an approach has been deemed a failure by conservatives and liberals alike, blamed for causing a surge in incarceration rates, exacerbating racial inequities and failing to address the problems of drug dependency and addiction (Tonry 2011). Governments have therefore looked for alternative solutions to the problem of illicit drug use. Some solutions have simply involved changing laws such as the legalization of marijuana. But this does not address the problem of “harder” drugs and what to do about them. Furthermore, the legalization of marijuana creates new regulatory problems and public health questions about long-­term use. Other solutions to America’s drug problem have been more “middle-­ range,” including the use of police officers as would-­be drug counselors who  can provide information about remedial resources, work to support local

2   Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State outreach initiatives and divert users to treatment and detoxification services (Beckett 2014; Goetz and Mitchell 2006). This book is about the ways in which state agencies shape social problems, including the reproduction of social inequality. It is built primarily around two cases. The first has to do with the regulation of urban building fires, and the second has to do with community policing as a form of social outreach, especially as this concerns illicit drug users and alternatives to punitive drug control policies. Although these topics may appear to be unrelated on the surface, they have relevance to theory-­building about the state and to broader dynamics of social inequality in the following ways. One, fire and drug problems both serve as significant threats to the stability of community life, and are often caused by similar social forces, including economic disinvestment, poverty, and population displacement. Two, we continue to rely on government to regulate these threats and mitigate their effects on social life. Three, as with other social problems, the public often grows dissatisfied with governmental responses to regulating fires and drugs. Fire departments may bathe in public and media praise after dousing a major blaze only to find themselves the objects of criticism when it is discovered that they failed to abate fire code violations that gave rise to the incident. These matters of suppression versus prevention, or reactivity versus proactivity, are also pertinent to concerns over drug control. Critics of America’s “war on drugs” have long held that we cannot “arrest” our way out of problems of illicit use and abuse. Rather, community-­based solutions are required that emphasize expanded substance abuse treatment and other social supports, including employment opportunities, adequate housing, and education (Currie 1993). Fire and police services require new organizational orientations and structures to shift from a reactive to a proactive focus in response to community problems. For example, a crime and fire prevention orientation on the part of fire departments and police departments means more interaction with organizations outside the state, landlords and property owners, businesses and ordinary citizens. This focus on collaboration and preventing problems before they occur goes back to the Kerner Commission Report2 in 1968 and its call for a holistic approach to dealing with the nation’s urban problems such as fires, crime, substandard housing, unemployment, poverty, and racial discrimination. Old methods of simply suppressing fires or crime where and when they appeared would no longer work. Indeed, for many urban residents, these old methods appeared to represent a form of state bias and repression. Police officers cast themselves as crime-­fighters, but heavy-­handed enforcement measures were rejected, prompting urban uprisings from Watts, Los Angeles in 1965 to Detroit in 1967. Fire departments put out fires, but this did little to address the economic disinvestment, substandard housing conditions, and white collar criminality that gave rise to many of the incidents occurring in urban neighborhoods. The urban crisis of the 1960s and 1970s prompted the federal government to increase social welfare spending at the local level on programs designed to reduce poverty, provide adequate housing, create jobs, and protect public safety. However, the 1980s brought about retrenchment in welfare state spending,

Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State   3 ushered in by the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the emergence of the neo-­liberal state. Dreier and colleagues report that “in 1980, federal dollars accounted for 22 percent of big city (over 300,000 population) budgets; by 1989 federal aid was only 6 percent.” States failed to raise enough revenues to compensate for losses in federal support, and this led to the cutting of urban social welfare departments and workers, housing inspectors and other essential urban services and public supports (Dreier et al. 2014, 153). Pressures would increase on agencies in the public safety sector to pick up the slack resulting from government cut-­backs and to meet citizen demands. It is no accident that community policing initiatives emerged in the 1990s as a way to facilitate citizen access to a range of urban services, including those for social welfare (Klinenberg 2015; Skogan and Hartnett 1997). Neo-­liberal, market-­based solutions are now viewed by many in and outside government as the best way to solve social problems and deliver public services, echoing Ronald Reagan’s pronouncement that government causes more problems than it solves.3 Many communities have begun to experiment with fee-­ based emergency services ostensibly as a way to reduce fiscal strain and save taxpayers’ money (Lester and Kraus 2016; Ivory et al. 2016). Nevertheless, Americans still rely on the state to protect them from harm. This is most apparent in the urban context where residents take it for granted that “first responders”—firefighters and police officers—will come to their aid for any number of personal or public emergencies. But where do these assumptions come from? As I will argue in the following pages, fire protection and policing services were at one time largely private, and only became public with the expansion of the modern state. We now view public safety agencies as guardians of popular sovereignty, responsible for protecting the lives and property of all citizens regardless of their social class or status (Lineberry 1977). When public safety agencies appear to fail in this mission the public grows angry. For some conservatives, this anger has presented an opportunity for returning many public services to the private sector where it is argued that providers will be more efficient and responsive to citizen “consumers.” Nevertheless, what most citizens want from the public safety sector is impartial treatment and occupational expertise (i.e., well-­trained fire and policing officials). There is no evidence that market-­based approaches to public protection can fulfill these goals, and indeed, they tend to result in less citizen accountability and adequate government oversight (see debate in Mason 2012 on private prisons). Before proceeding, it is useful to clarify some terms. First, “public safety infrastructure” or “public safety sector” refers principally to fire control and policing services done at the local level. The term “fire service” refers to full-­ time, urban fire departments that are an integral part of local governments, especially those with dedicated fire investigation and inspection units, but also to state-­level and federal agencies that influence the writing of fire codes and the determining of fire control policies. By “the police” I am primarily referring to urban departments, especially those that have attempted to integrate community policing objectives into their policies and practices.4 In talking about the police,

4   Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State my discussion is not limited to law enforcement, but also the other broad range of services that the police provide, including, in particular, the delivery of public health and mental health services. Second, I use the terms “government” and “state” interchangeably. Although government is a term typically used to reference public policies and agencies, “the state” represents a specific institutional construct responsible for fostering social integration and imposing social control through rational-­legal and secular authority structures (Durkheim 1997[1893]; Weber 1946).

The Public Safety Sector and the Welfare State Every year the nation’s fire and police departments respond to hundreds of millions of calls for service from citizens.5 These calls are not only for fires and crime, but also vehicle accidents, medical emergencies, interpersonal disputes, mental health crises, family crises, disruptive behaviors, environmental hazards and a host of other matters (Kiesling 2015; Greene and Klockars 1991; Mastrofski 1983). In addition to their reactive posture, public safety agencies also seek to regulate social problems in the proactive sense. The police patrol with the objective of maintaining law and order, and fire departments conduct inspections to make sure buildings are safe. Public safety agencies are also the first lines of defense against the “big events” that beset a community, such as weather or civil emergencies. Michael Lipsky (1980, 8) has argued that local public service agencies—such as fire and policing agencies—represent the “furthest reaches of the welfare state” given their importance in protecting the lives and fortunes of citizens. Yet, the public safety sector is rarely theorized as part of the welfare state. How can this be explained? The welfare state is generally defined as those aspects of governance designed to protect the citizens of advanced industrial societies against the risks and insecurities of modern life, both economic and physical. Wilensky (2003, 211) defines its “essence” as the assurance of “minimum standards” of income, housing, nutrition, education, health and safety. Nevertheless, the role of the welfare state in offering physical protection in the direct sense, i.e., through the provision of emergency services or regulatory enforcement, has often been ignored by academics and the public alike. To the extent that it receives attention, it is framed in terms of economic security, for example, having medical insurance to guard against ill-­health or having accident insurance to pay for job-­related injuries. Moreover, in the United States we look on the welfare state as a system of benefits available only to those who meet certain qualification criteria, e.g., based on age, disability or inadequate income (Katz 2001). No such restrictions are placed on emergency services or regulatory enforcement, which are taken for granted as universal protections available to all those residing in, working in or visiting a particular jurisdiction. Beyond a focus on the provision of social services and supports, Esping-­ Andersen (1990, 3) argues that an adequate theory of the welfare state must consider the ways in which it secures basic citizenship rights. In the American

Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State   5 context, in particular, this means moving beyond the “standard conception” of social policy, i.e., a consideration of social insurance (e.g., social security for the elderly) and public assistance programs (e.g., income subsidies for the poor), to examine the various ways in which government is involved with the functioning of all aspects of economic and social life (Amenta et al. 2001, 228). Examples include the public schools and supports for higher education (Wilensky 2003), consumer, workplace, and housing protections (Neumann 2005; Marcuse 1986), state and local government services such as worker compensation programs and public health systems (Katz 2001; Lineberry 1977), upholding civil rights, e.g., defending women against violence and sexual harassment (Brush 2002; O’Connor et al. 1999) and softening societal “shocks” such as wars and economic downturns (Wilensky 2003, 211). Fire and policing services can also be added to this list, which are vital to the protection of life, liberty, and property in democratic societies (Lineberry 1977, 10). The view of the welfare state as a system of basic citizenship entitlements has its foundation in the work of T.H. Marshall (1983 [1950]). Marshall argued that modern democracies evolved to support three interdependent sets of rights: civil, political, and social. Civil rights have their foundation in the seventeenth century and the Enlightenment and guarantee individual liberties such as speech, religion, and even the right to free labor. Political rights evolved as a mechanism to protect civil rights, culminating in the great democratic movements and revolutions that occurred in eighteenth-­century Europe and the United States. The expansion of market economies, however, created extraordinary levels of social inequality that could not be mitigated purely through the exercise of individual freedoms. Moreover, individual self-­expression could be used as a way to justify social inequality, and a lack of resources among the working classes had the effect of undermining political rights (Hicks and Esping-­Andersen 2005). As a result, the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries were characterized by increasing demands for social rights as a means to engender “equalization” among social classes. These became realized through collective bargaining arrangements and a commensurate rise in state-­guaranteed benefits and protections designed to defend against the “risk and insecurity” endemic to market economies—in short, a welfare state (Marshall 1983[1950], 257–258). Marshall (1983[1950], 248, 258) argued that social rights were not about absolute equality in the Marxist sense, but instead about engendering “full membership” in the community and the “concrete substance of civilized life.” This included state protections related to physical health and well-­being. Esping-­Andersen has expanded the concept of social rights as a way to conceptualize his work on welfare state “regimes.” The practical expression of social rights according to Esping-­Andersen is “decommodification,” defined as the process by which citizens are freed from having to wholly depend upon their own labor to achieve a “socially acceptable standard of living” (Esping-­Andersen 1990, 37). Decommodification means that many of the essentials basic to assuring democratic citizenship—health care, education, and safety protections—are transformed into public goods and made available to all citizens “regardless of

6   Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State social class, status, color, or gender” (Hicks and Esping-­Andersen 2005, 510).6 Decommodification also enhances “social solidarities” in that basic social services are universally provided to all citizens, defusing tensions that often emerge when some groups get more services than others. Esping-­Andersen (1990, 48) therefore distinguishes the dual concepts of social rights and decommodification from “means-­tested” social assistance formulas that are designed primarily for those with low incomes. Means-­tested benefits “do not properly extend citizenship rights,” because they are simply a form of poor relief. Means-­tested services also diminish one’s sense of equal citizenship in that recipients may be stigmatized and standards of eligibility may be designed to change behaviors (Katz 2001, 222; Piven and Cloward 1993 [1971]). I argue that public safety agencies secure social rights of citizenship through the provision of decommodified social benefits. This view of the public safety sector is not well elaborated in the social science literature, which tends to look at public safety agencies as either expressions of political rights (e.g., democratic demands for government-­administered protections) or as defenders of civil rights, i.e., safeguarding individual liberties and upholding law and order (Bittner 1970). Public fire protection and policing services are also “fundamentally redistributive mechanisms” that reflect broader community decisions about the types of services that government should provide to all citizens (Lineberry 1977, 14). The nation’s public safety sector therefore levels class and status differences, helping to ensure the full sense of community membership that Marshall equates with equal citizenship rights. Indeed, those with the lowest incomes, as I will demonstrate throughout this book, are more heavily reliant on fire and policing protections. Public safety agencies also promote economic security in that they subsidize citizens and businesses that would otherwise have to pay for protective services in the private market. Finally, public safety agencies are also responsible for the provision of a whole range of public services that are not typically associated with what we perceive to be their main function. Fire departments do not just put out fires. They also attempt to prevent them and figure out what caused them. The police provide a whole range of community and citizen services that have nothing to do with law enforcement. By categorizing urban fire and policing services under the heading of welfare state agencies I do not mean to suggest that they are inherently beneficent. Indeed, I focus on their contradictory aspects, i.e., the ways in which apparently benevolent state structures and policies give rise to unequal outcomes. Peter Marcuse (1986, 248) has explained this problem in terms of the “myth of the benevolent state,” which is the view that “government acts out of a primary concern for the welfare of all its citizens,” and that “its policies represent an effort to find solutions to recognized social problems.”7 Marcuse’s focus is American housing policy, which is ostensibly designed to benefit the living conditions of low-­income households, He has argued, however, that the true beneficiaries of the nation’s housing policies have been private interests (e.g., developers) and civic elites that promoted slum clearance, allowing them to later benefit from the generous financial subsidies used to build low-­income housing.

Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State   7 The dual questions of benevolence versus contradiction are central to theories of the welfare state, both in terms of explaining its emergence and accounting for its protective role in society. “First generation” theories that predominated in the post-­World War II era focused on modernization as the primary force behind the creation of welfare states (Myles and Quadagno 2002, 36).8 The emergence of market economies, in particular, eroded traditional systems of social control and caregiving rooted in kinship and local community (Giddens 1976). The Industrial Revolution promoted a wage labor system and cultural norms emphasizing self-­reliance, and those unable to support themselves risked not only hunger and homelessness but also legal punishment (e.g., for begging) or institutionalization (e.g., in almshouses) because of their poverty (Chambliss 1964). In time it would become dangerously apparent that markets were incapable of fulfilling basic human needs, from income to health care. The state emerged as the most “rational, universalist and efficient” form of administration for delivering social benefits, expanding through the growth of taxation systems that could tap the market surpluses produced by rising incomes (Esping-­Andersen 1990, 13). By the late nineteenth century, Britain implemented measures intended to reduce “pauperism,” and had also established public infirmaries and drug dispensaries for the poor (Rose 1981, 59). Old-­age pensions and unemployment insurance became a permanent part of the American welfare state in the 1930s. The growth of correctional systems and criminal justice infrastructures also figured in the emergence of American and European “penal-­welfare” states (Garland 2001, 27). The creation of the London Metropolitan Police in 1829 was part of a broader era of social reform that recognized the responsibility of the state in safeguarding urban residents against common risks, including crime, disorderly behaviors, and rioting (Manning 1997; Silver 1967). Modernization perspectives alone are limited in recognizing the political dimensions of welfare states and the ways in which they often serve some interests over others (Giddens 1976, 719). Neo-­Marxists have argued that the welfare state is a mechanism for supporting capitalist “accumulation” (i.e., profit-­making and private wealth) while attending to broader “legitimation” functions associated with democratic governance (Offe 1984, 120–121). Decommodified goods and services are conceptualized as mechanisms of “social reproduction” that play the dual role of promoting social well-­being while, at the same time, subsidizing private producers (Skocpol and Amenta 1986, 134; O’Connor 1973). Public fire departments do not exist simply to provide emergency services and to protect life. They are also a form of public subsidy upon which insurance, banking, and real estate markets are built. Other critical work on the welfare state has emphasized its contradictory nature without relying on the materialist foundations of structuralist neo-­ Marxism. Perhaps the best known of these approaches is Piven and Cloward’s (1993 [1971]) classic Regulating the Poor, which emphasizes the intersections between democratic demands, the provision of public benefits, and the imposition of social controls. Piven and Cloward strip away the sentimentality associated with social welfare as “a kindly service towards the poor,” revealing the

8   Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State ways in which social policies are designed to regulate behavior, for example, the use of work requirements as a precondition for receiving aid (Schram 2002, 89). Garland’s (2001, 39) work on criminal justice systems conceptualizes a “penal-­ welfare state” that acts as an “agent of reform as well as repression.” Garland links the emergence of social welfare provisions in the nineteenth century with the emergence of correctional systems that were devoted to the rehabilitation of offenders through various kinds of remedial measures from education to psychological therapies. In this way, he concludes, the “criminal justice state” also became “a welfare state” that approached crime and criminality as social problems that needed to be rectified. Garland and others have built on the work of Michel Foucault to frame the welfare state as a regulatory device for normalizing “aberrant” behaviors, relying on the knowledge, input and participation of experts and professionals such as social workers, medical professionals, and academics (Rose 1993, 293). Foucauldian analyses have especially focused on areas of health and safety, where researchers analyze the “technologies of power” used by governments as well as other modern institutions to shape individual conduct and manage perceived social risks (O’Malley 1992, 255; Rose and Miller 1992; Foucault 1979). This includes work on alternative drug control policies that seek to expand systems of treatment and “harm reduction,”9 including a role for police as agents of social outreach (Bunton 2001; Kubler and Walti 2001; Maher and Dixon 1999). Katz’s (2001, 4) work also questions the inherent benevolence of social welfare policies, focusing on the ways in which governments and the public attempt to delineate between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor insofar as the distribution of aid is concerned. Schneider and Ingram (1993, 336) too, argue that the quality and generosity of public benefits will depend on the relative social power of the target groups receiving aid, i.e., the elderly and children are viewed as more worthy of benefits than are the marginalized groups such as “criminals” and “drug addicts” (also see Huey 2007). That public safety agencies represent the myth of the benevolent state is a controversial position given our reliance on first responders for our safety. But when one examines outcomes, whether these pertain to urban building fires or the ways in which the police treat the socially marginalized or communities of color, the contradictory aspects of public safety agencies, and the ways in which these lead to protective failures, come into focus.

Urban Fires and Unequal Outcomes Fire control is taken for granted as a basic government service. Yet, the organization of fire control services may also lead to unequal social outcomes. This is not simply a matter of lengthened response times or other emergency response issues, but rather a matter of policy and institutional priorities and practices. In 1973 the National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control, commissioned by Richard Nixon, published a groundbreaking study called America Burning, in which it demonstrated that the U.S. had the highest fire incident and casualty rates in the industrialized world. The reality of their findings was

Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State   9 evident to all those living in the nation’s largest cities, especially in the northeast. Fires surged in New York City during the mid-­1970s, especially in the South Bronx. Firefighters were so deluged with fire calls during this period that they called the 1970s “the War Years” (Flood 2010, 8). It was estimated that 30,000 structures had been burned in the South Bronx over a ten year period, and thousands of mostly low-­income tenants were displaced. President Carter toured the Bronx as a way to highlight the relationship between fires and urban decay, and CBS News produced The Fire Next Door in 1977, a documentary that focused on the urban fire problem with the South Bronx as its focus (U.S. Senate 1977). Many of the fires occurring in the Bronx were arson or determined to be suspicious in nature, reflecting a national trend. Incendiary fires (arson) increased by 234 percent between 1964 and 1974 in the United States (Boudreau et al. 1977, 5). Although some of this increase had to do with the urban uprisings of the 1960s, arson continued to surge well into the 1970s, causing 1,000 fire fatalities per year, a higher rate than handguns at that time. Arsons were also killing about 120 firefighters per year. Economic losses from arson were estimated to be three times higher than those of auto theft and over ten times higher than those of burglary (Brady 1983). In 1976 the federal government published a report calling arson America’s “malignant crime” (Suchy 1976), and the United States Congress held three separate hearings on arson, two devoted entirely to the dynamics of arson fraud, or arson-­for-profit (U.S. Senate 1978; U.S. Senate 1977) and another on developing initiatives against arson (U.S. Senate 1979). Public officials, activists, and experts disagreed over what was causing urban arson. The nation’s fire problem was concentrated in older urban areas populated by lower-­income households and primarily persons of color. Fire and police officials therefore saw fires as the inevitable outgrowth of the urban unrest of the 1960s or as a result of the “urban crisis” characterized by economic decline, increasing crime and other social problems associated with poverty and deteriorating neighborhood conditions (Flood 2010; Sternlieb and Burchell 1983; Moore et al. 1983; Moll 1974). Nowhere was this situation more apparent than in the South Bronx, nicknamed “Fort Apache” by police officials because of the dangerous and insecure conditions that characterized the area (Conason and Newfield 1980). New York’s Chief of Police Anthony Bouza blamed the fires in the Bronx on a “permanent underclass of disaffected and poor, drugged on alcohol, on welfare, living in bombed out situations” (U.S. Senate 1977, 380–381). Officials also blamed the fires on tenants who they claimed were committing arson to take advantage of government policies allowing burned-­out residents to move to the top of public housing lists (Federal Emergency Management Agency 1979, 8). An alternative view of urban fires was offered by neighborhood activists, among them David Scondras, a leader of Boston’s Symphony Tenants Organizing Project (STOP). Scondras had told a reporter for ABC News in 1978 that “there’s some obscure notion in the minds of people that low-­income people have a natural proclivity toward a variety of strange behavior, one of them being

10   Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State they burn down their homes” (Brady 1983,18). Scondras was a resident of Boston’s Fenway district, a community of primarily low-­income households and students, where fires had surged during the 1970s. The epicenter of the fires was Symphony Road,10 where 29 of the 74 properties on the street, mostly multiple-­ density apartment structures, had burned between 1973 and 1976. Hundreds were displaced by the Fenway fires and they resulted in the deaths of six people, including a little girl. Authorities blamed the fire incidents on “transients” or the “carelessness” of neighborhood residents (Hartnett 1978, 17). A lead investigator looking into the Fenway fires, Massachusetts State Police Lieutenant James DeFuria, blamed the fire incidents occurring on or around Symphony Road on “prostitutes, radicals and homosexuals” bent on arson. “I don’t have to tell you,” DeFuria told the press, “one of those [homosexuals] finds his lover in bed with somebody else, he’ll just burn the whole place down” (Slade 1978, 308). But STOP rejected these claims, suspecting fraud, and launched their own citizen-­ driven inquiry to prove it. Through an examination of public records such as property deeds and mortgages, STOP was able to show that there were financial and legal irregularities associated with properties that had burned. In particular, they were worth much more than comparable properties on or around Symphony Road that had not burned, appearing to sell frequently—at least on paper—within a short period of time. One apartment structure changed hands six times in four years, with its market value more than doubling from $220,000 to $545,000 (Slade 1978, 308). The burned buildings were also heavily mortgaged with “pyramids” of loans that appeared to approximate their inflated sales prices “on paper,” often with former owners serving as the beneficiaries on the notes (Brady 1984, 224). The burned properties also tended to be in tax arrears and were found to have had serious housing and fire code violations preceding fire incidents. STOP pressured the Massachusetts Attorney General to investigate the Fenway fires, which eventually led to the indictment and conviction of 33 landlords, lenders, insurance adjusters, and public officials on arson and arson-­related charges. Among them was Lieutenant DeFuria, who was sentenced to prison after admitting to taking bribes from landlords and falsifying fire reports. What was called a “conspiracy to burn Suffolk County for profit” worked by transferring properties to “straw” buyers (e.g., girlfriends) with sellers retaining their legal and financial interests by becoming mortgagees—holding notes that were often very near the recorded sales price of a property. Insurance(s) would then be purchased to cover the full value of a property, with the mortgagees listed as primary loss payees. Tenants would be encouraged to vacate the properties, sometimes through harassment, including small fires, or threats of eviction. Services would be cut back and code violations would mount. Eventually the property would be burned for the insurance money (Harvey and Connolly 1977; U.S. Senate 1977). Boston was not an anomaly. Arson-­for-profit rings were also detected in Detroit, St. Louis and other cities during the 1970s (Boudreau et al. 1977). Fires in the Bronx and other New York boroughs were tied to arson-­for-profit schemes

Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State   11 involving landlords, realtors, and insurance adjusters and brokers. Beyond the Fenway, additional Boston neighborhoods such as Roxbury, North Dorchester, and East Boston were also experiencing arson outbreaks during the 1970s and early 1980s that were linked to condominium conversions and schemes to burn foreclosed properties for insurance (Brady 1983, 1984). What all these situations had in common was that public safety officials tended to blame the fire outbreaks not on unscrupulous landlords or other business actors but on the disaffected poor, unruly youths who vandalized properties, or “sickies” (Jacobson and Kasinitz 1986; Jahnke 1982; Conason and Newfield 1980). The urban fire problem of the 1970s and 1980s was a barometer of broader social inequities afflicting lower-­income urban communities in the United States, especially as this involved the community effects of speculative real estate practices, tax depreciation schemes, and deliberate forms of disinvestment associated with low-­income housing markets (Lima 1977). Arson-­for-profit, in particular, was linked to the “routine profit-­making practices of banks, realtors and insurance companies” (Brady 1983, 18). More than insurance fraud, arson-­for-profit represented systemic economic shifts associated with either decline or revitalization. Landlords might use arson-­for-profit to “cash out” of a bad investment, or they might use it as a tool in gentrification, forcing low-­income tenants out of properties to make way for luxury occupancies, clearing parcels to make way for new and more profitable structures, and generating insurance money for renovations in areas with tight lending markets (Jahnke 1981). Unscrupulous business actors also found ways to take advantage of lax insurance underwriting practices associated with FAIR (Fair Access to Insurance Requirements) Plans, state-­ mandated organizations that were required to write insurance in poor neighborhoods. Those bent on insurance fraud also exploited coverage associated with “surplus line” insurance carriers who were willing to write business on just about any property and were willing to pay-­off on just about any loss without an investigation or inquiry (Jacobson and Kasinitz 1986; Brady 1984; Conason and Newfield 1980; Lima 1980; U.S. General Accounting Office 1978). Although rooted in larger economic dynamics, the urban arson problem—and urban fire-­risk more generally—was exacerbated by a “blind spot” in the state’s protective agenda that had allowed urban fires to be relegated to the status of “non-­issue,” at least in terms of their connection to fraud and socio-­economic trends in urban neighborhoods (Goetz 1997a, 567, 1997b). That fire and police officials blamed poor urban residents for what were white collar crimes symbolized nothing less than “class and race prejudice” according to David Scondras of STOP (Slade 1978, 308). The National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control criticized the organization of the American fire service itself as a cause of the nation’s fires, arguing that it prioritized the functions of suppression (extinguishment) to the detriment of prevention and cause determination—in a phrase, reactivity versus proactivity. In its report America Burning the National Commission (1973, 18; 2) raised the hypothetical scenario of a fire department having to fight a tenement fire and asked “if part of the money spent on responding to the tenement fire had been spent instead on enforcing a tough fire

12   Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State prevention code, would the fire have occurred at all?” The Commission charged that fire officials paid only “lip service” to goals of fire prevention, finding that it amounted to only five cents of every public fire control dollar spent, and recommended that local governments make prevention “at least equal to suppression” as a firefighting priority. The urban fire problem contains lessons about the limits of the welfare state as a mechanism for protecting citizens. Arson-­for-profit was called a “civil rights issue” by the Massachusetts Attorney General, where the “poor and underprivileged” were victimized and their neighborhoods scarred (Slade 1978, 308).

Community Policing, Social Outreach, and Drug Policy Reforms A different historical moment and issue dynamic, the emergence of community policing as a public safety intervention mimics the arson case in that public safety agencies were called on to address biased outcomes that they had helped to create. Community policing emerged as the “new orthodoxy” of law enforcement reform in the late 1980s and 1990s (Eck and Rosenbaum 1994, 3). It is a movement that had its foundations in the post-­1960s era in response to the shortfalls of the so-­called “professionalization” era in American policing that commenced from the 1920s to the 1960s and its inability to assure both community safety and political legitimacy. Whereas traditional approaches to policing emphasized arrests, quick reaction times, randomized patrols, and crime investigation clearance rates as the key technologies for deterring crimes, the community policing movement stressed alternatives to arrests through more widely based crime prevention and “problem-­solving” strategies (Skogan and Roth 2004; Kelling and Coles 1996; Eck and Spelman 1987; Skolnick and Bayley 1986; Goldstein 1979). Early statements on community policing were far-­reaching. Especially in the aftermath of Rodney King’s beating at the hands of Los Angeles police officers in 1991, community policing was heralded as an outreach strategy that could improve relationships with African-­Americans and other persons of color throughout the United States (Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department 1991). Some models saw police officers as a way to address basic resource deficits in human service delivery systems and social work. Available on a “24/7” basis, the officer was promoted as a “community-­builder,” having the potential to mobilize and help integrate remedial resources as a way to reduce social strains and thereby crime (Goetz and Mitchell 2003, 222). There was even a school of thought that community policing could serve as an alternative drug control strategy. During the 1990s a debate was raging in the media over the question of drug legalization amid growing concerns over the toll of America’s drug wars in terms of growing prison population, costs, and minority neighborhoods under siege (Nadelmann 1991). I found myself in the middle of this debate while a post-­doctoral fellow at the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University in the mid-­1990s. Here scholars from

Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State   13 public health, psychology, medicine, and sociology began looking more closely at the “public health” approach to regulating illicit drugs, emphasizing treatment on demand policies and harm reduction initiatives (Des Jarlais 1995). Experiments in public health approaches were underway in New Haven, CT, the City of Baltimore, and San Francisco where linkages with law enforcement were considered crucial to successful implementation (Goetz and Mitchell 2003, 2006; Pastore 2000–2001). Community policing appeared to be the perfect intellectual platform on which to build this new alternative drug control policy. Community police officers could “work together to set up drug counseling and rehabilitation centers,” said the federal government (U.S. Department of Justice 1994, 20). In time, however, disagreements over the definition of community policing helped to derail early efforts at policing outreach and diversion tactics. “Broken windows” models, in particular, gained support among police officers themselves as the more acceptable road to reform compared with what I call “reintegrative” models that stressed linkages with community-­based social services and prevention measures (Goetz and Mitchell 2003, 2006).11 Broken windows approaches were more consistent with the organizational orientation of policing, which emphasized crime-­fighting, responding to citizen complaints and the use of coercion to deal with community concerns (Terrill and Mastrofski 2004). Reintegrative efforts, on the other hand, required the police to step out of their comfort zones and perform what officers perceived as “social work” activities, which they disparaged (Herbert 2006, 97). Reintegrative approaches to community policing, however, have seen some resurgence in recent years. Crisis Intervention Teams (CITs) have been increasingly adopted by police departments across the United States as a means of defusing tense and sometimes deadly police encounters with especially mentally ill citizens and as a means of diverting mentally ill offenders away from the criminal justice system and into remedial services (Bonfine et al. 2014). Strained police relations with communities of color, often the result of fatal police shootings, and a backlash to the “militarization” of American policing, have brought about a renewed emphasis on the citizen engagement aspects of the community policing movement, especially with those populations distrustful of law enforcement (Police Accountability Task Force 2016; President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing 2015; Balko 2013). Social service outreach is considered an essential part of this renewed community engagement emphasis. For example, a select number of police departments around the United States have adopted the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) concept as a means of addressing the racial disparities associated with punitive drug enforcement practices. The LEAD concept is built around the use of “pre-­booking” policing strategies that divert low-­level drug and other offenders with drug dependency problems into treatment services as an alternative to prosecution (Beckett 2014, 1; Emshwiller and Fields 2015). New concerns over opioid addiction in the United States have led some smaller police departments to experiment with “pre-­arrest” interventions for street addicts. The “Angel” initiative calls for police officers to divert to detoxification any drug user that walks into a police station voluntarily and asks

14   Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State for help (Seelye 2016). In many jurisdictions the police are now expected to carry the medication naloxone that they can directly administer to citizens experiencing a drug overdose (Goodman and Hartocollis 2014). The use of community policing reform as a means to promote a broader mechanism of social assistance speaks to the importance of policing as an aspect of the welfare state. Again, the issue of proactivity and reactivity is raised, especially as this has to do with mitigating the social strains underlying social problems that give rise to crime.

State Bias and Institutional Selectivity No form of government intervention is entirely free of bias because it reflects the political objectives or intentions of specific groups. The question becomes, in what ways are biases expressed? Where are they manifest? What is their impact on social outcomes and the shaping of social problems? In this book I use the concept of “institutional selectivity” to demonstrate the dynamics of state bias and to show how these work to shape social problems and unequal outcomes. Institutional selectivity assumes a “three-­dimensional” power analysis. From Lukes (2005, 25), this means that state biases can be located in governmental structures and processes themselves, beyond the influence of specific elites or definable interest groups. I focus on the “normative order” of local public safety infrastructures as the specific vehicles of bias (Goetz 1997a, 577). I define normative order as the interplay between bureaucratic structures and procedures, agency subcultures, and the micro-­foundational aspects of organizational life, i.e., the cognitive orientations of state actors and their “taken-­for-granted” assumptions about what particular agencies do (Goetz 1997a).12 I have derived the concept of institutional selectivity from Offe’s (1974, 35–39) work on “selection mechanisms,” or the ways in which class or interest group biases are contained in the state’s “own routines and formal structures.” Offe has argued that modern welfare states serve to mediate political and social conflicts occurring in advanced capitalist democracies. Selection mechanisms are central to this process because they act as “sorting processes” for “distilling a ‘class-­interest’ out of narrow, short-­term, conflicting, incompletely formulated interests of pluralistic influence politics.” In this way, welfare states are able to adopt policies designed to seemingly mitigate social inequities or address social problems while at the same time sustaining the integrity of the capitalist system as a whole (also see Offe 1984; O’Connor 1973). Moreover, because biases are embedded in ostensibly neutral administrative structures, often determined by  the rule of law, governments are shielded from claims that they are doing the   bidding of specific social or political interests (Offe 1985; also see Poulantzas 1978). Whereas Offe’s theory of selection mechanisms is rooted in a class analysis, I argue that the concept of institutional selectivity can also be used to exemplify a Foucauldian or “fourth” dimensional power analysis (Lukes 2005, 88; Digeser 1992). From the fourth dimensional standpoint, state bias reflects more than

Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State   15 traditionally defined political struggles rooted in class or other interests. It also reflects sources of domination that may emanate from cultural beliefs and trends, norms regarding social and individual behavior, or the opinions and practices of experts. Similar to a three-­dimensional power analysis, a Foucauldian approach to analyzing the state is focused on its “machinations” and how these shape social outcomes (Rose and Miller 1992, 175). However, the analysis moves beyond the identification of patterns of inequity and instead hones in on what Foucault (1991, 87) called the challenges of “governmentality,” or the process by which modern social institutions seek to manage and discipline social and individual conduct. The concepts of governmentality and selection mechanisms are analogous and can be synthesized within the broader theory of institutional selectivity, especially in terms of how they presuppose the role of state structures and processes as the vehicles of state bias. For Offe, social outcomes are directly linked to governments’ “institutional apparatuses, bureaucratic organizations, and formal and informal codes” (Carnoy 1984, 130). Foucauldian analyses focus on specific technologies of power, or the specific apparatuses, programs, techniques, and procedures used to carry out governmental ambitions (Rose and Miller 1992; O’Malley 1992). The theory of institutional selectivity will be applied to public safety agencies to show how they shape social problems and lead to unequal outcomes. Applied to the domain of fire control, I show that a normative order of public fire control built around suppression versus prevention and investigation functions has helped to create a “social problem of fire” in America’s cities, defined as unequal fire-­risk by race and social class. Applied to community policing, I argue that a normative order in policing emphasizing crime-­fighting versus community service has thwarted attempts to implement reintegrative programs aimed at socially marginalized populations, particularly illicit drug users and street addicts. A normative order organized around crime control versus social outreach as a main focus of the community policing movement has also worsened policing relationships with communities of color, particularly in relation to the drug war.

Research Methodologies and Choosing the Cases This book is the culmination of 35 years of working in or researching public safety agencies. From 1979 to 1984 I was a consultant for the “City of Hyde”13 where I worked with its Arson Task Force (ATF ), made up of fire and police officials and a local assistant district attorney, and the Bureau of Fire Prevention, within the Hyde Fire Department (HFD). Hyde hired me because the city was experiencing an outbreak of arson fires and had obtained a federal grant from the United States Fire Administration to develop an arson prevention program or “arson early warning system” (AEWS). The AEWS concept was developed by former STOP activists in Boston who had formed an organization called Urban Educational Systems (UES), which helped neighborhood groups identify and

16   Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State abate arson-­for-profit and other fire problems associated with property deterioration and disinvestment. I knew how to develop an AEWS because I had interned with UES while an undergraduate at Boston University. I had also interned with a city planner who was advising the Massachusetts Arson Prevention Task Force—a policy-­making body—on the connection between urban fires and real estate, banking, and insurance practices. Working with both the Massachusetts task force and UES, I became familiar with government officials, members of the business community, and community activists who were all involved in some way or the other with addressing the urban fire problem. While working with the HFD and Hyde Arson Task Force I went back to graduate school to study sociology, and decided to focus my Ph.D. research on the response of local public safety agencies to the urban fire problem and especially arson-­for-profit (Goetz 1991). I began doing participant-­observation research in 1983 where I would record my observations working alongside fire investigators, prevention inspectors, police officers, and other city officials such as housing inspectors and city attorneys engaged in code enforcement actions. My work for the ATF and HFD also required that I become familiar with community activists and organizations to learn more about Hyde’s fire problem. The interactions I had with these groups were also part of my participant-­observation research. I also worked with the FBI and Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms on fraud investigations while part of the Hyde ATF. My interactions with these organizations also inform the research presented in this book. My approach to participant-­observation research assumes an “extended case study” method where the examination of “unique” social circumstances and phenomena is used to draw conclusions about “macro” social relations and outcomes (Burawoy 1998, 5). In addition to participant-­observation, my research on Hyde includes extensive archives, including HFD/ATF fire incident and investigation reports, HFD/ATF internal memos, policy and planning documents, efficiency reports, code enforcement materials from Hyde’s building department, news articles and my own internal archives generated as head of the AEWS. I also conducted formal interviews during 1988 and 1989 with HFD, ATF and other Hyde officials, as well as neighborhood activists and other community organizations, after I was no longer working with the City of Hyde. Finally, the research on fires and arson presented in this book also draws on national and international sources. In particular, I rely heavily on data summaries generated by the federal United States Fire Administration (USFA) and the private National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) to show how the national fire experience has changed over time and to demonstrate how fire-­risk is unevenly distributed in the United States by race and social class. My research on community policing and drug control stems from my ongoing interest in policing and its impact on community outcomes. In 1993 I began working with the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies (CAAS) at Brown University, first as a visiting scholar and later as a post-­doctoral fellow. The Center’s director, David Lewis, M.D., was interested in the harm reduction movement that was taking hold in some western European, Australian and North

Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State   17 American cities. Part of this movement included a role for community policing, and in particular, the officer as an agent of social outreach, directing drug users to services or working in support of services. Together with colleagues at CAAS, including Roger Mitchell, David Duncan, and David Lewis, we won a grant with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF ) entitled “The Role of Police in Drug Policy Reform.” The project included a national survey of police executives that examined the extent to which departments were engaged in supporting community-­based treatment or harm reduction initiatives. Another piece of the RWJF grant involved in-­depth analyses of three research sites: the cities of Norfolk, VA, Baltimore, and San Francisco, chosen because of their attempts to use community policing as an alternative drug control strategy in support of harm reduction, treatment diversion or other forms of social service outreach. These cases make up the primary evidence on community policing discussed in this book, augmented by some additional research that I have done on community policing in Providence, RI, and on policing and drug treatment/harm reduction outreach in Merseyside and Cheshire in the United Kingdom (Goetz 2000). The community policing case relies on participant-­observation and in-­depth interviews, as well as data archives. In Norfolk I conducted 56 hours of ride-­ alongs with “PACE” (Police-­Assisted Community Enforcement) officers, who were specially assigned to community policing duties, spent 24 hours with regular beat officers (i.e., for comparative purposes), observed community meetings with citizens, law enforcement and other government officials, and attended a three-­day “problem-­solver” school with Norfolk officers that included a field component. I also conducted in-­depth interviews with police and other city officials, including those from the public health and social service sectors. Interviews were also conducted with community-­based organizations and voluntary associations, including civic leagues, homeless shelters, and activists. In Baltimore I completed 52 hours of participant-­observation research alongside specially-­designated community policing or Comprehensive Communities Program (CCP) officers as well as 24 hours alongside regular patrol officers in CCP districts. I also conducted five hours of direct observation in the city’s “PAL” or Police Athletic League Centers and on mobile city-­sponsored needle-­ exchange and treatment referral vans. In-­depth interviews were completed with police department administrators and district lieutenants, the director of Maryland’s “Police Corps,” an initiative that trained college students in community policing techniques with the promise of getting hired by police departments, the city’s public health commissioner, substance abuse treatment officials, officials from the mayor’s office criminal justice council, community-­based organizations, and activists, especially those concerned with housing and crime prevention issues. In San Francisco I conducted 46 hours of observation of specially-­designated drug control or community policing initiatives, including those devoted to order maintenance in high-­crime areas of the city. A large part  of this research was on the Campaign Against Drug Abuse (CADA) that focused its attention on the city’s Mission District and that was also working in collaboration with the federal government’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking

18   Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State Area or “HIDTA” initiative administered through the local U.S. Attorney. Observational research was also done on the “Tenderloin Task Force” and on other specialized order maintenance and foot patrols in the South of Market and Mission districts of San Francisco. Additional direct observations (eight hours) were also done on San Francisco’s “Mobile Assistance Patrol,” a service that transports the homeless to shelters and services. Extensive interviews were also done with city officials, including those from CADA, ranking police administrators and a commissioner, the mayor’s criminal justice council staff, city supervisors, and public health administrators. These included the administrator in charge of substance abuse services for the city’s public health department and the public health department’s official in charge of doing ongoing research on the effectiveness of the city’s Treatment on Demand and Harm Reduction initiatives. I also interviewed representatives from five different advocacy and social service groups concerned with the rights and needs of the homeless, sex workers and other marginalized groups. Four of these groups served on the city’s Treatment on Demand Planning Council, a body of government officials and community representatives convened to implement the city’s Treatment on Request Policy. Representatives of three different drug treatment organizations were also interviewed, as well as the director of the Treatment Access Program (TAP), a centralized intake unit for drug users. The evaluators and researchers in charge of establishing San Francisco’s centralized intake unit were also interviewed. Finally, extensive archival research was also done for all three cities comprising the community policing cases in this book. Sources used include the Norfolk Virginian-­Pilot, the Baltimore Sun, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the New York Times, and other neighborhood newspapers or local magazines where appropriate. Policy reports, official unpublished documents and other materials were also used as archival sources.

Plan of the Book In Chapter 2 I will elaborate more fully on the concept of institutional selectivity as a dynamic of local welfare states. In Chapter 3 I examine fire as a social problem since the 1970s, highlighting the relationship between fire-­risk, arson, and social inequality, especially defined by social class and race. I also consider competing narratives on what causes structural fires and look at the ways in which different stakeholders, especially public safety officials and community activists, have responded to the urban fire problem. In Chapter 4 I go “inside the state” to illustrate the ways in which dynamics of institutional selectivity shaped the social problem of fire in the City of Hyde between the years 1964 and 1990, especially in the context of fire control, arson investigation, and “post-­industrial” prevention priorities. I also examine the cultural and material history of public fire control policies and practices in the United States as a way to show how  these were tied to the expansion of local welfare states and the de-­ commodification of protective services.

Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State   19 In Chapter 5, I frame the police as “agents of civic governance” who are expected to respond to a range of community problems beyond their coercive role in assuring law and order (Loader and Walker 2001, 14). I examine the three major social functions of the police: order maintenance (or peacekeeping), crime-­fighting, and community service. I argue that one or the other of these functions may be emphasized over time, conforming to a dialectic that reflects broader social conflicts and changing ideas about how to assert social control and regulate social problems. I focus on the 1960s as laying the foundations of the community policing movement and its emphasis on enhanced citizen engagement, only to be pre-­empted and redirected by the arrest and imprisonment frenzy associated with the nation’s “war on drugs.” I then examine the 1990s when a backlash to the drug war led to the re-­emergence of community policing as a way to restore policing legitimacy, especially as this concerned the use of reintegrative strategies to support treatment outreach and harm reduction services. I examine this matter more fully in Chapter 6, where I focus on the cities of Norfolk, Baltimore, and San Francisco during the 1990s and their attempts to use community policing as a way to facilitate citizen access to drug treatment, harm reduction and other remedial services. I argue, however, that the implementation of reintegrative community policing has proven to be problematic, mediated and even thwarted by dynamics of institutional selectivity and the tendency for law enforcement agencies to stress goals of coercion over those of outreach. The findings of Chapter 6 have important implications for our understanding of how prepared American police are for incorporating pre-­arrest/ booking and other crisis intervention measures aimed at low-­level drug offenders, street addicts, and the mentally ill. Chapter 7, the conclusion, ties together the theoretical and policy implications of the book for better understanding how the fire service and police shape social problems and unequal outcomes. I elaborate on the ways in which state structures and practices reflect distinct dimensions of social power and how these may be altered to better serve policy goals. I also elaborate on the usefulness of institutional selectivity as a framework for identifying and analyzing multi-­ faceted aspects of social bias within welfare states that reflect both class and other types of status interests.

Notes   1 Vermont’s governor devoted his entire 2014 State of the State speech to the problem of heroin addiction. See Seelye (2014).   2 The formal title of the Kerner Commission Report is the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968).   3 In Ronald Reagan’s inaugural speech he stated that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the cause,” referring to a plethora of domestic problems.   4 “Urban” for my purposes is defined as any settlement with more than 10,000 persons, although my own analysis will focus on large cities with hundreds of thousands of persons.   5 The National Emergency Number Association estimates that 240 million emergency calls are made to 911 numbers each year. See www.nena.org/?page=911Statistics

20   Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State   6 Eligibility requirements may still be defined by age or one’s ability to work depending on the benefit. See Esping-­Andersen (1990, 48).   7 Marcuse’s conclusion is that American housing policy has been more concerned with providing financial benefits to banks, developers, and other private interests and less with aiding low-­income households.   8 The modernization perspective is sometimes also referred to as the “logic of industrialism” thesis. See Kerr et al. (1960).   9 Harm reduction is defined as an approach that “minimized the hazards associated with drug use rather than use itself.” See Duncan et al. (1994, 281). 10 Symphony Road is named for Boston’s Symphony Hall which is located at the eastern end of the street. 11 My use of the term reintegrative is derived from Braithwaite’s (1989) theory of “reintegrative shaming,” where efforts are made to bring the offender back into the life of the community without resorting to incarceration. 12 See Powell and Colyvas (2008, 276–278) and Chapter 2 on the micro-­foundations of institutional life. Also see Herbert (1997) on the concept of normative order in policing. 13 Hyde is a pseudonym for a large city on the west coast of the United States. I have also used pseudonyms to refer to specific individuals, organizations, bureaus, and reports relevant to the Hyde research. The use of pseudonyms in place of actual place names or organizations is longstanding in sociology, including classic works such as Lynd’s Middletown (1929) and Burawoy’s study of “Allied Corporation” (1978). Classic studies of the police have also used pseudonyms to refer to places and specific organizations (see, e.g., Skolnick 1966; Westley 1970). Although pseudonyms are used for the Hyde case study, all findings reported are true to fact as are the responsibilities of actual organizations, their divisions, and job ranks and titles. Quoted passages or findings from field notes, interviews or archives on the Hyde case are verbatim.

References Amenta, Edwin, Chris Bonastia, and Neal Caren. 2001. “U.S. Social Policy in Comparative and Historical Perspective: Concepts, Images, Arguments, and Research Strategies.” Annual Review of Sociology 27: 213–234. Balko, Radley. 2013. Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces. Philadelphia: Public Affairs Books. Beckett, Katherine. 2014. Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Program: Lessons Learned from the First Two Years. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Law, Societies and Justice Program and Department of Sociology. Bittner, Egon. 1970. The Functions of Police in Modern Society. National Institute of Mental Health. Chevy Chase, MD: Center for Studies in Crime and Delinquency. Bonfine, Natalie, Christian Ritter, and Mark Munetz. 2014. “Police Officer Perceptions of the Impact of Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Programs.” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 37: 341–350. Boudreau, John F., Quon Kwan, William Faragher, and Genevieve Denault. 1977. Arson and Arson Investigation; Survey and Assessment. Washington, DC: United States Department of Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice. Brady, James. 1984. “The Social Economy of Arson: Vandals, Gangsters, Bankers and Officials in the Making of an Urban Problem.” Research in Law Deviance and Social Control 6: 199–242. New Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State   21 Brady, James. 1983. “Arson, Urban Economy, and Organized Crime: The Case of Boston.” Social Problems 33: 1–27. Braithwaite, John. 1989. Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Brush, Lisa. 2002. “Changing the Subject: Gender and Welfare Regime Studies.” Social Politics 9: 161–186. Bunton, Robin. 2001. “Knowledge, Embodiment and Neo-­Liberal Drug Policy.” Contemporary Drug Problems 28: 221. Burawoy, Michael. 1998. “The Extended Case Study Method.” Sociological Theory 16: 4–31. Burawoy, Michael. 1978. Manufacturing Consent. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Carnoy, Martin. 1984. The State and Political Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chambliss, William. 1964. “A Sociological Analysis of the Law of Vagrancy.” Social Problems 12: 67–77. Conason, Joe, and Jack Newfield. 1980. “Arson-­for-Hire: The Men Who are Burning New York.” The Village Voice, June 2. Accessed December 14, 2015 from www.­ villagevoice.com/news/arson-­for-hire-­6401815 Currie, Elliott. 1993. Reckoning: Drugs, The Cities and the American Future. New York: Hill and Wang. Des Jarlais, Don. 1995. “Harm Reduction—A Framework for Incorporating Science into Drug Policy.” American Journal of Public Health 85: 10–11. Digeser, Peter. 1992. “The Fourth Face of Power.” Journal of Politics 54: 977–1007. Dreier, Peter, John Mollenkopf, and Todd Swanstrom. 2014. Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press. Duncan, D., T. Nicholson, P. Clifford, W. Hawkins, and R. Petosa. 1994. “Harm Reduction: An Emerging New Paradigm for Drug Education.” Journal of Drug Education 24: 281–290. Durkheim, Emile. 1997 [1893]. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: The Free Press. Eck, John, and Dennis Rosenbaum. 1994. “The New Police Order: Effectiveness, Equity and Efficiency in Community Policing.” In The Challenges of Community Policing: Testing the Promises, 3–21, edited by Dennis Rosenbaum. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Eck, John, and William Spelman. 1987. “Who Ya Gonna Call? The Police as Problem-­ Busters.” Crime and Delinquency 33: 31–52. Emshwiller, John, and Gary Fields. 2015. “Seattle LEAD Program to Keep Offenders Out of Jail Draws Nationwide Interest.” Wall Street Journal, July 20. Accessed May 10, 2016 from www.wsj.com/articles/seattle-­lead-program-­to-keep-­offenders-out-­of-jail-­ draws-nationwide-­interest-1437434693 Esping-­Andersen, Gøsta. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), United States Fire Administration. 1979. “Arson: The Federal Role in Arson Prevention and Control.” Report submitted to Congress. Washington, DC: FEMA. Flood, Joe. 2010. The Fires. New York: Riverhead (Penguin). Foucault, Michel. 1991. “Governmentality.” In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, 87–104, edited by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish. New York: Random House/Vintage.

22   Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State Garland, David. 2001. The Culture of Control. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Giddens, Anthony. 1976. “Classical Social Theory and the Origins of Modern Sociology.” American Journal of Sociology 81: 703–729. Goetz, Barry. 2000. “Community Policing, Equity and Drug Enforcement: Towards a Consideration of Public Health Strategies.” In Handbook of Global Legal Policy, 391–412, edited by Stuart Nagel. New York: Marcel Dekker. Goetz, Barry. 1997a. “Organization as Class-­Bias in Local Law Enforcement: Arson-­forProfit as a ‘Non-­Issue.’ ” Law and Society Review 31: 557–588. Goetz, Barry. 1997b. “State Theory and Fire Control: Selection Mechanisms in Local Government.” Critical Sociology 23: 33–62. Goetz, Barry. 1991. The American Fire Department and the State: Government Organization and Social Inequality. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley. Department of Sociology. Goetz, Barry, and Roger Mitchell. 2006. “Pre-­Arrest/Booking Drug Control Strategies: Diversion to Treatment, Harm Reduction, and Police Involvement.” Contemporary Drug Problems 33: 473–520. Goetz, Barry, and Roger Mitchell. 2003. “Community-­Building and Reintegrative Approaches to Community Policing: The Case of Drug Control.” Social Justice 30: 223–247. Goldstein, Herman. 1979. “Improving Policing: A Problem-­Oriented Approach.” Crime and Delinquency 25: 236–258. Goodman, David J., and Anemona Hartocollis. 2014. “Anti-­Overdose Drug Becoming an Everyday Part of Police Work.” New York Times, June 12. Accessed June 13, 2014 from www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/nyregion/anti-­overdose-drug-­becoming-an-­everydaypart-­of-police-­work.html?_r=0 Greene, Jack, and Carl Klockars. 1991. “What Police Do.” In Thinking About Police: Contemporary Readings, 273–284, edited by Carl Klockars, and Stephen Mastrofski. New York: McGraw-­Hill. Hartnett, Ken. 1978. “The Symphony Road Fire Murders.” Nation’s Cities (February): 17–20. Harvey, Joseph, and Richard Connolly. 1977. “A Huge Conspiracy to Burn Suffolk County for Profit.” Boston Globe, October 18: 1, 3, 4. Herbert, Steven. 2006. Citizens, Cops, and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Herbert, Steven. 1997. Policing Space: Territoriality and the Los Angeles Police Department. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Hicks, Alexander, and Gøsta Esping-­Anderson. 2005. “Comparative and Historical Studies of Public Policy and the Welfare State.” In The Handbook of Political Sociology: States, Civil Societies and Globalization, 509–525, edited by T. Janoski, R. Alford, A. Hicks, and M. Schwartz. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, Huey, Laura. 2007. Negotiating Demands: The Politics of Skid-­Row Policing in Edinburgh, San Francisco and Vancouver. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department. 1991. Los Angeles, CA: City of Los Angeles. Ivory, Danielle, Ben Protess, and Kitty Bennett. 2016. “When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers.” New York Times, June 26. Accessed July 5, 2016 from www.nytimes. com/2016/06/26/business/dealbook/when-­y ou-dial-­9 11-and-­w all-street-­a nswers. html?_r=0 Jacobsen, Michael, and Philip Kasinitz. 1986. “Burning the Bronx for Profit.” The Nation (November 15): 512–514.

Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State   23 Jahnke, Art. 1982. “Who’s Burning Boston?” Boston Magazine (December): 144–149, 185–190. Jahnke, Art. 1981. “Upscale Arson: Condo Conversion By Fire.” The Real Paper, Cambridge, MA, January 15: 11.  Katz, Michael B. 2001. The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Kelling, George, and Katherine Coles. 1996. Fixing Broken Windows. New York: Touchstone. Kerr, Clark, John Dunlop, Frederick Harbison, and Charles Myers. 1960. Industrialism and Industrial Man. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kiesling, Phil. 2015. “Why We Need to Take the ‘Fire’ Out of ‘Fire Department.’ ” Governing the States and Localities, July 1. Accessed May 5, 2016 from www.governing. com/columns/smart-­mgmt/col-­fire-departments-­rethink-delivery-­emergency-medical-­ services.html Kinder, Kimberly. 2014. “Guerilla-­style Defensive Architecture in Detroit: A Self-­ Provisioned Security Strategy in a Neoliberal Space of Disinvestment.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38: 1767–1784. Klinenberg, Eric. 2015. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Second Edition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kubler, Daniel, and S. Walti. 2001. “Drug-­Policy Making in Metropolitan Area Urban Conflicts and Governance.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 25: 35–54. Kurth, Joel. 2015. “Detroit Pays High Price for Arson Onslaught.” The Detroit News. Accessed July 4, 2016 from www.detroitnews.com/story/news/special-­reports/2015/ 02/18/arson-­fires-detroit-­cost/22596529/ LeDuff, Charlie. 2008. “Detroit Firefighters Battle Fires, Failures.” The Detroit News, April 22. Lester, Patrick, and Scott Kraus. 2016. “More Municipal Governments Outsourcing Services.” The Morning Call, July 29. Accessed July 1, 2016 from www.mcall.com/­ business/outlook/all-­government-030908-story.html Lima, Alfred J. 1980. “The Influence of the Non-­Admitted Insurance Market on Arson-­ For-Profit.” Washington, DC: National Fire Prevention and Control Administration. United States Department of Commerce. Lima, Alfred J. 1977. “Fires in Urban Residential Neighborhoods: A Survey of Causes and Local Efforts at Prevention.” Washington, DC: National Fire Prevention and Control Administration. United States Department of Commerce. Lineberry, Robert L. 1977. Equality and Urban Policy: The Distribution of Municipal Public Services. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Lipsky, Michael J. 1980. Street-­Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Loader, Ian, and Neil Walker. 2001. “Policing as a Public Good.” Theoretical Criminology 5: 9–35. Lukes, Steven. 2005. Power: A Radical View, 2nd Edition. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Lynd, Robert S., and Helen Merrill. 1959[1929]. Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture. New York: Harcourt, Brace Javanavich. Maher, Lisa, and David Dixon. 1999. “Policing and Public Health.” British Journal of Criminology 39: 488–512.

24   Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State Manning, Peter. 1997. Police Work: The Social Organization of Policing. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland. Marcuse, Peter. 1986. “Housing Policy and the Myth of the Benevolent State.” In Critical Perspectives on Housing, 248–257, edited by Rachel Bratt, Chester Hartmann, and Ann Meyerson. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Marshall, T.H. 1983[1950]. “Citizenship and Social Class.” In States and Societies, 248–260, by David Held. New York: NYU Press. Mason, Cody. 2012. Private Prisons: Too Good to be True. Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project. Available at http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_Too_ Good_to_be_True.pdf Mastrofski, Stephen. 1983. “The Police and Non-­Crime Services.” In Evaluating the Performance of Criminal Justice Agencies, 33–61, edited by G. Whitaker and C. Phillips. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Moll, Kendall. 1974. Arson, Vandalism and Violence: Law Enforcement Problems Affecting Fire Departments. Washington, DC: United States Department of Justice; Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. Moore, Winston, Charles P. Livermore, and George F. Galland, Jr. 1983. “Woodlawn: The Zone of Destruction.” In The Social and Economic Consequences of Residential Fires, 271–288, edited by Chester Rapkin. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath. Myles, John, and Jill Quadagno. 2002. “Political Theories of the Welfare State.” Social Service Review 76: 34–57. Nadelmann, Ethan. 1991. “The Case for Legalization.” In The Drug Legalization Debate, 17–44, edited by James Inciardi. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control. 1973. America Burning. Washington, DC: United States Government. Neumann, W. Lawrence. 2005. Power, State and Society. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press. O’Connor, James. 1973. The Fiscal Crisis of the State, New York: St. Martins. O’Connor, Julia S., Ann Orloff, and Sheila Shaver. 1999. States, Markets, Families: Gender Liberalism and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. O’Malley, Pat. 1992. “Risk, Power and Crime Prevention.” Economy and Society 21: 252–275. Offe, Claus. 1985. “The Divergent Rationalities of Administrative Action.” In Disorganized Capitalism, 300–316, edited by John Keane. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Offe, Claus. 1984. “Theses on Theories of the State.” In Contradictions of the Welfare State, 119–129, edited by John Keane. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Offe, Claus. 1974. “Structural Problems of the Capitalist State: Class Rule and the Political System. On the Selectiveness of Political Institutions.” In German Political Studies, 31–57, edited by Klaus von Beyme. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Pastore, Nick. 2000–2001. “Police Others as You Would Have Them Police You.” The Reconsider Quarterly 1: 10–14. Piven, Frances Fox, and Richard Cloward. 1993 [1971]. Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare. Second Vintage Edition, New York: Random House. Police Accountability Task Force. 2016. Recommendations for Reform: Restoring Trust Between the Chicago Police and the Communities That They Serve. Accessed April 15, 2016 from https://chicagopatf.org/ Poulantzas, Nicos. 1978. State Power Socialism. London: Verso.

Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State   25 Powell, Walter W., and Jeannette A. Colyvas. 2008. “Microfoundations of Institutional Theory.” In Handbook on Organizational Institutionalism, 276–298, edited by Royston Greenwood, Christine Oliver, Kerstin Sahlin, and Roy Suddaby. London: Sage. President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. 2015. Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Rose, Michael E. 1981. “The Crisis of Poor Relief in England: 1860–1890.” In The Emergence of the Welfare State in Britain and Germany, 50–70, edited by W.J. Mommsen. London: Croom-­Helm. Rose, Nikolas. 1993. “Government, Authority and Expertise in Advanced Liberalism.” Economy and Society 22: 283–297. Rose, Nikolas, and Peter Miller. 1992. “Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government.” British Journal of Sociology 43: 172–205. Schneider, Anne, and Helen Ingram. 1993. “The Social Construction of Target Populations: Implications for Politics and Policy.” The American Political Science Review 87: 334–347. Schram, Sanford. 2002. Praxis for the Poor: Piven and Cloward and the Future of Social Science in Social Welfare. New York: New York University Press. Seelye, Katharine. 2016. “Massachusetts Chief ’s Tack in Drug War: Street Addicts to Rehab, Not Jail.” New York Times, January 24. Accessed January 25, 2016 from www. nytimes.com/2016/01/25/us/massachusetts-­chiefs-tack-­in-drug-­war-steer-­addicts-to-­ rehab-not-­jail.html?_r=0 Seelye, Katharine. 2014. “In Annual Speech, Vermont Governor Shifts Focus to Drug Abuse.” New York Times, January 8. Accessed December 15, 2015 from www.nytimes. com/2014/01/09/us/in-­annual-speech-­vermont-governor-­shifts-focus-­to-drug-­abuse. html?_r=0 Silver, Allen. 1967. “The Demand for Order in Civil Society: A Review of Some Themes in the History of Urban Crime, Police and Riot.” In The Police: Six Sociological Essays, 1–24, edited by David Bordua. New York: John Wiley. Skocpol, Theda, and Edwin Amenta. 1986. “States and Social Policies.” Annual Review of Sociology 12: 131–157. Skogan, Wesley, and Susan Hartnett. 1997. Community Policing, Chicago Style. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Skogan Wesley, and Jeffrey Roth. 2004. Introduction to Community Policing: (Can it Work?), xvii–xxxiv, by Wesley Skogan, and Jeffrey Roth. Belmont, CA: Thomson-­ Wadsworth. Skolnick, Jerome. 1966. Justice Without Trial: Law Enforcement in Democratic Society. New York: John Wiley. Skolnick, Jerome, and David Bayley. 1986. The New Blue Line. New York: The Free Press. Slade, Steve. 1978. “The Business of Arson.” The Nation (March 18): 307–309. Sternlieb, George, and Robert Burchell. 1983. “Fires in Abandoned Buildings.” In The Social and Economic Consequences of Residential Fires, 261–270, edited by Chester Rapkin. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath. Suchy, John T. 1976. “Arson: America’s Malignant Crime.” National Fire Prevention and Control Administration, National Academy for Fire Prevention and Control. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce. Terrill, William, and Stephen Mastrofski. 2004. “Working the Street: Does Community Policing Matter?” In Community Policing: (Can it Work?), 109–135, by Wesley Skogan, and Jeffrey Roth. Belmont, CA: Thomson-­Wadsworth.

26   Fire Service, Police, Local Welfare State Tonry, Michael. 2011. Punishing Race: A Continuing American Dilemma. New York: Oxford University Press. U.S. Department of Justice. 1994. Understanding Community Policing. Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance, document # 148457. U.S. General Accounting Office. 1978. Arson-­for-Profit: More Could be Done to Reduce It. Washington, DC: Office of Comptroller General, document #79-664. U.S. Senate. 1979. Senate Subcommittee on Governmental Affairs by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Arson in America. 96th Congress, 1st Session. U.S. Senate. 1978. “Arson-­for-Hire.” Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, 95th Congress, 2nd Session. U.S. Senate. 1977. “Arson-­For-Profit: Its Impact on States and Localities.” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs. 95th Congress, First Session. Weber, Max. 1946. “Politics As a Vocation.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, 77–128, edited by Hans Gerth, and C. Wright Mills. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Westley, William. 1970. Violence and the Police: A Sociological Study of Law, Custom, and Morality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wilensky, Harold. 2003. Rich Democracies. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

2 Institutional Selectivity

In Chapter 1, I introduced the examples of urban fires and community policing to demonstrate how state structures and practices shape social problems and unequal community outcomes. Here I expand on the concept of institutional selectivity as a way to better observe and analyze this dynamic. First, I examine different dimensions of social and political power and show how these lead to different understandings of state bias. Next, I argue for an understanding of public safety organizations within an institutional framework, drawing on theoretical insights from organizational sociology. I then turn to the concept of normative order, defined as a way to better understand the workings of fire control and policing infrastructures in the United States. I identify the key variables that I view as important for defining normative orders, and discuss why they are important for explaining organizational behavior. I end the chapter with a broader discussion of how normative orders underlie institutional selectivity, leading to contradictory welfare state practices and outcomes.

State Bias and Dimensions of Power State bias can be analyzed by using different methodologies for discovering its existence. A “one-­dimensional” power analysis looks at the exercise of bias through “concrete” behaviors, actions or group conflicts (Lukes 2005, 17). The most obvious example of this kind of bias is reflected in democratic decision-­ making, where there is an expectation that citizens will disagree over key social issues and that there will be “winners and losers” in terms of policy solutions and outcomes (Alford and Friedland 1985). Applied to the state, where there is an expectation of bureaucratic neutrality, the researcher looks for bias in the prejudicial utterances or misbehaviors of organizational actors (e.g., racist or sexist beliefs or decisions reflecting these beliefs) or in the expression of policies that are clearly designed to subordinate one group to another (e.g., Jim Crow). For some researchers, one-­dimensional expressions of power are the only legitimate method for establishing that bias exists within organizations or institutions (Katz 1999). However, governmental bias can also be discovered if researchers employ a “two” or even “three” dimensional power analysis (Lukes 2005, 29, 109). The writings of political scientists Peter Bachrach and Morton

28   Institutional Selectivity Baratz have served as the primary exemplars of the two-­dimensional view. Bachrach and Baratz (1962, 947) argued that community power has “two faces.” One is overt and corresponds to a pluralist model of political decision-­making, i.e., a one-­dimensional view of power, where definable interest groups coalesce around key civic issues and compete with one another to influence governmental policy (Dahl 1961). The other face of power is covert, involving the “institutional practices that limit the scope of the political process.” Bachrach and Baratz (p.  949) called this dynamic “nondecision-­making,” which has more to do with organizational structures and practices than with open political struggle between vested interests. The concept of nondecision-­making is rooted in E.E. Schattschneider’s (1960, 71) famous dictum that: All forms of political organization have a bias in favor of the exploitation of some kinds of conflict and the suppression of others because organization is the mobilization of bias. Some issues are organized into politics while others are organized out. Nondecision-­making limits the political decision-­making process to handling only “safe” issues, i.e., those that are considered innocuous to influential members of a community, and keeps more threatening issues out of the political arena entirely. The effects of nondecision-­making become especially apparent at the level of the policy implementation process, where governmental elites, often at the behest of elites outside government, are able to structure the “rules of game”—the institutional arrangements—that bias policy outcomes in favor of some community interests over others (Bachrach and Baratz 1962, 950). Bachrach and Baratz (1970) used their theory of nondecision-­making to illustrate the ways in which the federal Community Action Program (CAP) initiative of the 1960s exhibited racial basis, especially in the City of Baltimore. Established through the U.S. Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, CAPs were designed to encourage the “maximum feasible participation” of ordinary citizens in planning and directing poverty reduction programs. Community-­based organizations—designated “Community Action Agencies” or “CAAs”—would be the direct recipients of federal funds without having to partner with local or state governments. Many CAAs saw no distinction, however, between political action and poverty reduction, and used federal resources to stage voter registration drives to elect certain politicians, to demand more tenant and welfare rights, and to lobby for improved government services. In 1967, the U.S. Congress passed the Green Amendment requiring state or local governments to officially designate those agencies allowed to receive anti-­poverty funds as a way to head off what was viewed by many as the politicization of the CAP program (see Piven and Cloward 1993[1971], 265–267). In Baltimore, city leaders established their own CAA stacked with mayoral appointees as a way to seize control over CAP dollars. For all intents and purposes, Bachrach and Baratz conclude, the Baltimore CAA was “part and parcel of the municipal government,” including the ability of the City Council to veto projects. Not surprisingly, Baltimore’s CAA

Institutional Selectivity   29 favored local agencies that were less political in nature, an outcome also preferred by local business elites. Baltimore’s more involved black leaders, many of whom had been active in civil rights struggles and who had been conducting their own home-­grown anti-­poverty efforts, chose not to cooperate with the city-­ based CAA. Those that did faced cooptation. Lukes (2005, 39) views the two-­dimensional view of power as an advance over one-­dimensional views in that it reveals “the less visible ways in which a pluralist system may be biased in favor of certain groups and against others.” Bachrach and Baratz’s work is crucial in that it redefines “the boundaries of what is to count as a political issue,” and considers the ways in which potential community concerns are kept from becoming full-­blown political conflicts that may threaten those with power and authority (Lukes, 23). As a methodological matter, however, Lukes (p.  39) criticizes the two-­dimensional view for falling back on a one-­dimensional view of intentionality that sees the “mobilization of bias” as “attributable to individuals’ decisions.” For example, Lukes (p. 40) concludes that Bachrach and Baratz’s work on Baltimore is ultimately concerned with the ways in which specific policy decisions (such as the creation of a city-­ administered CAA) worked to keep “the inchoate demands of Baltimore’s blacks from becoming politically threatening” to civic elites. In this way, Bachrach and Baratz continue to promote the “exercise fallacy” of political analysis that emphasizes the choices and influence of key social actors in determining social outcomes (Lukes 2005, 109). A “deeper analysis” of nondecision-­making, Lukes (p. 40) concludes, would have concerned itself with “all the complex and subtle ways in which the inactivity of leaders and the sheer weight of institutions” bias policy processes and outcomes. Matthew Crenson’s (1971, vii) work on the “unpolitics” of air pollution, Lukes argues, provides one of the best examples of how inactivity represents governmental bias. Crenson asked how it was that Gary, IN, built as a steel-­ producing town with excessively dirty air, had no effective anti-­pollution ordinances until the 1970s. His conclusion was that the sheer reputation of U.S. Steel, which dominated Gary economically for much of the post-­World War II era, was enough to convince politicians and governmental officials that they should keep air pollution off the local policy agenda. In this way, U.S. Steel neither had to lobby local government to defeat anti-­pollution ordinances, nor did they have to directly pressure local government to act in their interest. Quite on their own, Crenson (1971, 4) concludes, the state and other political organizations (i.e., political parties) relegated air pollution to the status of a “non-­issue.” Lukes (2005, 47) argues that Crenson’s study is located at the theoretical “borderline” between two-­dimensional and three-­dimensional views of power, the latter of which locates governmental bias at the level of policy or procedural inaction. Whereas Bachrach and Baratz’s examination of nondecision-­making in Baltimore focuses on the ways in which specific elites in specific situations attempt to manipulate the policy implementation process, Crenson’s theory of nondecision-­making considers the ways in which hegemonic forces, such as the reputational power of large corporations, are able to keep social problems out of

30   Institutional Selectivity the political sphere. His analysis is therefore consistent with a three-­dimensional view of power, where neither overt conflict nor the direct influence of elite actors need be present to observe dynamics of class or social bias within the policy process. Bias is instead observable through the ways in which social conflicts are shaped and channeled through existing political structures and the “institutional materiality” of the state itself (Poulantzas 1978, 49), i.e., the public bureaucracies through which everyday government functions are carried out. These broader questions on the “faces” of power bring me back to debates over contradictions in the welfare state and the ways in which the concept of institutional selectivity can be used to analyze biases in public safety agencies, and in turn, how these shape social problems and unequal community outcomes. As noted in Chapter 1, my use of the term institutional selectivity is derived from Offe’s (1974, 33–39) work on “selection mechanisms” which serves as one of the best examples of a three-­dimensional power analysis. Offe argued that political biases within the state are located in their “own routines and formal structures”—the “institutional apparatuses, bureaucratic organizations, and formal and informal codes” of governance that attempt to mediate social and political crises occurring in the broader society (also see Carnoy 1984, 130) Offe (1974, 36–37) argued that government institutions acted as “sorting processes,” which had the result of “distilling a ‘class-­interest’ out of narrow, short-­ term, conflicting, incompletely formulated interests of pluralistic influence politics.” In this way, welfare states are able to adopt policies designed to mitigate social inequities or address social problems while at the same time sustaining the integrity of the capitalist system (also see Offe 1984; O’Connor 1973). Analogous to the work of Crenson, Offe concluded that economic elites need not directly influence the policy-­making process to assure outcomes favorable to their interests. Instead, governmental structures and practices become the mechanisms through which political—and particularly class conflicts—are channeled. Selection mechanisms create “action-­premises and action-­barriers” that limit the “scope of possible policies” (Offe 1974, 39). Key public concerns that may threaten the status quo may therefore be transformed into non-­issues, or as Offe labeled them, “non-­events.” Moreover, because biases are embedded in ostensibly neutral administrative structures, governments are shielded from claims that they are favoring the interests of one social group over another (Offe 1985; also see Poulantzas 1978). Using Offe’s emphasis on organizational dynamics, I expand the concept of institutional selectivity beyond a class analysis to consider a Foucauldian or “fourth” dimensional view of power to explain operational contradictions within the welfare state (Lukes 2005, 88; Digeser 1992, 977). From the fourth dimensional standpoint, state bias reflects more than traditionally defined political struggles rooted in class or other interests. It also reflects sources of domination that may emanate from cultural beliefs and trends, norms regarding social and individual behavior, or the opinions and practices of experts. Foucault’s (1979, 97) concept of “governmentality” refers to the ways by which welfare states (and other social institutions) attempt to manage and discipline social and individual

Institutional Selectivity   31 conduct (also see Rose 1993). As a form of institutional selectivity, the process of governmentality involves the use of specific “technologies” of power—the apparatuses, programs, techniques, and procedures used to carry out governmental ambitions (Rose and Miller 1992, 175; O’Malley 1992). Examining public safety infrastructure from the standpoint of a third or fourth dimension power analysis requires a greater understanding of how organizations themselves work as societal actors that determine social outcomes, and this requires a better understanding of the ways in which public safety agencies behave as social institutions.

Public Safety Organizations as Institutions From the standpoint of institutional theory, organizations should be understood as both rational and non-­rational constructs (DiMaggio and Powell 1991). As an ideal-­type, organizations are means-­oriented goal attainment structures where there is a clear sense of bureaucratic objectives, norms, and roles (Weber 1958). On the other hand, organizations are subject to political and other outside influences that may alter how they view their functions and carry out their tasks (Selznick 1966[1947]). Organizations also tend to take on a life of their own, defined by internal systems of informal norms and worker subcultures that may or may not serve formal organizational objectives and purposes (Vaughan 1997; Perrow 1986; Gouldner 1954). Consider public safety agencies. The police understand their role in society as protecting the public from criminals. Likewise, firefighters are honored by the public because they put out fires. These “myths and ceremonies” allow both police and fire departments to retain their legitimacy in the eyes of the public (Meyer and Rowan 1977, 340). Nevertheless, the structures of police organization may be viewed as conforming more to “institutional expectations of what the police should do, rather than practical considerations of what they actually do” (Crank and Langworthy 1992, 343). The “myth” about the police is that they prevent crime, although law enforcement “ceremonies” such as randomized patrol and rapid response have little to do with crime prevention (Bayley 1994). Meyer and Rowan (p.  357) argue that such gaps between expectations and everyday process represent a “decoupling” process that allows organizations to retain legitimacy when operational goals are “ambiguous” or “vacuous.” Politicians, police, and the public can continue to define “real police work” as crime-­ fighting even though this does not adequately describe what many officers do during a typical shift (Van Maanen 1978, 225). Similarly, the myth surrounding the structuring of fire departments is rooted in the task of firefighting, even though medical calls, traffic accidents and other non-­fire emergencies are more common than fires (Keisling 2015; Marrs 1996). Still, elements of technical rationality cannot be completely ignored as an explanation of organizational structure and practice. After all, applied to public safety organizations, what could be more rationally clear than the need to put out our fires and enforce laws? Moreover, what about the domain of constituent

32   Institutional Selectivity demands or technological constraints, what Thompson (1967, 28) called the “task environment?” Questions of institutional norms, therefore, need to be linked to concrete political or related concerns outside the realm of simply “what’s expected.” The ultimate question is how it is that particular organizational structures and practices come to interpret and implement the demands of the task environment. Although the role of the police is to control crime, there is, at the same time, little consensus on how police departments “should” be doing this (Crank and Langworthy 1992, 360). Wilson noted in 1968 that there are different styles of policing: legalistic, watchman, and service. Each of these approaches reflected different normative dimensions and types of technical rationality. Institutionalized practices influence how public safety agencies act because they determine “what has meaning and what actions are possible” (Zucker 1983, 2). Although it may be true that organizations must fulfill technical requirements to remain legitimate, they must also fulfill expectations that may not necessarily coincide with rational thinking about public policing. The observation that organizations become “isomorphic,” or similar to one another, has relevance here (DiMaggio and Powell 1983, 150). The subcultures of public safety officials are very much bound up with the notion of “first responder” heroism, which the public also views as commensurate with expectations of performance. At the same time, such institutional behavior may do little to promote preventative or regulatory activities that may ultimately be more effective at protecting public safety in the long run (Bayley 1994). When pressures for change do occur, organizational subcultures may reveal themselves as powerful sources of agency that resist structural forces of reform. The community policing movement challenged existing myths and ceremonies organized around crime-­fighting and reactive policing methods (Eck and Rosenbaum 1994). The arson crisis of the 1970s and early 1980s was a catalyst in challenging the myth and ceremonies associated with firefighting and fire suppression.

The Normative Orders of Fire Control and Policing Walk into a police or fire department in any city in America and you will be confronted with recognizable cultures, organizational symbols and workplace scripts that shape and constrain expectations and behaviors. These make up the normative orders of public safety agencies that, in turn, define institutional selectivity. Here I define normative order as the interplay between bureaucratic structures and procedures, agency subcultures and the micro-­foundational aspects of organizational life, i.e., the cognitive orientations of state actors and their “taken-­forgranted” assumptions about what particular agencies do (Goetz 1997a). The concept of normative order is not new to the study of policing. Herbert’s (1997, 19) work described the “internalized values” of Los Angeles police officers, shaped by a combination of structural and informal constraints such as the law and occupational subculture. Herbert also has drawn on Bourdieu to show

Institutional Selectivity   33 that normative orders are a form of habitus reflecting the cognitive understandings, daily practices, and world-­views of officers. Garland (2001, 38), too, has used the habitus concept to describe the “thoughtways,” “working ideologies,” and “trained responses and decisions” of police officers. Social psychologists too, have used “schema theory” to specify the cognitive processes through which police officers interpret situations and make decisions (Watson et al. 2014, 353). This focus on the “micro-­foundations” of normative order represents a “new institutionalist” approach to studying organizational process (DiMaggio and Powell 1991, 2). From the micro-­foundational standpoint, more attention needs to be paid to the dynamic ways in which macro- and micro-­forces interact, i.e., how macro-­forces get “pulled down” to influence everyday organizational practices and also how “micro-­processes,” such as the cognitive processes associated with the actions of specific actors and processes, “ratchet upwards” to influence structural conditions (Powell and Colyvas 2008, 276–278). Recognizing the importance of both macro- and micro-­forces, my use of the term normative order applies not only to the behaviors of organizational actors but organizations themselves, particularly in terms of how they affect social problems and dimensions of social inequality. Here I outline what I consider to be the most salient elements of a normative order as it applies to both the fire service and policing agencies. The Law The law is a technical constraint that helps to shape the normative order of public safety agencies through the determination of both structure and procedures. Supreme Court decisions such as Mapp v. Ohio (1961), which outlined strict search and seizure rules for collecting evidence, and Miranda v. Arizona (1966), which enhanced rights protecting against self-­incrimination, have advanced a “due process” model of law enforcement that has limited the aggressiveness of policing actions (Packer 1968, 153). Leo has argued that the Miranda decision and other Supreme Court decisions limiting policing powers are directly responsible for the development of more sophisticated (and manipulative) methods of discovering evidence that do not involve threats or the use of physical coercion (Leo 2008). The “Task Environment” Organizations have “task environments” to the extent that they must serve a given constituency or set of clients (Thompson 1967). In the public domain, task environments include expectations of service among citizens, including the expectation of safety and protection from harm, and the technical demands of fulfilling these expectations. The task environment can also include the challenges of implementing policies and programs and competing ideas in the political arena about how problems should be addressed and solved. The task environment surrounding public safety agencies has shifted over time. In the fire

34   Institutional Selectivity service, the use of more fire-­resistant building materials, fire-­safe appliances, safer heating and lighting methods, and internal extinguishment systems, have all meant that fires are not the threat that they used to be. Departments have had to adapt to new threats posed by hazardous materials and chemicals, and have assumed a more significant regulatory role in overseeing the installation and operation of sophisticated fire prevention systems. They also have had to hire new recruits who are more educated and accepting of new regulatory responsibilities, some of these civilian engineers, representing a break with the insular culture and firefighting orientation of most departments (Goetz 1997b). The community policing movement has also transformed the ways in which citizens and government officials think about policing, with a greater emphasis on community input, cooperation, and attention to “quality of life” concerns, which the police did not typically identify as crime control priorities (Kelling and Coles 1996; Sadd and Grinc 1994). Moreover, shifts in the task environment cannot be separated from the political contexts and movements through which they have occurred. The arson crisis forced fire and police departments to reexamine their approaches to fire safety (Goetz 1997a). The community policing movement has its roots largely in crises over political legitimacy, especially within communities of color (Crank 1994; Eck and Rosenbaum 1994). Bureaucratic Structures, Routines, and Procedures As noted in Chapter 1, both police and fire departments have come under increasing pressure to prevent social problems and crises from occurring as opposed to simply reacting to them. Nevertheless, new initiatives often conflict with normative orders built around a call for service orientation (e.g., the 911 emergency response system), reactive methods of dealing with social disorder (e.g., randomized patrols looking for crime) or productivity measures rooted in clearance rates or rates of arrest (Moskos 2008; Bayley 1994). Few agencies have yet figured out how to measure prevention or to measure the output devoted to activities such as community or problem-­oriented policing. Furthermore, community policing is rarely adopted as a department-­wide strategy but is instead a “beat” assigned to specialized officers or sequestered into specialized units (Mastrofski 2006; Greene 2004; Maguire et al. 2003). The shift toward alternative public safety models has also conflicted with the paramilitary hierarchical model that is still prominent in police and fire departments. Paramilitary ranks are efficient ways of disseminating orders in an emergency, but as departments become more complex in terms of responsibilities one’s rank and know-­how in a distinct position do not always correspond. For example, civilian fire safety inspectors may have more formal education and training in prevention systems than their supervisors who may be assigned from the suppression ranks. Still, the uniformed chief will make much more money and garner more prestige within the paramilitary system than the civilian (Goetz 1997b). Bureaucratic constraints are also evident in investigative techniques. Pontell (1982, 137) has argued that law enforcement agencies lack the “institutional

Institutional Selectivity   35 capacity” to deal with white collar crimes (also see Williams 2006). As they apply to arson investigation, in particular, local investigators are resistant to developing the “paper trails” necessary for building fraud cases (Goetz 1997a and Chapters 3 and 4, this volume). Professionalization, Training, and Social Diversity The normative orders of policing and firefighting have been shaped by important changes in formal socialization that occurred over the past century. There was a time when there were few, if any, eligibility requirements for being a police officer or firefighter. Much of what police officers and firefighters knew was learned “on the job,” passed down from those with more experience (Goetz 1997b; Haller 1976). Moreover, municipal police and fire departments in the United States had their roots in political patronage. Although paramilitary models of organization were intended to impose standards of professionalism (i.e., a division of labor built around rank and particular tasks) and discipline (i.e., strict codes of behavior), they did little to curb organizational incompetence or the official misbehavior of officials, including the brutal treatment of African-­ Americans and certain ethnic groups, especially immigrants (Klockars 1985). A “professionalization movement” in policing imposed new standards of eligibility and training on American law enforcement, in particular. As early as 1917, August Vollmer, the police chief in Berkeley, CA, called for police officers to have a college education (Walker 1977). The professionalization movement also imposed bureaucratic recruitment and promotion criteria (e.g., civil service tests) on police organizations to minimize political favoritism. The professionalization movement would eventually be criticized for failing to curb police corruption and brutality (Chapter 5, this volume). At the same time, the professionalization movement altered the way that policing is done in America, imposing bureaucratic rules of citizen response and process, altering the skills of investigators and minimizing the effect of political culture on the everyday work of individual officers (Leo 2008; Hassell et al. 2003; Walker 1997). That the normative orders of public safety agencies have changed over time is consistent with an institutionalization argument that emphasizes the relationship between environmental factors and organizational structure. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that professionalization, certification, and training do not necessarily mean a purposive, goal-­oriented rationality. Institutionalization assumes that old structures and practices that function as “myths and ceremonies” are replaced by new ones. Crank (1994), for example, argues that the community policing movement has attempted to supplant the “myth” of policing as crime-­fighting with that of police officer as “watchman”, complete with its own set of ceremonies that may or may not reflect the reality of what police officers do on an everyday basis. Moreover, despite what appear to be determinant sources of change outside of agencies, reforms in policing have always been modified and altered as they have butted up against existing endogenous forces such as occupational culture and informal beliefs and practices (Herbert

36   Institutional Selectivity 2006). In short, organizations continue to be their own independent actors despite outside forces attempting to impose change (Zucker 1987). Frequently, too, agency actors work to defend informal norms on the basis that they are associated with agency performance. Chetkovich (1997) has found that male firefighters view women firefighters as threatening to their cultural homogeneity and solidarity, leading to a loss of camaraderie and less effective emergency response. Police officers view their loyalty to one another as essential in assuring their safety and willingness to take on dangerous situations, even though such loyalty may lead to a “blue wall” of silence where officers are unwilling to tell on one another’s misconduct (Skolnick and Fyfe 1993). Subculture and Micro-­Foundational Elements Occupational subculture is one of the most important aspects associated with the normative orders of public safety agencies. Westley’s (1970, 48) classic study Violence and the Police found that police viewed themselves as distinct from ordinary citizens and were guided by a collective “morality” built around secrecy and violence. The public was often viewed as an “enemy,” at best unappreciative and unknowing about the challenges police officers face. The lives of firefighters and police officers are also built around a fierce sense of loyalty and commitment to one another, sometimes rivaling the loyalties in one’s private life. The work on subculture is troubling in that it reveals behaviors among public safety officials that are not consistent with our expectations of a benevolent state. Skolnick (1966, 45) attempts to explain the origins of policing subculture, what he calls their “working personality,” linking it to the fear of danger and the belief that one needs to present an air of authority when interacting with the public or attempting to control a situation. As a result, officers tend to always be on guard and assume a defensive posture that they believe is functional for their own safety and protection. This adaptation to intrinsic environmental threats engenders a suspicion toward the public among police officers that can result in organizational bias. Skolnick (1966, 45) argues that officers develop a “perceptual shorthand to identify certain kinds of people as symbolic assailants, that is, as persons who use gesture, language and attire” attracting the attention of officers. Such perceptual cues often spill over into the use of racial or ethnic stereotypes as a basis for making stops (Goldberg 1999). Research on public safety organizations also indicates the importance of informal forms of socialization in determining behavior. Police officers draw much of their occupational self-­definition from the challenges of the working environment and may even sometimes devalue or reject tenets of formal training (Moskos 2008). In the 2001 film Training Day, detective Alonzo Harris warns his newbie recruit Jake Hoyt not to bring the knowledge learned in the academy to policing narcotics because “that shit will get you killed.” Herbert’s (1997) work is among the most notable on informal norms and policing subculture. Echoing Skolnick, Herbert finds that many officers are preoccupied with their safety and that this leads to specific types of protective attitudes and gestures.

Institutional Selectivity   37 Herbert also finds subcultural strains that reflect a desire for adventure and a commensurate sense of machismo among (primarily male) officers. Such subcultural elements may have a significant impact on social outcomes. Herbert (1997, 94) finds that “hotshot” officers are the most respected within the policing ranks because of their resolute stance when dealing with the public and troublemakers. At the same time, a macho officer may prove to be an impediment to the implementation of community policing interventions that stress patience and an emphasis on communicative skills. Such approaches to policing represent “feminized” activities and are considered antithetical to the officer’s macho subculture (Herbert 2006). A macho subculture is noted in firefighting too. The “smokeater” enjoys high esteem within the ranks whereas prevention inspectors are viewed as being “put out to pasture” where they are no longer able to fight fires (Goetz 1997b). Organizational subculture and informal norms play an important role in determining the cognitive elements associated with policing and firefighting, i.e., conveying to agency actors a sense of what they are “supposed to do.” This leads to isomorphic elements where organizational actors are reluctant to question their accepted approaches to particular problems. Such cognitive constraints, as I will show in later chapters, have impacted the extent to which firefighters are willing to accept prevention and police officers are willing to accept activities perceived as “social work” as a part of their occupational self-­definitions.

Normative Orders and Institutional Selectivity The concept of normative orders is useful for understanding how organizations behave and the ways in which they impact social life. At the same time, it is necessary to specify the political framework in which normative orders exist. As Jepperson (1991, 146) has noted, “institutions are not just constraint structures; all institutions simultaneously empower and control.” Powell and Colyvas (2008) similarly argue that organizational arrangements may come to privilege some groups more than others through the imposition of sanctions and rewards. Eligibility restrictions imposed through the public assistance process are just one example of such bias rooted welfare state structures (Piven and Cloward 1993[1971]). The rest of this chapter will be devoted to showing how normative orders fit into a broader framework of institutional selectivity, and in turn, demonstrating how this selectivity is causal in terms of social outcomes. Political sociologists emphasizing a “state-­centered” perspective argue that state actors and organizations are key players in shaping social outcomes, problems, and political conflicts (Amenta 2005). Key explanatory variables from the state-­centered standpoint include the preferences of policy experts, the desires and interests of state managers, the influence of powerful elites, and state “capacities” to pursue certain kinds of policies, including bureaucratic rules and process (Skocpol 1985, 17). On the surface, the state-­centric viewpoint would appear to be ideal as a way to theorize institutional selectivity. However, state-­ centered analyses tend to view unequal outcomes or controversies resulting from

38   Institutional Selectivity governmental action or inaction as independent from any inherent class or status biases existing within state institutions. Instead, state structures and practices, and the decision-­making and actions of particular state managers and elites, are viewed as “potentially autonomous” from societal interests (Hooks 1990, 31). But the state-­centered focus on the intent of particular actions and agencies diminishes the importance of social outcomes as a methodological approach to analyzing state bias (Lukes 2005; Alford and Friedland 1985). Indeed, even those governmental decisions appearing to be completely neutral in terms of political intent may give rise to racial, ethnic, and class disparities. Consider the Flint water crisis, initiated in 2011 when an emergency manager, who had the power to override all locally elected officials and was appointed by Michigan’s governor, chose for budgetary reasons to shift the public’s source of drinking water from the Detroit regional water system to the Flint River. A decision was made not to treat the water with anti-­corrosion chemicals, allowing it to become contaminated with lead. The Flint crisis has been called one of America’s largest cases of “environmental injustice,” where lower-­income populations, disproportionately African-­American, “did not enjoy the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards as that provided to other communities” (Bosman 2016). Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s office, when speaking out about the Flint water crisis, insisted that its objectives in dealing with Flint’s water supply were entirely managerial, with no intent to poison residents.1 From a three-­dimensional standpoint, however, governmental actions, even those that are apparently bureaucratic or budgetary, cannot be viewed as divorced from class and status interests if they ultimately undermine basic citizenship rights. Political scientists and economists have long been concerned with the problem of governmental organization and the “distributional equity” of providing essential urban services, from refuse pick-­up to public safety. Important work was done in this area, especially during the 1960s and 1970s, in response to lawsuits and citizen activism charging that local governments discriminated against the poor and communities of color. Key studies nevertheless rejected the argument that local governments deliberately discriminated against an urban “underclass” defined by race or economic status (Lineberry 1977, 174). Ultimately, analysts found that unequal outcomes were not the fault of the state. Rather, they were caused by “the other face of inequality,” i.e., the view that inequities begin in the market and that the state is relatively powerless in mitigating them (Merget and Berger 1982). Studies of distributional equity have recognized, however, that bureaucratic dynamics can produce unequal outcomes, but similar to state-­centric theorists, view these as managerial in focus and having little to do with inherent class or social biases within government. As Levy et al. (1974, 224–225) argued, unequal outcomes result from a “multitude of influences that interact in unforeseen ways,” including the immediate interests of bureaucrats, pet programs of politicians, and fiscal constraints. “Even in the cases of straight forward discrimination,” Levy and colleagues conclude, “there are no villains: just a number of professionals—unaware of the consciousness of their actions.”

Institutional Selectivity   39 Michael Lipsky’s (1980) work on “street-­level bureaucrats,” such as teachers, police officers, and social workers, has shown that it is not so easy to conclude that there “are no villains” when looking at the links between bureaucratic dynamics and unequal outcomes. Lipsky (1980, 111) identifies “bureaucratic sources of bias” within state agencies that clearly lead to unequal outcomes for certain populations. He argues that there is a contradiction within the “ideology of welfare states,” whose mission is to be both “humanitarian” and benevolent while also playing a role in asserting social control (p. 183). This contradiction, Lipsky (1980, 71) argues, leads to a “myth of altruism” attached to the work of governmental service. Agencies are concerned with “caring and responsibility,” on the one hand, but there is also the need for bureaucratic detachment and the reality of resource limitations on the other hand, making “care and responsibility conditional” (Lipsky 1980, 71). Work on street-­level bureaucrats focuses on the normative order of service delivery as the key for explaining how the welfare state leads to unequal community outcomes. “Service bureaucracies consistently favor some clients over others, despite official regulations to the contrary” argues Lipsky (1980, p. xi). He notes (p. 181) that street-­level bureaucrats themselves are affected by prejudices toward low-­income populations, including the “deep conviction that poor people are at some level responsible for the conditions in which they find themselves.” Street-­level bureaucracies are said to have “relative autonomy” from the legislatures and supervisory authorities (e.g., a mayoral administration) and this situation helps to explain the “slippage” between policy goals and outcomes (Lipsky 1980, 16). The theory of selection mechanisms also focuses on the relative autonomy of governmental administrations to account for the disjuncture between policies and outcomes, but views this dynamic as rooted in the functions of welfare states in democratic societies, namely, the need to support economic growth while attending to the needs and demands of citizens (Offe 1984, 121; O’Connor 1973). From this perspective, the normative orders of service bureaucracies, including fire and police departments, cannot be viewed as distinct from the structural dynamics that give rise to them, rooted in law, policy formation, and the institutional arrangements that comprise the state. Indeed, the informal norms and occupational subcultures of street-­level bureaucrats, even if these appear to thwart policy goals, are still framed by broader structural forces, even if in reaction to them. There are select studies worth noting that explicitly focus on institutional selectivity and the ways in which organizational structures and practice, what I am calling normative orders, give rise to it. Work in education has shown that there is a “selective tradition” in the construction of public school curricula that reinforces capitalist social relations, especially through the textbook adoption process and excluding works that take a critical view of American industry or the free enterprise system (Liston 1984, 241). Work on white collar crime control shows that adjudicative procedures are designed to allow for the “selective” tolerance of elite offenders, unless their wrongdoing threatens the

40   Institutional Selectivity integrity of financial markets as a whole (Calavita and Pontell 1994, 298; also see Sutherland 1983[1949]). My own work on arson-­for-profit shows how the normative order of local law enforcement relegates arson fraud to the status of a “non-­issue” (Goetz 1997a). I have also shown how normative orders act as vehicles of bias in the carrying out of fire prevention functions and in the implementation of community policing reforms (Goetz and Mitchell 2006; Goetz and Mitchell 2003; Goetz 1997b). The Foucauldian emphasis on technologies of power used to regulate both social life and individual conduct also is ultimately concerned with normative orders as vehicles of bias. Rose and Miller (1992, 175) define governmental technologies as particular “apparatuses,” programs, techniques, and procedures that define the “mentalities” and “machinations” of government (also see O’Malley 1992). The cognitive processes associated with organizational normative orders, such as collective “routines,” “scripts” and “schemas,” are also viewed as central to technologies of control and the governmentality process (Power 2011, 50). Specifying distinct technologies of power implies different dynamics of institutional selectivity in terms of how state organizations shape social problems and reproduce unequal community outcomes (Harcourt 2001; Bunton 2001). In the chapters that follow, I will focus on the intersections between a third and fourth dimensional power analysis to explain the dynamics of institutional selectivity associated with fire control and community policing. The fire case will be concerned with how state structures and practices create unequal social outcomes, especially defined by heightened fire-­risk by social class, race, and geographic location. The community policing case focuses on unequal outcomes, but also examines the ways in which welfare state interventions attempt to shape and change behaviors perceived as deviant or threatening to the conventional social order (Hewitt 1991, 248). In both the police and fire cases, the larger framework of state bias should be viewed in the context of broader social changes having to do with the post-­industrial transformation of cities.

Note 1 From an interview with Spokesperson Ari Adler on “Current State” with Mark Bayshore, WKAR Radio, East Lansing, MI, March 28, 2016. Also see The Flint Water Advisory Task Force, March 21, 2016, commissioned by the Office of Governor Rick Snyder, State of Michigan.

References Alford, Robert R., and Roger Friedland. 1985. Powers of Theory: Capitalism, the State and Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Amenta, Edwin. 2005. “Institutionalist and State-­Centric Theories of Political Sociology.” In The Handbook of Political Sociology, 96–114, edited by Thomas Janoski, Robert Alford, Alexander Hicks, and Mildred Schwartz. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Institutional Selectivity   41 Bachrach, Peter, and Morton Baratz. 1970. Power and Poverty: Theory and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Bachrach, Peter, and Morton Baratz. 1962. “Two Faces of Power.” American Political Science Review 56: 947–952. Bayley, David. 1994. Police for the Future. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bosman, Julie. 2016. “Flint Water Crisis Inquiry Finds State Ignored Warning Signs.” New York Times, March 23. Accessed March 27, 2016 from www.nytimes. com/2016/03/24/us/flint-­water-crisis.html?_r=0 Bunton, Robin. 2001. “Knowledge, Embodiment and Neo-­Liberal Drug Policy.” Contemporary Drug Problems 28: 221. Calavita, Kitty, and Henry Pontell. 1994. “The State and White Collar Crime: Saving the Savings and Loans.” Law and Society Review 28: 297–324. Carnoy, Martin. 1984. The State and Political Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chetkovich, Carol. 1997. Real Heat: Gender and Race in the Urban Fire Service. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Crank, John P. 1994. “Watchman and Community: Myth and Institutionalization in Policing.” Law and Society Review 28: 325–352. Crank, John P., and Robert Langworthy. 1992. “An Institutional Perspective of Policing.” The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 83: 338–363. Crenson, Matthew A. 1971. The Un-­politics of Air Pollution; A Study of Non-­Decision Making in the Cities. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Dahl, Robert. 1961. Who Governs? New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Digeser, Peter. 1992. “The Fourth Face of Power.” Journal of Politics 54: 977–1007. DiMaggio Paul, and Walter Powell. 1991. “Introduction.” In The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, 1–38, edited by DiMaggio Paul, and Walter Powell. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. DiMaggio Paul, and Walter Powell. 1983. “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields.” American Sociological Review 48: 147–160. Eck, John, and Dennis Rosenbaum. 1994. “The New Police Order: Effectiveness, Equity and Efficiency in Community Policing.” In The Challenge of Community Policing: Testing the Promises, 3–21, edited by Dennis Rosenbaum. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish. New York: Random House/Vintage. Garland, David. 2001. The Culture of Control. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Goetz, Barry. 1997a. “Organization as Class-­Bias in Local Law Enforcement: Arson-­ForProfit as a ‘Non-­issue.’” Law and Society Review 31: 557–587. Goetz, Barry. 1997b. “State Theory and Fire Control: Selection Mechanisms in Local Government.” Critical Sociology 23: 33–62. Goetz, Barry, and Roger Mitchell. 2006. “Pre-­Arrest/Booking Drug Control Strategies: Diversion to Treatment, Harm Reduction, and Police Involvement.” Contemporary Drug Problems 33: 473–520. Goetz, Barry, and Roger Mitchell. 2003. “Community-­Building and Reintegrative Approaches to Community Policing: The Case of Drug Control.” Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict and World Order 30: 222–247. Goldberg, Jeffrey. 1999. “The Color of Suspicion.” New York Times Magazine (June 20). Accessed December 28, 2015 from www.nytimes.com/1999/06/20/magazine/the-­colorof-­suspicion.html?pagewantedall&srcpm

42   Institutional Selectivity Gouldner, Alvin. 1954. Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy. New York: The Free Press. Greene, Jack. 2004. “Community Policing and Police Organization.” In Community Policing (Can it Work?), 30–53, edited by Wesley Skogan. Belmont, CA: Thomson-­Wadsworth. Haller, Mark. 1976. “Historical Roots of Police Behavior: Chicago, 1890–1925.” Law and Society Review 10: 303–323. Harcourt, Bernard E. 2001. Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hassell, Kimberly, Jihong Zhao, and Edward Maquire. 2003. “Structural Arrangements in Large Municipal Police Organizations: Revisiting Wilson’s Theory of Local Political Culture.” Policing 26: 231–251. Herbert, Steven. 2006. Citizens, Cops and Power: Recognizing the Limits of Community. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Herbert, Steven. 1997. Policing Space: Territoriality and the Los Angeles Police Department. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Hewitt, Martin. 1991. “Bio-­Politics and Social Policy: Foucault’s Account of Welfare.” In The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, 225–255, edited by Mike Featherstone, Mike Hepworth, and Bryan Turner. London: Sage. Hooks, Gregory. 1990. “From the Autonomous to a Captured State Agency: The Decline of the New Deal in Agriculture.” American Sociological Review 55: 29–43. Jepperson, Ronald. 1991. “Institutions, Institutional Effects, and Institutionalism.” In The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, 143–163, edited by Paul DiMaggio, and Walter Powell. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Katz, Jack. 1999. “Hunting for Bias: Notes on the Evolution of Strategies for Documenting Invidious Discrimination.” In Social Science, Social Policy and the Law, 210–257, edited by Patricia Ewick, Robert Kagan, and Austin Sarat. New York: Russell Sage. Keisling, Phil. 2015. “Why We Need to Take the ‘Fire’ Out of ‘Fire Department.’” Governing the States and Localities, July 1. Accessed May 5, 2016 from www.governing. com/columns/smart-­mgmt/col-­fire-departments-­rethink-delivery-­emergency-medical-­ services.html Kelling, George, and Katherine Coles. 1996. Fixing Broken Windows. New York: Touchstone. Klockars, Carl. 1985. The Idea of the Police. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Leo, Richard. 2008. Police Interrogation and American Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Levy, Frank S., Arnold Meltsner, and Aaron Wildavsky. 1974. Urban Outcomes: Schools, Streets and Libraries. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Lineberry, Robert L. 1977. Equality and Urban Policy: The Distribution of Municipal Public Services. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Lipsky, Michael J. 1980. Street-­Level Bureaucracy; Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Liston, Daniel. 1984. “Have We Explained the Relationship Between Curriculum and Capitalism? An Analysis of the Selective Tradition.” Educational Theory 34: 241–254. Lukes, Steven. 2005. Power: A Radical View, 2nd Edition. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Maguire, Edward R., Yeunhee Shin, Jihong Zhao, and Kimberly Hassell. 2003. “Structural Change in Large Police Agencies During the 1990s.” Policing 26: 251–276. Marrs, Gary. 1996. “It’s Not Just a Fire Department Anymore.” In Fire Services Today: Managing a Changing Role and Mission, 9–14, edited by Gerald Hoetmer. Washington, DC: International City/County Management Association.

Institutional Selectivity   43 Mastrofski, Stephen. 2006. “Community Policing: A Skeptical View.” In Police Innovation: Contrasting Perspectives, 44–73, edited by David Weisburd, and Anthony Braga. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Merget, Astrid E., and Renee A. Berger. 1982. “Equity as a Decision Rule in Local Services.” In Analyzing Urban Service Distributions, 21–44, edited by R. Rich. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath (Lexington Books). Meyer, John W., and Brian Rowan. 1977. “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony.” American Journal of Sociology 83: 340–363. Moskos, Peter. 2008. Cop in the Hood. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. O’Connor, James. 1973. The Fiscal Crisis of the State. New York: St. Martins. O’Malley, Pat. 1992. “Risk, Power and Crime Prevention.” Economy and Society 21: 252–275. Offe, Claus. 1985. “The Divergent Rationalities of Administrative Action.” In Disorganized Capitalism, 300–316, edited by John Keane. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Offe, Claus. 1984. “Theses on Theories of the State.” In Contradictions of the Welfare State, 119–129, edited by John Keane. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Offe, Claus. 1974. “Structural Problems of the Capitalist State: Class Rule and the Political System. On the Selectiveness of Political Institutions.” In German Political Studies, 31–57, edited by Klaus von Beyme. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Packer, Herbert. 1968. The Limits of the Critical Sanction. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Perrow, Charles. 1986. Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay. New York: Random House. Piven, Frances Fox, and Richard Cloward. 1993 [1971]. Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare. Second Vintage Edition, New York: Random House. Pontell, Henry. 1982. “System Capacity and Criminal Justice.” In Rethinking Criminology, 131–143, edited by Harold Pepinsky. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Poulantzas, Nicos. 1978. State Power Socialism. London: Verso. Powell, Walter W., and Jeannette A. Colyvas. 2008. “Microfoundations of Institutional Theory.” In Handbook on Organizational Institutionalism, 276–298, edited by Royston Greenwood, Christine Oliver, Kerstin Sahlin, and Roy Suddaby. Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Power, Michael. 2011. “Foucault and Sociology.” Annual Review of Sociology 37: 35–56. Rose, Nikolas. 1993. “Government, Authority and Expertise in Advanced Liberalism.” Economy and Society 22: 283–297. Rose, Nikolas, and Peter Miller. 1992. “Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government.” British Journal of Sociology 43: 172–205. Sadd, Susan, and Randolph Grinc. 1994. “Innovative Neighborhood Oriented Policing.” In The Challenge of Community Policing: Testing the Promises, 27–51, edited by Dennis Rosenbaum. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Schattschneider, E.E. 1960. The Semi-­Sovereign People. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Selznick, Phillip. 1966 (1947). TVA and the Grassroots. New York: Harper and Row. Skocpol, Theda. 1985. “Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research.” In Bringing the State Back In, 3–43, edited by Peter Evans, Theda Skocpol, and Dietrich Reuschemeyer. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Skolnick, Jerome. 1966. Justice Without Trial: Law Enforcement in Democratic Society. New York: John Wiley. Skolnick, Jerome, and James Fyfe. 1993. Above the Law: Police and the Excessive Use of Force. New York: Free Press.

44   Institutional Selectivity Sutherland, Edwin H. 1983 [1949]. White Collar Crime. New Haven: Yale University Press. Thompson, James D. 1967. Organizations in Action. New York: McGraw-­Hill. Van Maanen, J. 1978. “The Asshole.” In Policing: A View from the Street, 221–238, edited by P.K. Manning. Santa Monica, CA: Goodyear. Vaughan, Dianne. 1997. The Challenger Launch Decision. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Walker, Samuel. 1977. A Critical History of Police Reform. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath. Watson, Amy C., James Swartz, Casey Bohrman, Liat Kriegel, and Jeffrey Draine. 2014. “Understanding How Police Officers Think About Mental/Emotional Disturbance Calls.” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 37: 351–358. Weber, Max. 1958. “Bureaucracy.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, 196–239, edited by Hans Gerth, and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press. Westley, William. 1970. Violence and the Police: A Sociological Study of Law, Custom, and Morality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Williams, Howard E. 2006. Investigating White Collar Crime, 2nd Edition. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Wilson, James Q. 1968. Varieties of Police Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Zucker, Lynn. 1987. “Institutional Theories of Organization.” Annual Review of Sociology 13: 443–464. Zucker, Lynn. 1983. “Organizations as Institutions.” In Advances in Organizational Theory and Research, 1–43, edited by Samuel Bachrach, Vol. 2. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

3 Fire as a Social Problem

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (2005) focused the nation’s attention on the poor planning and lack of regulation that exacerbated the devastating effects of the storm (Bier 2006). Katrina raised key questions—as do most disasters of its type—about whether its horrendous effects could have been prevented or mitigated. Katrina was also important in that it prompted a national discussion about the links between disasters and social inequality. As sociologist Kathleen Tierney has argued (2006, 110), “disaster scholarship now recognizes that factors such as wealth and poverty, race and ethnicity, gender and age influence vulnerability to hazards, disaster victimization, and disaster recovery outcomes.” Tierney’s conclusions have pertinence for the study of fire. Although fires may not appear to be as disastrous as hurricanes or other natural events, they are responsible for roughly 3,000 civilian fire deaths every year (U.S. Fire Administration 2011). Rashes of fires can destabilize neighborhoods as residents and businesses flee for their safety. Furthermore, while we tend to think of them as fortuitous events, fire incidents can often be traced to owner negligence and failed governmental oversight. As with larger disasters, questions about regulation and prevention are often clouded by political and economic considerations. Debates emerge over risk-­factors, cause, culpability, and the efficacy of prevention measures. Here I argue that fire, too, should be analyzed as a social problem. I begin with an examination of the 1970s as the “war years” of urban fires, highlighting the relationship between fire-­risk and social inequality. I then discuss the various narratives for explaining fire-­risk that emerged during the 1970s among key stakeholders, particularly public officials and community activists, and examine how these informed policy solutions to preventing and regulating fire. I then look at the changing nature of the social problem of fire over the past 40 years. I end the chapter by making the case that although the overall fire threat has diminished in the United States, it remains a social problem measured by dimensions of unequal risk.

46   Fire as a Social Problem

The War Years: Urban Fires and Arson in the 1970s In 1973 the National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control, convened by President Richard Nixon, published a remarkable study called America Burning. The study found that “appallingly, the richest and most technologically advanced nation in the world leads all the major industrialized countries in per capita deaths and loss from fire” (p.  1). Fires were blamed for 12,000 civilian deaths and 300,000 injuries annually, ranking behind only auto accidents and falls. Fire was also found to be responsible for 11 billion dollars in yearly property losses. International studies also found that fire was an especially American problem. Harlow (1975, 43) found that the U.S. had 14.1 fire incidents per 1,000 persons in 1974, exceeding the rates of 11 other industrialized countries. Using 1980 data, Banks (1983) found that the U.S. had the highest rate of building fires, 4.6 incidents per 1,000 persons, compared to an average of 2.7 in 14 other industrialized countries including Australia, Japan, Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Banks also found that the U.S. had a fire-­related death rate of 29.4 per million persons compared to an average of 14.5 for 16 other industrialized countries. Fires were so pervasive in New York during the 1970s that firefighters called this decade “the War Years,” with hundreds of thousands of tenants in the Bronx, central Brooklyn, and Manhattan’s lower east side and Harlem neighborhoods forced from their homes (Flood 2010, 8). Fire incident frequencies in New York had doubled over a 20-year period, from 24,000 per year in 1959 to more than 54,000 in 1978 (Wallace and Wallace 1998, 66). The National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control (1973, 9) also noted that there was an “appalling gap” in the amount of available data on fires in the U.S., separating Americans from an adequate understanding of the enormity of the problem. There was no centralized federal agency available to track and report fire statistics similar to the FBI and its tracking of national crime statistics. Data on fire incidence, casualties and loss were primarily the province of local fire departments and the states, and were not routinely disseminated to the public. A private organization, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), produced reports on the national fire experience based on sample surveys (Hall and Harwood 1989). Indeed, the National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control depended largely on the NFPA for the data reported in America Burning. Still, the NFPA was not an official government agency, and its information was produced primarily for member clients (e.g., engineers or fire service personnel) rather than the public at large.1 America Burning paved the way for what Panneton (1985) called the “federalization” of the nation’s fire problem. In 1974 the federal Fire Protection and Control Act was passed into law, its preamble stating that “fire is an undue burden affecting all Americans,” posing great public health and safety risks to the public.2 The Act created the National Fire Protection and Control Administration (NFPCA), later renamed the United States Fire Administration (USFA), and placed under the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The USFA’s first order of business was the establishment of the National Fire Data

Fire as a Social Problem   47 Center to develop and administer a new centralized National Fire Incident Reporting System or “NFIRS.” The USFA was also responsible for publishing Fire in the United States, a report akin to the Department of Justice’s Uniform Crime Reports or UCR.3 The USFA also assisted local fire agencies in ways that were similar to how the Department of Justice assisted local law enforcement. A National Fire Academy dedicated to training fire service officials was established under the USFA, and the agency also provided grants for hiring personnel and purchasing investigative equipment. The USFA also provided grants for research and program development to fire service agencies and community-­based organizations, much of it geared toward fire prevention objectives. NFIRS was designed as a data clearing house for all public fire agencies in the United States, and is therefore considered a more reliable resource than the NFPA’s sample survey. NFIRS works by having local fire agencies provide fire incidence, loss, and casualty data to state-­level agencies (or territorial/tribal authorities) who pass the information on to NFIRS. Although participation in the system has improved over time, NFIRS is voluntary and some local fire agencies—and even states—may fail to provide data. Consequently, the USFA incorporates NFPA data to construct more accurate data summaries (see U.S. Fire Administration 2016, 8–13 on participation rates and use of NFPA data).4 Figure 3.15 is based on a combination of NFPA and NFIRS data to track the incidence of fire in the United States since 1977, the first year for which reliable national data became available. There were 3,264,500 fire incidents reported in the United States for 1977, a very high number by today’s standards. In 2014 only 1,298,000 fire incidents were reported, representing a 60 percent reduction over 40 years. These frequency reductions corresponded to a substantial decline

Incidents Reported (× 1,000)

3,500 3,000 2,500 2,000 1,500 1,000 500 0 1975

1980

1985

1990

1995 2000 Years

2005

2010

2015

Figure 3.1  Fire Incidents in the United States, 1977 to 2014. Source: United States Fire Administration and National Fire Protection Association.

2020

48   Fire as a Social Problem in fire rates, from 14.8 per 1,000 persons in 1977 to just 4.1 per 1,000 in 2014 (Ahrens 2016, 2). Although fire incident frequencies have changed over time, the distribution of where fires occur, by “property type,” has changed little. In 2013 roughly 45 percent of all fires occurred “outside” or in “other” locations defined as “trees, brush, grass or refuse,” or involved “outside gas or vapor consumption incidents.”6 Most outside incidents are not rural brush fires, as one might expect, but rather urban events occurring in vacant lots, storage sheds, and trash containers. An additional 32 percent of fire incidents occurred in residential properties and about 8 percent of incidents occurred in non-­residential buildings. The remaining 15 percent of fire incidents occurred in vehicles and other “mobile property” (U.S. Fire Administration 2016, 37).7 Distinctions among property types and incident rates are important for understanding fire as a social problem. Fires occurring outside or in other locations cause only about 4 percent of all fire deaths and limited property loss.8 Residential fires are responsible for roughly 75 percent of all fire and fire-­related fatalities and 55 percent of property loss (U.S. Fire Administration 2016, 38). For purposes of this work, I will be primarily concerned with structural and especially residential fires given their importance for understanding fire as an urban problem. Fires, Social Inequality, and Risk America Burning cited a number of reasons for the nation’s heightened fire rates of the 1970s, including technical factors such as the combustibility of building materials and individual carelessness. But what was especially notable about the document is that it framed the nation’s fire problem within the context of broader “social problems” afflicting the nation’s cities. The urban poor, in particular, were said to be the most vulnerable to fire because they were forced to live “in the most run-­down neighborhoods, where dilapidated buildings are tinderboxes.” Extraordinarily, the National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control (1973, 5) did not view these problems as the unfortunate result of deprivation, but rather as the result of deliberate actions on the part of urban landlords, stating that: crowded apartment and tenement buildings often reflect total indifference to fire safety, because landlords see no benefit in decent, long-­term upkeep of their properties. Tenants must often warm their rooms with dangerous portable or make-­shift heaters because central heating is inoperable or non-­ existent. A number of important policy and academic studies followed America Burning, detailing the nature of America’s social problem of fire and particularly its links to social inequality. Based on a study of 36 cities in New Jersey and 54 of the nation’s largest cities, Munson and Gates (1983, 72) concluded that fire-­risk was not a “random phenomenon.” Rather they concluded that it was possible to:

Fire as a Social Problem   49 Enumerate a set of community characteristics that are likely to go hand in hand with a high fire incidence rate. In particular, if we were to seek out a city in a relatively cold climate with a comparatively old and dilapidated housing stock composed of largely rental units, where the population exhibited low incomes, high rates of unemployment, a large minority population, and where the land area and dwelling units were quite crowded, we could feel confident that this would be a city with an unusually high rate of fire incidence. Munson’s (1976, 59) work on residential fire-­risk in New York City concluded that “as median income increases, fire incidence decreases.” Munson also argued that “fires keep poor people poor” in that they are similar to other indicators of social disparity, including schooling, housing, and health, which prevent the poor from improving their well-­being. Donnell’s (1980) work on Syracuse similarly found that the rate of fire incidents is likely to be greater in those communities where there are high concentrations of households on public assistance, renter-­occupied residences, absentee landlords, housing abandonment, and unenforced health and safety codes. In work done for the NFPCA on Boston, Al Lima (1977) tied the economics of lower-­income and changing urban neighborhoods, such as bank “redlining” and landlord disinvestment, to the threat of fire and also arson.9 By the mid-­ 1970s it became clear that arson was a primary driver behind the prevalence of urban fires, called a “malignant crime” by the federal government (Suchy 1976, 2). Increasing governmental concern with urban arson led the U.S. Senate to hold three separate hearings on it between 1977 and 1979, two of these exclusively devoted to arson-­for-profit (U.S. Senate, 1979; U.S. Senate, 1978; U.S. Senate, 1977). In 1979 (p. v), the Federal Emergency Management Agency concluded that urban arson had reached “epidemic” proportions. The South Bronx was viewed as the epicenter of arson’s devastation, where 30,000 structures had been laid waste by fire from the late 1960s to the mid-­1970s (Wallace and Wallace 1998; U.S. Senate 1977). Flood (2010, 14) reports that between 1970 and 1980 seven census tracts in the Bronx lost 97 percent of their buildings to fire and abandonment and 44 tracts lost more than 50 percent. President Carter toured the Bronx in 1977 to highlight the broader problems of urban decay and its link to fires and arson. The national media also picked up on arson as a national crisis. CBS News aired an hour-­long documentary called The Fire Next Door in 1977 that focused on the South Bronx, showing its viewers block after block of burned-­out tenements. ABC News also produced a documentary called Fire-­For-Hire in 1978 that focused specifically on the problem of arson-­for-profit. Arson is defined by the FBI as “any willful or malicious burning or attempting to burn, with or without attempt to defraud, a dwelling house, public building, motor vehicle or aircraft, personal property of another, etc.” It was not until 1978 that arson was added to the FBI’s “Part I” index of major crimes10 and tracked on a yearly basis. Before 1978, national arson incidence was tracked by the NFPA. Moreover, unlike other crimes, arson statistics have historically been

50   Fire as a Social Problem reported by policing and fire agencies, making for discrepant findings and reporting criteria (Jackson 1988). For example fire departments have traditionally considered a fire arson if it was found to be of “incendiary” origin in terms of cause, i.e., deliberately set. However, just because a fire agency determines a fire to be incendiary does not mean that the police will call it an arson, requiring some evidence of an intentional and malicious act (see discussion below on “intentional” fires). Furthermore, until 1999 the fire service tracked arson using a composite category of “incendiary/suspicious” incidents. “Suspicious” incidents are defined as when “circumstances indicate the possibility that the fire may have been deliberately set, multiple ignitions were found, or there were suspicious circumstances and no accidental or natural ignition factor could be found” (Hall 2007, 3). Although suspicious fires might be used to indicate the potential for arson, such designations did not meet the legal criteria for being called an arson. This situation has been especially problematic for discovering the presence of arson-­for-profit, in that such crimes are specifically designed to fool investigators, making it difficult to come up with a conclusive determination of fire cause. Because it is a crime, historical data on arson is easier to come by than data on fires generally. In one of the first comprehensive studies of the national arson problem funded by the U.S. Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), Moll (1974) found that there were 13 times as many incendiary fires set in 1971 than in 1950. Boudreau et al.’s (1977, 5–7) work for the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration tracked a 270 percent increase in incendiary and suspicious building fires in the United States between 1964 and 1974, from 31,000 to 114,000 incidents. This corresponded to an increase from about 15 incendiary/suspicious fire incidents per 100,000 persons in 1964 to 50 in 1974, an increase of 234 percent. Fire rates per 100,000 for all incident causes, by contrast, increased only 26 percent from 1964 to 1974. In Figure 3.2, I have reproduced Boudreau et al.’s tables, where they calculate one-­half of unknown causes as a means to better estimate the prevalence of arson. Moll (1974) blamed the increases in arson largely on the racial uprisings of the 1960s and the use of arson as a tool of social protest. However, as Figure 3.2 clearly shows, incendiary and suspicious building fires continued on an upward trend in the U.S. even as urban conflicts ebbed. Compared with the tempestuous years of 1964 through 1968, the years between 1969 and 1974 were ones of relative calm in the nation’s cities (Gale 1996). Yet, incendiary and suspicious fires continued to surge, just about doubling from roughly 60,000 incidents in 1969 to 114,000 incidents in 1974 (Boudreau et al. 1977, 6).11 Incendiary and suspicious building fires continued on the increase throughout the 1970s, peaking at 167,500 incidents in 1977 (Hall 1998, 8).

Competing Narratives on Fire-­Risk Outbreaks of fire and arson during the 1970s were concentrated in lower-­income or changing urban neighborhoods. Three competing narratives therefore emerged to explain the phenomena. The first was the “built-­to-burn” narrative, which

Fire as a Social Problem   51

Incendiary Building Fires

200,000 Incendiary plus Suspicious plus 1/2 Unknown Cause

160,000

120,000

80,000 Incendiary plus Suspicious

40,000

0 1964

1966

1968

1970

1972

1974

1972

1974

Year

Incendiary Building Fires per 100,000 Inhabitants

100

80

Incendiary plus Suspicious plus ½ Unknown Cause

60

40

20

0 1964

Incendiary plus Suspicious

1966

1968

1970 Year

Figure 3.2 Incendiary plus Suspicious plus ½ Unknown Cause Fires, 1964 to 1974, Frequencies and Rates. Source: Reproduced from Boudreau et al., 1977.

emphasized factors associated with the built environment, human living densities, and the use of fire-­safe technologies. The second narrative stressed “cycles of abandonment” and anomic social conditions associated with the collapse of urban housing markets. A third narrative also considered a community’s socio-­ economic circumstances but framed these in terms of the direct decisions by economic actors not to invest in a community, the speculative dynamics associated with urban real estate markets, and white collar crime.12

52   Fire as a Social Problem “Built-­to-Burn” Fire officials tend to see fire-­risk in terms of physical risk. In the City of Hyde, for example, the case site that I examine in Chapter 4, fire officials would tell me that their city was “built-­to-burn.” This meant a large concentration of wooden structures and high population and building densities, i.e., distinct occupancies that were often attached to each other or separated by only a few yards, as in a row-­house configuration or row of shops. High population densities meant more multiple-­occupancy properties and a greater risk of personal mishaps, such as a kitchen fire, and buildings attached or close to each other meant that fires could easily spread from one structure to another. Finally, older structures were also viewed as inherently built-­to-burn because they lacked up-­to-date fire-­safe technologies such as sprinklers. The emphasis on built-­to-burn factors as the best way to explain fire-­risk is shared among other fire control professionals. Fire-­scientists and fire protection engineers view fire primarily as a phenomenon that needs to be managed through technological innovations, such as combustibility-­retardant materials, sprinklers, smoke and heat detectors, and other safety systems. The emphasis on fire control technologies spills over into regulatory enforcement through the development of fire-­safe building codes and standards. Organizations such as Underwriters’ Laboratories and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission have been central players in assuring the engineering of fire-­safe appliances (Cote 2003). The insurance industry, too, uses built-­to-burn factors to determine rate structures (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 1978). It would be folly to argue that the built environment or other technical considerations have nothing to do with fire-­risk. Nevertheless, built-­to-burn arguments cannot adequately account for the social and economic dimensions of the fire experience. Jennings (1999) found that assessing fire-­risk in terms of the built environment only makes sense when taking into consideration socio-­ economic variables such as housing quality, vacancy rates, median income, and percent of female-­headed households. In my Ph.D. thesis (Goetz 1991), I examined mean fire and arson rates by census tract in the City of Hyde from 1977 to 1986, a period of historic fire frequencies for the city (Chapter 4, this volume). My results showed that socio-­economic indicators were the strongest predictors of fire, specifically as these had to do with vacancy rates, median income, and percentage of non-­white population. Vacancies were the strongest predictor of fire, suggesting a close association between economic conditions, fire, and the advent of arson. Although densities were associated with fire-­risk, this was primarily the case because of the high number of fires occurring in single resident occupancy hotels (SROs) that served a transient and low-­income clientele. “Cycles of Abandonment” and Anomie Vacant properties, as I have noted, create a heightened risk of fires and arson, and the problem of vacant properties is most acute in neighborhoods where there

Fire as a Social Problem   53 is property abandonment. It was during the 1970s that the relationship between property abandonment and fires became most apparent amid the broader problem of America’s “urban crisis.” Northern industrial cities, in particular, were faced with reductions in manufacturing jobs, population loss, growing fiscal strain, and simmering racial conflicts (Dreier et al. 2014). Some academics argued that older urban residential neighborhoods were especially vulnerable to fire because of “cycles of abandonment”, associated declining real estate values, and anomic social conditions (Moore et al. 1983: 272; Sternlieb and Burchell 1983). The cycles of abandonment narrative went as follows. Many of the nation’s inner city neighborhoods, which had served as the staging areas for upward mobility among successive generations of immigrants and working-­class Americans, were growing older and becoming less attractive as places to live and work. Northern industrial cities, in particular, were no longer able to support the job growth that they once did because of declines in manufacturing industries such as steel (Jezierski 1990). The children and grandchildren of the early migrants to cities like New York and Cleveland were abandoning the “old neighborhoods” in search of expanding job opportunities and what they believed were better living standards in the suburbs or in the nation’s newer metropolises in the “sunbelt” (Mollenkopf 1983). As a result, central cities became poorer, with increasing proportions of residents relying on public assistance and a declining tax base overall. African-­American populations, in particular, remained isolated from economic opportunities in the suburbs largely because of housing segregation practices (Massey and Denton 1993). When racial uprisings erupted in the 1960s, the decline of older urban neighborhoods accelerated through the phenomenon of “white flight.” These broader social and economic changes created financial stressors on the owners of real estate in older urban neighborhoods. Property values plummeted, and many residents who had sunk their life-­long earnings into their homes had little hope of ever recovering their investment through a sale or equity loans. The owners of rental properties, in particular, began to face the most stress. Landlords could not charge the rents they needed to properly maintain a building. Moreover, poorer tenants meant an increasing risk that some rents would never be paid at all. Faced with growing losses, landlords cut back on essentials such as heat, and housing and fire code violations proliferated because of maintenance cut-­backs. Taxes would also go unpaid because of declining building revenue. Government agencies tried to regulate this abandonment, demanding that landlords fix their properties and abate their tax arrears, or protect tenants through various kinds of rent control statutes. Eventually, owners found themselves unable to cope with the financial strain, either selling their buildings at a loss or simply abandoning them to cut their losses. Abandoned properties, in turn, became fire hazards, vulnerable to squatters that would use exposed flames to cook, for light, and to stay warm. Abandoned properties also attracted juveniles wanting to light fires just to make mischief. Some owners would commit insurance fraud as a way to recover their losses, which some commentators saw as a “good business decision” that allowed owners to get out from under a bad investment (U.S. Senate 1977).

54   Fire as a Social Problem The cycle of abandonment narrative also stressed anomic social conditions as causal of neighborhood deterioration and fires. For Durkheim (1951), anomic social conditions were those where institutional regulations located in the family or broader community were lacking or in dispute, leading to a breakdown in existing social control mechanisms. The “Chicago School” of American Sociology used anomie theory to explain heightened levels of urban deviance and criminality, especially within “zones in transition” characterized by run-­down housing, unstable families, heavy industries, and migratory populations (Burgess 1925). In the post-­World War  II era, anomie arguments shifted away from environmental or structural explanations to those stressing cultural dysfunction, especially within inner city neighborhoods (Banfield 1974). Moore et al. (1983, 273) used such an approach to explain the problem of fire and abandonment in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago: As conditions get worse, everybody runs who can. All that is left is a population no landlords want. A dangerous underclass spawned by poverty, joblessness, misguided welfare policies, and ineffectual corrections and educational programs . . . kids and young adults of this underclass cannibalize their neighborhoods, stripping vacant apartments of anything of value. The view of an anomic underclass as being responsible for the nation’s fires was noted by national leaders such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan.13 In 1970 Moynihan told President Nixon that he viewed the phenomenon of urban arson as symptomatic of “certain types of personalities which slums produce,” especially in relation to the “social pathologies” found in poor black neighborhoods (Hinton 2016, 300). Wilson and Kelling (1982, 31–32) have also used a variant of the anomie perspective (what they call “anonymity”) to explain variations in street crime and perceived threats to a citizen’s sense of security. In their influential article “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety,” the authors use the example of Newark, N.J. to argue that the police and ordinary citizens must work together to assert both formal and informal means of social control in the urban environment, attempting to minimize any signs of physical deterioration or social disorder. Otherwise, a neighborhood could become an “inhospitable and frightening jungle” of abandoned and vacant structures, overgrown lots, and abandoned vehicles. Where such physical conditions proliferate, the more likely are “untended” behaviors and minor crimes such as panhandling, prostitution, rowdy youths, public inebriation, loitering, and vandalism. In time, the “window­breakers” outnumber the “window-­lovers.” Such conditions of “no one caring” will also allow major crimes to fester. This argument has continued to hold favor in much of the work on community policing that advocates the need to assert conventional social norms as a way to reduce deviance and crime (Skogan 1990; Kelling and Coles 1996). Wilson and Kelling (1982, 31) specifically mentioned the “anonymity” of the South Bronx as just the place where problems of crime and social disorder occur,

Fire as a Social Problem   55 and New York’s officials seized on such an explanation to explain the borough’s fires. In CBS’s The Fire Next Door (1977) New York’s Chief of Police Anthony Bouza blamed the fires in the Bronx on a “permanent underclass of disaffected and poor, drugged on alcohol, on welfare, living in bombed out situations” (U.S. Senate 1977, 380–381). Fire and police officials seized on the cycle of abandonment/anomie argument to explain surging fire and arson rates in other cities as well. Boston’s arsons were said to be caused by “prostitutes, radicals and homosexuals,” “thrill seekers,” and people with “crazy motives” (Slade 1978, 308; Gest 1983, 56). A variant on the abandonment perspective has emphasized cut-­backs in municipal services as the roots of America’s surge in fires. Flood (2010, 20) argues that New York’s arson crisis of the 1970s was primarily an after-­effect of earlier waves of “conventional” (accidental) fires that “spread over the poorer quarters of the city like a contagion” and that had already destabilized lower-­income areas (also see Wallace and Wallace 1998). These fires were preventable, Flood asserts, but New York’s brush with bankruptcy in 1975 brought about the closing of firehouses and cut-­backs in code enforcement services, especially in poorer neighborhoods of the city. This meant heightened fire-­risk, including the proliferation of substandard housing conditions and an invitation for arsonists to swoop in like “vultures, picking over the bones of dead and dying communities” (Flood 2010, 20). Deliberate Disinvestment, Real Estate Speculation, and White Collar Criminality The cycle of abandonment perspective was correct in that fire-­risk was viewed as connected to socio-­economic forces. At the same time, its emphasis on the “inevitability” of market forces leaves the impression that there was no agency in the creation of urban conditions that increased fire-­risk and caused arson rates to surge. Moreover, as the discovery of arson-­for-profit rings in cities like New York and Boston would show, public safety officials were too quick to blame anomic social conditions and “street” deviance for the causes of urban arson. In writing about the 1960s and 1970s, William Tabb (1970) and Leonard Downie, Jr. (1974) documented the ways that principal actors in local real estate markets, including landlords, bankers, developers, and investors, precipitated the decline of urban neighborhoods across the United States, often with government incentives. Both authors showed that the profits generated off low-­income housing had little to do with rental income, and instead were engendered by tax write-­offs and other federal subsidies associated with urban renewal projects and rental supports for low-­income tenants. Furthermore, absentee landlords would “milk” profits out of residential properties by limiting maintenance or subdividing units, sometimes illegally, allowing for more tenants and thereby more income per building unit. The pernicious practice of “blockbusting,” too, was also a deliberate strategy used by some real estate entrepreneurs to foster the deterioration of formerly stable urban working-­class communities. Especially

56   Fire as a Social Problem pervasive during the 1960s, blockbusting was a form of speculation whereby real estate agents used racial fear to get white working class homeowners to sell them their properties at deflated prices. The realtors would then sell the properties, in turn, at inflated prices to blacks who might not be able to afford the required mortgage payments or be able to get financing for structural maintenance and remodeling projects. Deliberate forms of property disinvestment and speculation also figure into the phenomenon of fires in urban residential neighborhoods. In Chapter 1, I summarized events from Boston in the 1970s where 33 landlords, insurance brokers, and fire officials had been involved with an arson-­for-profit ring that resulted in the burning of dozens of properties and the deaths of six persons in the Symphony Road/Fenway district of the city. This white collar conspiracy involved the transferring of property deeds to “straw” (fake) owners such as girlfriends or dead people for a dollar or nominal price, although showing a significant increase in market value—at least on paper. Sometimes the properties had sold numerous times over a short period of time as with one building that had changed hands six times in four years, its market value more than doubling from $220,000 to $545,000 (Slade 1978, 308). Former deed holders would retain their legal and financial interests in a property by becoming mortgagees and holding notes valued at equal to or near the sales price. Fire insurance(s) would then be purchased by the new owner, based on the market value of the most recent (although phony) sale. Mortgagees were listed as primary loss payees. Throughout this process, maintenance would be cut back in the interest of getting tenants to move, or owners might move to evict tenants through harassment or buy-­outs. Eventually the property would be burned for the insurance money. Similar events involving property speculation and white collar criminality occurred in St. Louis in 1969, where the use of “straw” purchases allowed owners to artificially inflate the value of their properties, obtain inflated insurance coverage, and then commit arson fraud. In Detroit, an arson-­for-profit conspiracy was discovered in 1974 involving 57 contractors, lenders, and owners who bought foreclosed properties, performed shoddy repairs on them, and then “torched” them to collect insurance pay-­offs (Boudreau et al. 1977, 20). In 1985, six landlords and insurance brokers were convicted of insurance fraud for 55 fires that they had deliberately ignited in 17 buildings in the South Bronx between 1976 and 1979 (Jacobson and Kasinitz 1986). Conason and Newfield (1980) reported on another arson-­for-profit ring in New York during the 1970s involving landlords, realty companies, and lenders who burned over 250 buildings. The ring leader, a landlord and realtor named Joe Bald, a convicted felon with ties to the Mafia, acted as a “fire broker” for landlords who were looking to cash out their properties through fire. Boston again emerged as a center for arson-­ for-profit in the 1980s when an arson fraud ring was connected to fires in the city’s Dorchester neighborhood and in nearby Lowell, MA (Brady 1984; 1983). When the Symphony Tenants Organizing Project (STOP) mobilized around the problem of fires in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood, they coined the term “arson-­for-profit” to best describe what was going on there. This term, they

Fire as a Social Problem   57 argued, was preferable to the term “insurance fraud” to capture the ways in which fire could be used to make money off real estate in lower-­income areas. Brady’s (1983, 1) work on the “sociology of arson” is the best academic work drawing the connections between property disinvestment, real estate speculation, and white collar criminality. Brady has argued that arson-­for-profit is not simply the desperate act of financially stressed property owners but rather reflects systemic market dynamics associated with the economic investment and disinvestment decisions made by banks, realtors, and insurance companies. These decisions, Brady (1983, 1) has argued, hasten the “process of abandonment, gentrification, and neighborhood decline” in many lower-­income neighborhoods that leaves them destabilized and vulnerable to “several varieties of arson.” In this way, arson-­for-profit is not only a manifestation of urban decline but also urban revitalization and gentrification. Arson might be used to generate funds for building renovations in areas that commercial banks have “redlined” (refused to invest). Arson-­for-profit may be used to “clear” a parcel from a particularly profitable piece of land, using insurance payouts as the primary source of removing debris (Zangar 1979). “Upscale” arson involves clearing tenants from low-­ income property to make way for luxury uses, such as condominiums (Brady 1984, 222; Jacobson 2006; Jahnke 1981). Brady’s work is also important for countering the view that problems of anomie and the inevitability of urban decline were responsible for rising arson and fire frequencies during the 1970s. He notes (1983, 5) that in Boston businessmen and government officials chose to blame “pyromaniacs,” “juvenile vandals,” and “street deviants” for their own wrongdoing, knowing full well that their version of events would be accepted by the media and middle-­class residents. Similar frustration with the anomie perspective came from David Scondras who was the lead organizer for STOP. Responding to public officials who had blamed the Fenway fires on low-­income tenants, Scondras complained to ABC News that “there’s some obscure notion in the minds of people that low-­ income people have a natural proclivity toward a variety of strange behavior, one of them being they burn down their homes” (Brady 1983, 18). Scondras argued that public officials perpetuated “class and race prejudice” in their explanations for what was causing urban fires, blaming poor people for “problems caused by rich people,” i.e., unscrupulous landlords and their business associates (Slade 1978, 308). In an interesting twist to the argument that juveniles were behind many urban fires, Sullivan (1992) found that youths did set a large number of blazes in the Bronx, but that this was because they were hired by landlords who wanted their properties burned. The lack of mainstream, affordable insurance in urban communities has been another dynamic of disinvestment that has encouraged arson fraud in urban communities. Many mainstream insurers stopped writing policies in urban neighborhoods across the United States during the 1960s, especially in response to urban uprisings, exacerbating economic disinvestment and urban decay (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 1978, 7). In response, the U.S. Congress enacted the Urban Property Protection and Reinsurance Act of 1968

58   Fire as a Social Problem requiring “fair access to insurance requirements” in all 50 states. “FAIR” plans, as they came to be known, would be regulated by each individual state. They would be paid for through the assessment of a fee charged to every insurance company writing business in that state. Those companies would share in the profits generated by the plans, but also share their losses. FAIR plans, however, were criticized for encouraging arson-­for-profit (Brady 1984). In conventional insurance markets, the amount of coverage provided on residential structures is determined by their market value (e.g., their sale price or the sale prices of like properties in their proximity), including the full amount of any mortgages. Requested coverage amounts are generally honored by insurers unless there are reasons for rejection, e.g., an inspection revealing that a structure is non-­existent, has deteriorated or is not up to building code standards. FAIR Plans were mandated to accept more risk, and therefore had looser underwriting criteria. This left the Plans vulnerable to white collar criminals intent on arson fraud who “gamed” the system by getting coverage on properties that were well in excess of their market value, often through the presentation of phony sales and mortgage documents. In 1978, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) found that the underwriting and inspection procedures of many of the FAIR Plans were unnecessarily lax even given their mandates to accept higher risk. Some properties, for example, had never been inspected, and companies rarely checked to see whether a requested amount of coverage was in line with market values and commensurate levels of coverage in a particular geographic location. Beyond the FAIR Plans there was the problem of offshore “surplus line” companies. Jacobson and Kasinitz (1986) document the problem of over-­ insurance in many parts of New York during the 1970s as carriers such as Lloyds of London rushed in to fill the vacuum left by retreating conventional carriers. These companies were even more lax in terms of oversight than were FAIR Plans, and would write insurance on just about any property and pay-­off just about any loss without an investigation or inquiry (also see Lima 1980; Conason and Newfield 1980). Surplus line companies faced little risk from their exposure to fire because they were “re-­insured”; they had bought insurance on the policies that they were indemnifying. Surplus carriers were also unregulated, so there was little that government officials could do to regulate them beyond an outright ban on their ability to do business. Beyond arson-­for-profit, the violation of state-­mandated health and safety codes, especially as these pertain to regulating fire-­risk, has also been construed as a form of white collar offending, encouraging fire. One of the best examples of this is the accidental fire at the Imperial Food Products Company in Hamlet, NC, where 25 deaths were blamed on locked exit doors and other health and safety violations (Wright et al. 1995; Aulette and Michalowski 1993). Similarly, Delibert (1984, 54) has argued that fires associated with the failure of landlords to maintain residential properties, whether the result of incendiary or accidental causes, should be construed as “arson-­by-neglect.” Substandard appliances and non-­functioning heating systems all increase fire-­risk because tenants are forced

Fire as a Social Problem   59 to use portable heaters to keep warm or use hot plates for cooking. Fire-­risk is further exacerbated when utilities are shut off, increasing the use of open flames for light and kerosene heaters. Furthermore, if owners abandon their buildings, this attracts vandals and squatters. Delibert’s (1984, 50) position is that negligent owners may be “held responsible for fire damages” in their properties “even if it can’t be shown who actually set the blaze.” Private individuals and government entities can sue an owner if it can be shown that their negligence resulted in an individual being harmed. Governments can also take criminal action against owners for failing to abate a “public nuisance” that endangered the public. However, as I will argue below and in subsequent chapters, municipal governments have often proven ineffective at protecting impoverished populations from health and safety code violations.

Public Safety Agencies and the Social Problem of Fire In terms of real world vulnerabilities, competing narratives on fire-­risk are not mutually exclusive. Property abandonment, for example, certainly exacerbates fire-­risk. At the same time, theories of what causes abandonment will necessarily influence policies on how to deter it. In America Burning, the National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control came to an extraordinary conclusion: the American fire service was largely responsible for the urban fire problem because it emphasized fire suppression (extinguishment) functions over those of prevention and investigation, i.e., figuring out what was causing fires in the first place. America Burning found that fire officials gave only “lip service” to the importance of prevention, spending only five cents of every public fire control dollar on it. The Commission recommended that local governments make prevention “at least equal to suppression” as a firefighting priority (National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control 1973, 2). As the nation’s fire problem became redefined as an arson problem, FEMA (1979) brought together key institutional stakeholders concerned with its control, especially fire and police officials, economic actors, and community-­based activists who had mobilized around the fire issue. FEMA identified the socio-­ economic foundations of urban arson and made recommendations for addressing these, including more citizen involvement in prevention efforts and insurance industry reforms. FEMA also identified institutional impediments to successful arson prosecution. Although the FEMA report seemed to present a united front to address arson, the fact was that stakeholders remained divided over theories of fire-­risk. Whereas public officials adhered to a view of urban fires that emphasized built-­to-burn factors, cycles of abandonment and anomie, activists stressed dynamics of deliberate disinvestment, real estate speculation, and white collar criminality. These differences had implications for the design and implementation of policies going forward.

60   Fire as a Social Problem Institutional Impediments to Arson Control In U.S. Senate hearings held in 1977, John Glenn (D-­Ohio) lambasted public officials for dismissing arson fraud as a “cost of doing business in the inner city.” He charged that fire and police officials “winked” at the occurrence of the problem, a thinly veiled reference to corrupt officials such as Massachusetts State Police lieutenant James DeFuria who colluded with white collar criminals in the burning of Boston’s Fenway (U.S. Senate 1977, 1). Despite revelations about arson-­for-profit in Boston and other cities, fire and police officials maintained that urban arson was mostly caused by problems of “street” deviance, especially vandalism and “spite-­revenge” motives. Furthermore, to the extent that arson-­for-profit was a problem, local officials reasoned, there was little that they could do about it because they lacked the time, resources, and skills to develop successful cases (Goetz 1997a; Brady 1983, 1982). Fire and police officials also did not view motive as important in deciding which arson investigations to pursue. What mattered was making arrests, and in this regard fire and police officials agreed that there were institutional impediments that stood in the way of investigating and successfully prosecuting arson (Clarke 2000; Goetz 1997a). Called the “most neglected crime on Earth,” the national clearance rate for arson during the 1970s hovered around 10 percent nationally, which was low, on average, compared with other offenses (Longmire et al. 1983, 359, 365).14 Part of the problem was structural. Criminal investigations typically begin with the police on the basis of a citizen complaint or some other discovery of wrongdoing (e.g., a murdered body). But arson investigations are usually initiated by fire officials who discover intentionally lit fires through “cause and origin” investigations. These occur after a fire has been suppressed and officials seek to determine the incident’s “cause of ignition.” If all accidental causes are ruled out, and if there is evidence that a fire has been deliberately set (e.g., multiple points of origin or indicators of flammable liquids), fire officials may seek to have an arson investigation initiated.15 The inter-­organizational nature of the fire-­arson investigation process led to “turf ” issues among local authorities. Arson was called an “orphan” within the context of law enforcement priorities, and fire officials complained that arson cases got short shrift from the police (Suchy 1976, 9; U.S. General Accounting Office 1978). For their part, police looked on arson as the province of fire departments and tended to give the crime less priority, at least in terms of taking the lead in an investigation. The fact was that fire officials often did have the legal authority to pursue arson crime on their own (i.e., as legally designated “fire marshals”), but they looked to the police as more skilled in conducting criminal investigations, if purely from the Constitutional standpoint (e.g., the search and seizure of evidence). Fire officials also did not see themselves as capable of facing the danger that could come from the pursuit and apprehension of offenders.

Fire as a Social Problem   61 Beyond turf issues there were additional legal and bureaucratic barriers to investigating and prosecuting arson. First, arson was not an FBI-­designated “Part I” offense, and was therefore not considered a “major” crime along with offenses such as murder, armed robbery, and rape (Longmire et al. 1983; Suchy 1976).16 Arson was instead classed along with a group of FBI-­designated “Part  II” offenses, which included prostitution, simple assault, gambling, drunkenness, and loitering. Because police departments measured their successes in terms of their effectiveness in reducing serious crimes, they prioritized Part I offenses, at least in terms of their assigning detectives to complete follow-­up investigations (Catalina 1979). Second, the nature of the arson offense itself made it difficult to catch perpetrators. Physical evidence was likely to go “up in smoke” during a fire or be tainted by firefighting operations. It is easiest for the police to make arrests in cases when a victim or eyewitness is able to provide a definitive identification of an assailant (Walker and Katz 2011; Reiss and Bordua 1967). With the exception of “spite-­revenge” arson (see above), such evidence was often lacking in arson cases (Jackson 1988), and especially fraud cases (see below). Because police departments judged their organizational effectiveness largely on the basis of their clearance (arrest) rates, offenses that were more difficult to clear—such as arson—got low priority (Alpert et al. 2001; Bayley 1994). The police maintained that catching the arsonist meant catching him or her with “match in hand,” i.e., in the actual act of setting the fire (Brady 1982). In other words, they argued, it was next to impossible. Third, the police argued that cause and origin investigations were often unreliable, hindering successful prosecutions. Moll’s 1974 (p. 10) work for the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration concluded that “many incendiary fires are mistakenly designated as due to ‘electrical,’ ‘smoking and matches,’ and other ‘common causes.’ ” A subsequent study by the Battelle Institute found that “many incendiary incidents are unintentionally mislabeled as suspicious, unknown or accidental origin” (Karchmer et al. 1981, 6). In 1984 the National Institute of Justice found that fire investigators were prone to attributing incident cause and motive “prematurely” without “sufficient consideration of other possibilities” (Hammett 1984, xvi). Police officials complained that fire investigators did not know how to lawfully seize evidence and rarely used forensic analysis. They also argued that investigative narratives were poorly written, making it difficult to determine whether a crime had taken place. Reforming the Investigative Process The FEMA (1979) report’s recommendations for improving arson investigation and prosecution processes focused largely on removing the legal and bureaucratic impediments to building successful cases. This included improving the skills of fire investigators and engendering better inter-­organizational relationships. To accomplish these goals, there would be a push to redesignate arson as a Part I crime, which the FBI agreed to do in 1979. This decision was later formalized

62   Fire as a Social Problem into the federal Anti-­Arson Act of 1982. The federal government also provided financial assistance for localities to send fire and police officials to the U.S. Fire Administration’s National Fire Academy in Virginia to receive expert training in cause and origin investigation and arson criminal investigation. The federal government also helped with the purchase of diagnostic equipment for local departments such as “gas chromatographs,” a portable mechanism for determining flammable liquids at fire scenes. As a data management remedy, the federal government would pay for grants to develop “arson information management systems” (AIMS), computerized databases to collect and analyze arson incident intelligence (U.S. Fire Administration, 1981). Finally, and perhaps the most significant of proposals, the federal government would spend millions of dollars on grants designed to pay for fire, police, and prosecuting attorneys to serve on inter-­ agency task forces in many of the nation’s larger cities. Task forces were viewed as a way to facilitate cooperation between the police and fire services so that they could work collectively on arson cases, often under the same roof and from the initiation point of the fire incident itself (Suchy 1976). By the end of the 1980s, the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration had supported the development of arson task forces in Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, Houston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Phoenix, Knoxville, and New Haven (U.S. Fire Administration 2004b). In Chapter 4, I elaborate on the task force concept and its use in the City of Hyde. The FEMA report also addressed ways in which local police and fire agencies could more successfully pursue arson-­for-profit cases. FEMA called for federal agencies such as the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF ), who had lawyers and accountants or staff skilled in complex fraud investigations, to cooperate with local authorities in cases where a profit motive was suspected as the reason behind a fire (Panneton 1985). Bringing in federal agencies also allowed for the prosecution of fraud as a criminal conspiracy under the “RICO” or Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act. Treating arson as a crime of collusion and fraud meant that there was less of an investigative emphasis on finding the person that actually lit a blaze. However, FEMA took for granted, as did local officials, that simply bringing in the federal government would solve the problem of arson-­for-profit, but this was not necessarily the case. Federal officials saw their role as one of assistance. Although they were willing to consult with local investigators on suspected fraud cases and help in the identification of criminal conspiracies, they left it to local officials to take the lead in investigations and do much of the legwork in collecting and presenting evidence.17 But local fire and police officials still lacked the time and training to put together arson-­for-profit cases, a situation that spoke to broader impediments to the identification and investigation of white collar offending within local law enforcement agencies. The White Collar Crime Problem My work (Goetz 1997a) as well as that of Williams (2006, 20) has observed that there is a procedural “class-­bias” in local policing agencies that favors the

Fire as a Social Problem   63 investigation of “street” offenses, such as murder or assault, versus “white collar” offenses such as fraud. Street crime investigations are typically prompted by the victim’s swearing out a criminal complaint. The police will then attempt to ascertain any physical evidence, e.g., a weapon, a bruised body, or property damage that confirms that a crime occurred, and after this, attempt to identify a suspect. This task is most likely to be accomplished, as I indicated earlier, when a victim (or victim’s intimates in the case of murder) has named an assailant or where there is other identifying information. In cases of arson, investigators seek to find the “torch” responsible for the act by talking to victims (if there are any) or any other witnesses. Once the suspect is apprehended, investigators can attempt to link him or her with the “scene of the crime” using physical evidence, witness testimony, and hopefully a suspect confession. However, the behavioral elements of arson-­for-profit are more like white collar crimes than street crimes. Susan Shapiro (1990, 346–347) has argued that white collar offenses are distinct from common street offenses in that “offending is collective, victimization subtle, offenses ongoing, culpability difficult to assign, conclusive evidence hard to amass.” Arson-­for-profit, for example, is a term that represents multiple criminal acts, including the felonious act of setting a fire and insurance fraud. Mortgage and real estate frauds are also likely to accompany arson-­for-profit in that these schemes may be used to artificially inflate property values, execute phony transactions, hide financial interests in a property, falsely assign financial interest, and evict tenants. Arson-­for-profit is also typically a collective act that involves a range of co-­conspirators playing distinct roles in setting up the crime (Jacobson and Kasinitz 1986; Brady 1984; Brady 1983; Conason and Newfield 1980). All of this adds up to white collar criminality being much more difficult to solve compared to common forms of street crime. White collar crime “scenes” do not produce the types of evidence that police officials rely on to build a criminal offense. As Jack Katz (1979, 446) has put it, rarely are there “smoking guns, busted locks, caches of drugs,” or the types of “concrete evidence that embody the crime.” Professional torches, for example, may be hired in arson-­for-profit scenarios to make an intentionally set fire look as if it was caused by accidental or unknown circumstances. If public fire investigators fall for such a hoax then there is no evidence to prove that a fire was a criminal act. Furthermore, the victims of arson-­for-profit, usually insurance companies or low-­income tenants, are often unaware or unable to show that they have been victimized by the crime. Such “social distance” between victims and assailants is common in white collar offenses, making it unlikely that victims will file criminal complaints (Katz 1979, 437). Most white collar crime investigations are initiated by state agencies. This was the case in Boston where the Massachusetts Attorney General took action to investigate suspicious fires in the Symphony Road area of the city only after community activists placed pressure on local legislators to do so (Brady 1982). The discovery of white collar criminality therefore requires a different investigative methodology than that used to prosecute common street crimes.

64   Fire as a Social Problem Detecting wrongdoing has less to do with placing an individual at a discrete crime scene and more to do with the examination of financial and legal “paper trails” that may contain evidence of collective and ongoing criminality (Pontell et al. 1994). The paper trail also allows for the mapping out of the relationships among potential co-­conspirators. In cases of arson-­for-profit, proving that a fire is of incendiary origin is less important than revealing the existence of a criminal network of actors conspiring to bring about this outcome. Determining the identity of those hiring a torch is more important than apprehending the torch themselves. Investigators must therefore spend a significant amount of time doing the “legwork” of collecting and analyzing public records and insurance documents, the latter of which may require a subpoena. Nevertheless, law enforcement agencies, and local police departments in particular, lack the “institutional capacity” to effectively prosecute white collar crimes (Pontell 1982, 137). The institutional impediments to solving white collar crimes meant that law enforcement could not be relied upon to effectively regulate arson-­for-profit. Instead, more would have to be done in the area of prevention, especially in connection to the urban housing market and how this influenced a community’s level of fire-­risk. The Community’s Push for Prevention Community activists supported the FEMA (1979) recommendations for enhancing investigative and prosecutorial efforts on the part of local fire and policing agencies, but they maintained that the urban arson problem could not be solved simply by “catching the crook and putting him behind bars.”18 The bulk of federal money going to combat urban arson was going to public safety agencies precisely for this purpose. A much smaller portion went to funding prevention priorities identified in the FEMA (1979) report, which were concerned with the deterrence of arson-­for-profit and hazardous property conditions that enhanced fire-­risk of all types. Community-­based organizations lobbied for federal funds to prevent arson and fires on both macro and micro levels. They pushed for legislation to end the practices of insurance and banking redlining that created disinvestment in urban communities. They also backed measures designed to “take the profit” out of arson such as getting state insurance commissioners to toughen insurance company underwriting standards to prevent over-­insurance, especially among the FAIR Plans (U.S. General Accounting Office 1978). Community groups lobbied for “right-­to-know” legislation that allowed tenants to access insurance information on the buildings in which they lived (Zangar 1979). Activists in Boston used lawsuits to restrict owners from converting low-­income properties to luxury use following a fire (Boston Globe 1981). Community groups also developed Arson Early Warning Systems (AEWS) that were designed to both detect and prevent neighborhood arsons and fires. Developed by Urban Educational Systems (UES) of Boston, a non-­profit organization that grew out of STOP, the AEWS was a computerized database that

Fire as a Social Problem   65 included the same kinds of public records that were used to detect the presence of arson-­for-profit in the Fenway. These included ownership deeds, property transfer records, sale prices, mortgage information, tax arrear statements, code violation citations, information about court injunctions or other legal actions against an owner or property, building permits and other information. These indicators, UES argued, allowed for the raising of “red flags” on whether certain properties were vulnerable to arson or other types of fire. Although the UES intended to market the AEWS to government agencies, it was primarily designed as a tool that community-­based organizations could use to protect themselves from fire and arson-­risks if the government was unwilling or unable to do so. In announcing the AEWS, for example, UES stated that “while the fire service approaches fire from the perspective of suppression, community-­based organizations frequently see arson as part of an overall housing problem.”19 They initially called the program the “Housing Early Warning System” and argued that it could be used as a tool for community-­based organizations to identify properties that were at risk to property deterioration generally, with fire being just one of a number of possible hazards. Nevertheless, UES opted to use the name “arson early warning system” because their funding came from the Fire Administration and also because arson was in the public eye as a key issue facing urban residential neighborhoods.20 People’s Firehouse, a community-­based organization that achieved national notoriety when it staged a “sit-­in” at a Brooklyn firehouse to prevent its closing, was also able to garner federal support. Fred Ringler, a community organizer representing People’s Firehouse, argued that neighborhood organizations needed funding to direct prevention efforts because these were not forthcoming from public agencies. Ringler argued that the “suppression orientation” and “paramilitary structures” of local fire departments made them averse to prevention as an organizational priority.21 When the City of New York argued that budget cuts made it impossible to increase money for prevention, Ringler chose not to fight this position. Instead he conceded it, and offered the assistance of community-­ based organizations themselves to act as “partners” with the city fire department and other code enforcement agencies to ensure the upkeep of local rental housing. With guidance from training manuals developed by UES to aid grassroots citizen efforts, People’s Firehouse developed its own “community tool library” that would be available to local residents interested in assessing fire-­risk in a particular building or neighborhood. People’s Firehouse would help facilitate a “Red Caps” program, a citizen’s patrol with an eye toward fire safety, reporting suspicious activities to the police department or evident fire hazards to the fire department. People’s Firehouse became a symbol of how ordinary citizens could be empowered to assure fire safety and housing standards in their own communities, and became a model for citizens in other communities around the country to mobilize around fire control issues. Together, Boston’s UES and People’s Firehouse formed an ancillary organization called the National Arson Prevention and Action Coalition (NAPAC) that attempted to institutionalize a strategy of

66   Fire as a Social Problem neighborhood-­based arson control. Part of their “kick-­off ” strategy was holding a joint summit with community-­based organizations and government organizations to formulate a kind of public–private partnership committed to fire prevention. Called the “Forums on Fire and Arson Prevention Partnerships” (hereafter “Forums”) they were held in both New York and San Francisco in 1985 and underwritten by the USFA and the Ford Foundation. The Forums were unique in that they placed fire officials and community groups together in the same room where they could discuss their definitions of the urban fire problem and formulate joint control and prevention strategies. What was most interesting about the Forums was the ways in which they confirmed long-­held suspicions that stakeholders had for one another. One of the most controversial attendees was a former fire marshal for the City of New York Fire Department named John Barracato, who had gone on to direct the arson and fraud unit at Aetna Casualty and Surety. He argued that fire service officials were “isolationist” when it came to investigating arson, and also stated that fire officials saw community members as “outsiders.” He recalled being told by his superiors in New York that he should not “converse or interact with any community-­based organization.” Barracato also argued that the occupational subculture in most fire departments did not allow for adequate fire prevention efforts because firefighters were mostly interested in suppression.22 Emmet Condon, then chief of San Francisco’s Fire Department who attended the Forum in San Francisco, bristled at Barracato’s claims.23 He argued that the United States had seen a steady decline in fire deaths over time and that this was linked directly with advances in fire prevention technologies. Condon was correct in his assertion, especially as this pertained to the use of smoke and heat detectors in residential properties (Ta et al. 2006). Condon also pointed out that the nation’s fire code standards were tougher than they had ever been in the wake of high-­rise tragedies such as the MGM Grand Casino fire in Las Vegas that killed 85 in 1980. Critics argued that the MGM “inferno” and incidents like it could be prevented with tougher safety codes and enforcement measures. For example, the MGM Grand had not been required to have fire sprinklers throughout the building, a lapse in fire safety standards applying to many other high-­rise structures throughout the United States (Franklin 1981). To rectify the matter, many states and localities began to require most of their new larger commercial projects to contain “life-­safety” fire and smoke deterrence systems (Vollmer 1988). These systems, featuring an intricate web of sprinklers, smoke and heat sensors, fans, and ducts to allow for proper venting, protected staircases and other safety mechanics, essentially became part of the fire suppression process itself, forcing an interface between new computerized technologies and century-­ old firefighting techniques (Craighead 2009). Condon argued that local fire prevention bureaus would be responsible for assuring the functioning of these systems. The failure to do so, he warned, would compromise the firefighting process itself. Therefore, to suggest that fire prevention was not a priority of local departments failed to recognize the intersections between effective prevention and effective suppression. Condon also rejected as “narrow” the charge that

Fire as a Social Problem   67 fire departments were unwilling to partner with the public, suggesting that fire departments were frequently involved in community-­based fire prevention efforts. These included “Learn Not To Burn,” a fire safety curriculum designed for K-­12 schoolchildren, the “Firehawks” program, a national initiative that teamed firefighters with juvenile fire setters, and a variety of other public service efforts encouraging the use of smoke detectors, the safe care of Christmas trees, and safe home-­heating and cooking practices. Condon’s comments about toughened fire codes, in particular, were correct insofar as they addressed new construction. But what activists were angry about had more to do with issues of lax enforcement than with whether there were adequate fire protection codes “on the books.” Mike Davis (1998, 99) has argued that 100 fatalities in low-­income tenement fires occurring in impoverished areas of Los Angeles between 1969 and 1993 could have been prevented “had slumlords been held to even minimal standards of building safety.” Flood (2010) has argued that cut-­backs in code enforcement and fire prevention activities, brought on by New York’s fiscal crisis, exacerbated the fire outbreaks in the Bronx and other areas of New York. Persistent code violations were also associated with fires and arson outbreaks in Boston and other cities (U.S. Senate 1977; Lima 1977). By offering their labor to help state officials with the code enforcement process, community activists were hoping to create a public–private partnership that would focus on code enforcement matters in lower-­income rental properties. However, fire officials rejected these efforts. The Insurance Question For many public officials, the answer to dealing with arson fraud had mostly to do with the willingness of the insurance industry to do something about it (Suchy 1976). Insurers stood to lose the most financially from arson, fire and police officials reasoned, so it was in their interest to regulate it. Yet, in the eyes of many public officials insurance companies appeared indifferent to arson. Rarely, they argued, would insurers approach them with suspicions about a particular owner or fire. Nor were insurers likely to approach local authorities in the interest of pressing criminal charges against policyholders who they thought had perpetrated arson. Public authorities also complained that insurance companies were unwilling to share policy information with them if they requested it (Brady 1982; U.S. Senate 1977). But to understand the role of the insurance industry in regulating fire means understanding more about how the insurance industry is structured and how it manages risk. What Americans know of as the “State Farms” or “Allstates” are basically indemnity companies that agree to underwrite exposures and process claims. But representing these companies are often independent insurance agents and brokers, adjusters, inspection bureaus, loss control experts, building contractors, and body shops. Each has their own relationship to an individual policyholder or loss. For example, agents want to sell policies and are less concerned about whether a loss occurs. Underwriters within the large indemnity companies,

68   Fire as a Social Problem of course, want losses kept to a minimum. Insurance adjustors, especially independent contractors, are often the most prone to fraud because they arrange settlements with policyholders, as was the case with the arson schemes in Boston and New York (Jacobson and Kasinitz 1986; Brady 1984; Conason and Newfield 1980). As for the complaint that companies never came forward with concerns about particular policyholders or fire incidents, insurance companies pointed out that they were not proxies for law enforcement. Providing information to the police voluntarily about a particular incident or conveying concerns about the honesty of a policyholder could amount to a violation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and left insurers open to lawsuits (U.S. General Accounting Office 1978; U.S. Senate 1977). If the police suspected arson fraud in connection with a particular fire incident or building owner then they would have to seek evidence to back up such suspicions through the execution of a subpoena that would enjoin companies to assist law enforcement. If insurance companies suspected a fraudulent loss then they could attempt to do something about it internally through the denial of a claim or filing civil charges against a policyholder. Some companies did maintain their own special investigations units to pursue these remedies, such as Aetna Life and Casualty indicated above. However, insurers looked to public authorities for cover before filing civil actions, i.e., criminal cases that had been filed in connection to arson or criminal fraud. On their own insurers were reluctant to deny a claim or pursue legal proceedings against an insured. One reason for this is that they feared “bad faith” lawsuits for breach of the insurance contract and the policyholder’s guarantee of indemnity upon a loss. Two, it was bad for business. No company wanted the reputation that they were reluctant to pay claims. Denying claims also hurt the independent agents or brokers that might have sold a policy to begin with, making them less willing to steer business to a particular indemnity company in the future. Beyond these bureaucratic issues, however, the reality was that most of the nation’s mainstream insurance companies—those that figured prominently in advertising and in suburban household markets—had little to lose from urban arson (Conason and Newfield 1980). They had divested themselves of urban neighborhoods during the 1960s, or maintained subsidiaries that were specifically designed to protect companies from high-­risk exposures through higher premiums or less coverage (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 1978). Others simply figured that any high-­risk business would come through the FAIR Plans. Therefore, few of the recommendations in the FEMA (1979) Report that pertained to reducing the economic risks to urban arson had a direct impact on insurance companies or their affiliates. Moreover, companies were not eligible for federal subsidies to carry out reforms unless these were done in cooperation with public safety agencies or community-­based organizations. Nevertheless, increasing public pressure on insurance companies to curb arson during the high fire incidence decades of the 1970s and 1980s meant that they needed to do something to show their commitment to reform. Some efforts

Fire as a Social Problem   69 were purely about public relations, such as the establishment of arson “hotlines” and the posting of “stop arson” billboards. Other efforts were more fundamental. For example, insurance companies helped to pass legislation in California and some other states that would immunize them from lawsuits if they shared information about a loss with fire officials and law enforcement authorities short of a subpoena (FEMA 1979). Insurers also took steps to stop fraud through the policy application/underwriting process. For example, the American Insurance Association (AIA), an industry trade group, announced the creation of a computerized database called the “Property Insurance Loss Register” (PILR) in the early 1980s, one of the first computerized databases that would allow competing companies to look at the loss history of applicants and deny coverage to those with suspect or numerous loss histories. The most important reforms involving the insurance industry in better regulating fires and arson occurred within the state FAIR Plans. The 1978 GAO report recommended that FAIR Plans could take rudimentary steps to guard against fraud, among them, verifying the prevailing market value of a neighborhood to guard against over-­insurance, and beefing up inspections to assure that structures were worthy of coverage. Many FAIR Plans adopted these reforms. There was also a push to allow FAIR Plans to impose stricter underwriting guidelines, allowing them to reject more applicants. This was a private form of public prevention, but it also reintroduced the problem of redlining (U.S. General Accounting Office 1978). Even with these reforms, surplus line carriers remained a problem, allowing those bent on fraud the opportunity to find a “mark.”

Post-­War: The Social Problem of Fire Since 1980 The threat of fire in the U.S. has declined substantially since the 1970s when measured as the frequency of distinct incidents. As noted earlier in Figure 3.1, there were about 1.3 million fires reported in 2015 compared with 3.3 million in 1977. Fatalities from fires have also declined. In 1977 there were an estimated 7,395 civilian deaths reported that resulted from fire (Levesque 2011, 5). By 2014 there were only 3,275 such deaths (Haynes 2015, 13). Overall fire death rates have also declined in the U.S, from 34.4 per million fatalities in 1979 to 12.4 by 2007, a reduction of almost two-­thirds (U.S. Fire Administration 2011, 2). Firefighter fatalities have also gone down in the U.S, from 157 in 1977 to just 67 in 2014 (U.S. Fire Administration, 2015, 4).24 The U.S. Fire Administration (2016) has argued that fire-­risk has been reduced because of more stringent regulations and fire-­resistant construction, as well as the increased use of technologies such as smoke alarms and sprinklers. However, fire-­safe technologies are more likely to reduce fire spread than to prevent combustibility from occurring in the first place. Moreover, the phenomenon of arson is relatively impervious to technical methods of control, i.e., fire sprinklers can be turned off. That fire frequency levels began to fall off in the 1980s likely reflects a mixture of the prevention measures put in place in response to the high fire rates

70   Fire as a Social Problem of the 1970s. The creation of arson task forces and better training for arson investigators, even though these reforms may have done little to address white collar crimes, likely suppressed the incidence of all fires simply because of greater attention to the fire problem. Indeed, arson clearance rates now hover around 20 percent nationally, about twice what they were in the 1970s (Campbell 2014, 11). Community mobilizations around neighborhood fire problems such as those staged by STOP and People’s Firehouse also heightened awareness of the social problem of fire and likely helped to reduce incident frequencies. Reforms to the FAIR Plans also undoubtedly took the profit out of arson for many would-­be offenders. But perhaps the most significant explanation for the reduction in the nation’s fire threat has to do with broader socio-­economic changes. American cities became increasingly gentrified and wealthy during the 1980s and 1990s (Smith 1996). Although fire, I argue, played a key role in bringing about this change, it is also true that fires diminish in frequency as neighborhoods become wealthier. Here I provide an overview of fire incidence and causation frequencies over the past four decades as a way to better understand the reduced prevalence of fire since the 1970s. First, I show that the historic fire incidence frequencies of the  1970s were largely urban phenomena as measured by declining building incidents throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Second, I look at fire causation patterns at four time points to see how these help explain reduced fire-­risk, with special attention to how 1999 changes in reporting criteria altered our understanding of the national fire experience. Third, I look more closely at arson as a driver of fire incidents during the 1970s, and as a key factor in driving urban fire rates today. Figure 3.325 tracks fire incidents by property type from 1977 to 2014. I use 1977 as the baseline because it is believed to be the year in which fire incident frequencies peaked in the United States (Haynes 2015, 11).26 Figure 3.3 shows that fires in “outside/other” locations, or those involving trees, brush, grass or flammable gas or vapors, were responsible for the most fires in any given year between 1977 and 2014. During the late 1970s, however, building fires (residential and non-­residential) were at historic levels, leading to the yearly decline in fire frequencies that marked the final decades of the twentieth century. Residential fires peaked at 734,000 in 1980 but then declined 48 percent to roughly 380,000 by the year 2000. Since 2000 there has been little change in residential incident frequencies. In 2014 there were 367,000 residential building fires, down only slightly from 2000. Figure 3.3 also shows that non-­ residential building fires declined from a peak of 374,000 in 1977 to 126,000 by 2000, a reduction of about 66 percent. In 2014 there were 127,000 non-­ residential incidents recorded, virtually unchanged from 2000. Vehicle incidents also declined from 1980 to 2000, although their rate of change was much less dramatic (only 23 percent) compared with residential and non-­residential building incidents. Outside/other fires actually trended up during the 1980s and 1990s, and their rates of occurrence have tended to be more erratic and random than those of building and vehicle incidents.

Fire as a Social Problem   71 1,200 Outdoor/Other Residential Vehicles Non-Residential

Fire Incidents (× 1,000)

1,000 800 600 400 200 0 1975

1980

1985

1990

1995 2000 Years

2005

2010

2015

2020

Figure 3.3  Fire Incidents in the United States by Property Type, 1977 to 2014. Source: National Fire Protection Association and United States Fire Administration.

The steady decline of building fires through the 1980s and 1990s indicates the extent to which the fire problem of the 1970s was primarily an urban problem. That non-­residential and residential building fires declined concurrently with one another would appear to cast doubt on the argument made by community activists that urban fires were largely an effect of changing housing market dynamics. However, there are three reasons to view trends in non-­residential and residential fires as connected. One is that before 1999, the USFA categorized all fires in vacant buildings or buildings under construction as non-­residential incidents for reporting purposes (U.S. Fire Administration 2004a, 109–110, 124). This was the case even if such buildings had formerly been residential or were being built for such purposes. The USFA’s categorization criteria prior to 1999 likely led to a serious undercounting of arson in residential properties. For example, in 1998 as many as 60 percent of all fires occurring in vacant properties were attributed to arson, and it is likely that many of these incidents were occurring in properties that had been, or were going to be, used for residential purposes (U.S. Fire Administration 2001, 123; also see Hall 1998, 36). A second reason that residential and non-­residential fire trends should be seen as connected is that changes in housing and commercial markets necessarily influence one another. A softening housing market may depress commercial activity, increasing the risk of arson fraud or fires linked to negligent building maintenance. There is a third reason for viewing residential and non-­residential fire rates as interrelated, and this has to do with the many mixed-­use properties in cities such as Boston, New York, and Chicago that have commercial space on the ground with residential

72   Fire as a Social Problem occupancies above. Although the general rule for estimating the origin of fire by property type is to determine where the source of ignition occurs, this determination is not always easy to make. Depending on the quality of an investigation and the extent of damage, it may be difficult to establish whether a fire spread from a building’s commercial area to its residential area or vice-­versa. Residential Fire Cause in Context Here I present national data on the leading known causes of residential fires at four distinct time points to gauge their relationship to the declining frequency of fire in the United States. I use time points because the USFA publishes fire cause data only for selected years (i.e., when an edition of Fire in the United States is published).27 The first point that I examine is 1978 when fires in the United States were at a 40-year high (Figure 3.1). The second is 1990 after ten years of declining building fire incident rates. The third point is 1998, a year before the USFA revamped its fire cause reporting criteria, moving from NFIRS 4.1 to NFIRS 5.0 in 1999. The fourth point is 2013, reflecting the early 2000s when NFIRS 5.0 was in use. The shift to NFIRS 5.0, I argue, has altered our understanding of the American fire experience especially as this pertains to the threat of arson. Before moving forward it is important to mention the USFA’s use of both known (or “raw”) and adjusted figures to measure fire cause. In many cases, fire investigators are not able to determine what caused a fire. To compensate for this uncertainty, the U.S. Fire Administration constructs probability estimates of known fire causes plus some portion of those incidents attributed to unknown causes.28 Here I report only the known figures as a way to illustrate the large proportion of fires in any given year where the causes are unknown. Figure 3.4 illustrates fire cause statistics for residential fires.29 In 1978 there were 707,000 such incidents. Of these, heating was listed as the single leading cause of fire (19 percent of the total) followed by cooking as number two (16 percent). “Incendiary/suspicious” fires and carelessly discarded smoking materials were recorded as the third leading cause of incidents (11 percent respectively). The fourth leading cause of fires in 1978—10 percent of the total—was attributed to what I am calling “additional sources of ignition,” or ASI. The ASI category includes faulty appliances, misuses of open flame, children playing with matches (before 1999), and a variety of other factors which, individually, rarely account for more than 5 percent of fire causes in a given year. Taken together, however, ASI factors can account for a significant percentage of fires occurring in a particular year. Electrical malfunctions were the fifth leading cause of residential fires in 1978, about 8 percent of the incidents. A full 25 percent of residential incidents were attributed to unknown causes. In 1990 there were 467,000 residential fires recorded, about a 34 percent reduction from 1978. ASI fires more than doubled as a proportion of all incidents for this time point (approximately 25 percent of the total) compared with 1978, replacing heating as the leading known cause of residential fires. Cooking

Fire as a Social Problem   73 45 40 35 Percentage

30 25 20 15 10 5 0

1978

1990 Cooking

Heating

Smoking

Electrical

1998

2013

Incendiary/Suspicious ASI

Unknown

Figure 3.4  Residential Fire Cause in the United States at Four Time Points.* Note * 2013 data reflects NFIRS 5.0 reporting criteria and the replacement of the “incendiary/suspicious” reporting category with “intentional” fires.

was the second leading known cause of residential fires in 1990 (19.6 percent of the total), followed by heating (15.8 percent) as the third. Incendiary/suspicious fires were the fourth leading cause of residential fires in 1990, about 12 percent of the total. Residential fires attributed to unknown causes were a smaller proportion of the total compared with 1978, about 16.7 percent of incidents. Residential fires declined 20 percent from 1990 to 1998, when 371,900 incidents were reported. ASI causes remained the leading cause of residential fires (24.6 percent of total), followed by cooking (20.4 percent) and incendiary­/­ suspicious and heating incidents, which were essentially tied at 10.8 and 10.6 percent respectively. Residential fires attributed to unknown causes increased to 20.4 percent in 1998 compared with 1990. Just over 380,000 residential fires were recorded for 2013, a slight increase over 1998 (although all fires were down overall). Cooking replaced ASI as the leading known cause of residential fires, listed as 42 percent of all incidents. ASI fires were now listed as the second leading cause of residential fires, or 20 percent of the total, followed by heating fires (11 percent) and electrical fires (5 percent). Intentional fires, the new category used to designate incendiary incidents under NFIRS 5.0, accounted for only 3.8 percent of known fire causes in 2013. This became the seventh leading cause of residential fires behind “other, unintentional or careless fires,” a new category introduced under NFIRS 5.0, and “open flame” (neither category is shown in Figure 3.4).30

74   Fire as a Social Problem The apparent lessening importance of incendiary causes of residential fires in 2013 was largely the result of changes in reporting criteria (Evarts 2012). When NFIRS 5.0 replaced NFIRS 4.1 in 1999, it created a new category called “intentional” fires, defined as the “deliberate misuse of a heat source, fires of an incendiary nature (arson), as well as other deliberate acts” (FEMA 2012, 1; Campbell 2014, vi). A key argument for introducing the intentional category was that incendiary incidents were too often viewed as tantamount to arson, which was not always the case. Fire-­setting because of mental disability, curiosity among young children, or “reckless fire-­play” might be called incendiary by the fire service although such acts do not necessarily constitute arson, which requires proof of criminal intent or the desire to do harm. NFIRS 5.0 therefore allowed fire officials to code for fire-­setting behavior that they believed was unintentional, especially when this involved young children or persons that were mentally impaired or under the influence of drugs or alcohol (Evarts 2012, 11–12, 52). The creation of the intentional category, however, also did away with the “suspicious” fire reporting option on the basis that it was not technically a cause of ignition. This decision was problematic, in that as many as a third of fires classified as incendiary/suspicious in any given year under NFIRS 4.1 might be attributed to suspicious circumstances alone (Hall 1998, 3).31 To compensate for removing the suspicious fire category, the USFA introduced a reporting option called “investigation with arson module” (later called “cause under investigation”) to indicate an inquiry that is ongoing. However, U.S. Fire Administration data indicates that the under investigation designation constitutes less than 1 percent of residential and non-­residential incidents in any given year (U.S. Fire Administration 2009a, 22; U.S. Fire Administration 2016). Moreover, the “investigation with arson module” coding category is optional under NFIRS 5.0 (Campbell 2014, 2). The impact of NFIRS 5.0 is especially pronounced when examining fire cause statistics for non-­residential properties. Between 1978 and 1999 incendiary/suspicious fires were listed as the single leading cause of non-­residential fires—20 to 25 percent of such incidents (U.S. Fire Administration 2001; U.S. Fire Administration 1982). As noted earlier, it is assumed that some of these incidents involved residential occupancies given that all vacant/under construction fires were designated as non-­residential until 1999. Under NFIRS 5.0, “intentional” fires, including incendiary fires, dropped to just 6.3 percent of the total in 2013, the second leading cause of non-­residential fires in that year. After the introduction of NFIRS 5.0, cooking emerged as the leading cause of non-­residential fires in 2013, or 19 percent of the total—more than doubling from what it had been in 1998, or 8 percent of the total.32 The proportion of unknown fire incidents in non-­residential properties also increased to 35 percent of the total in 2013 compared with 22.6 percent in 1998. Again, increases in the proportion of unknown cause fires were likely the result of the doing away of the suspicious incident designation under NFIRS 5.0 (Evarts 2012). Three key conclusions may be drawn from the data on fire causes. First, smoking has declined steadily as a cause of residential fires since 1978, probably

Fire as a Social Problem   75 as a response to the declining prevalence of smoking in the American population. Smoking still, however, remains the second leading cause of residential fire fatalities (U.S. Fire Administration 2016, 56). Two, in any given year a significant percentage of residential fires are attributed to unknown causes. A sizable portion of these are likely incendiary in that those perpetrating arson-­for-profit are the most likely to create conditions making it difficult for investigators to determine the cause. Three, the introduction of NFIRS 5.0 has altered our understanding of what causes residential fires. Until 1998 the known leading causes of residential incidents, in varying chronology, were (what I have labeled) ASI or “alternative sources of ignition” fires (e.g., faulty appliance, misuses of open flame, etc.), cooking, heating, and incendiary/suspicious acts. After 1999 and the introduction of NFIRS 5.0 this cause trajectory shifted. Cooking emerged as the dominant cause of residential fires—over 40 percent—with ASI fires trailing far behind as the second leading cause and heating as the third. Incendiary causes are now considered a relatively unimportant cause of residential fires proportionally speaking, although they remain a leading cause of fire deaths (U.S. Fire Administration 2016, 56). Caution must nevertheless be exercised when interpreting the American fire experience under NFIRS 5.0. Although the U.S. Fire Administration revamped NFIRS to better refine its reporting criteria, the removal of the suspicious reporting category may have created a situation where it is more difficult to track arson. Indeed, some cities, such as Detroit, have continued to use the suspicious designation to better estimate the prevalence of arson (Kurth 2015a). John Hall (2007, 3), an analyst for the NFPA, has argued for the reinstatement of the suspicious fire category, arguing that fires of a suspicious nature indicate the possibility of arson and that it is misleading to record such incidents as anything else. Indeed, the NFPA has diverged with the U.S. Fire Administration over the prevalence of intentional incidents, continuing to list them as the third leading cause of structural fires, on average, for the years 2009–2013.33 There also remains the issue of how to interpret the importance of cooking as a leading cause of all structural fires. Cooking has always been a leading cause of residential fires, but there is no good explanation for why such incidents increased from 20 to 40 percent of total residential incidents between 1998 and 2013. Moreover, there is no clear explanation for why cooking fires and incendiary/­suspicious incidents flip-­flopped with one another between 1998 and 2013 as the leading cause of non-­residential fires. In 2007 and 2013, only 6 to 7 percent of non-­ residential fires were attributed to incendiary acts, but 20 percent were linked to such causes a decade earlier. Only 8 percent of all non-­residential fires in 1998 were attributed to cooking, but that proportion more than doubled by 2013. These significant shifts can only be explained by changes in reporting criteria. Arson Then and Now Figure 3.534 tracks the decline of incendiary and suspicious fires nationally from 1980 through 2011. I use 1980 because it is the first year for which reliable year

76   Fire as a Social Problem 700 Outside/Other Fires Structural Fires Vehicle Fires

Incidents (× 1,000)

600 500 400 300 200 100 0 1975

1980

1985

1990

1995 Years

2000

2005

2010

2015

Figure 3.5 Incendiary/Suspicious Fire Incidents in the United States by Property Type, 1980 to 2011 (Intentional after 1999). Source: National Fire Protection Association and United States Fire Administration.

to year frequency rates for all property categories were available. Moreover, the incident data reported here are based on adjusted figures; i.e., raw figures plus a probability estimate based on a portion of unknown causes (see Hall 1998). These data show that incendiary/suspicious fires in structures declined the most between 1980 and 1998, by about 57 percent (i.e., from 201,200 to 86,000 incidents). These figures correspond to a reduction in the rate of incendiary/suspicious incidents in structures for the same period, from 88.5 incidents per 100,000 in 1980 to 37.2 per 100,000 in 1997 (Hall 1998, 12). This rate of decline more-­or-less corresponds to the reduction in known incendiary/suspicious structural incidents from their peak in 1977 to 1997.35 Outside/other incendiary/­ suspicious incidents also declined by 50 percent during the period 1980 to 1998, although as noted earlier, many of these may also be urban in nature and associated with structure fires (i.e., fire in trash receptacles or in vacant lots that eventually spread to buildings). Incendiary and suspicious fires in vehicles declined only 12 percent from 1980 to 1998. The apparent drop-­off in arson in 1999 was largely an artifact of changes in NFIRS reporting criteria (Campbell 2014, 2). Still, intentional fires—as a measure of incendiarism—have continued to decline in real terms since 2000. In 2011 there were just 48,800 intentional incidents, down 21 percent from 1999 when NFIRS 5.0 was first implemented. Fires from accidental causes also declined substantially from 1980 to 1999, by about 50 percent. However, tracking the decline in all structural incidents by incendiary/suspicious versus accidental causes over five-­year increments between 1980 and 199836 illustrates the extent to which the urban fire problem of

Fire as a Social Problem   77 the 1970s was caused by arson. Between 1980 and 1984 incendiary/suspicious fires declined 32 percent, from 201,000 to 136,000 incidents. By contrast, accidental fires declined only 18 percent between 1980 and 1984, from roughly 864,000 to 712,000 incidents (see Figure 3.6).37 For the later periods of 1985–1989, 1990–1994, and 1995–1998 there was little distinction between incendiary/suspicious and accidental fire incidents in terms of their yearly percentage decline. For the period between 1999 and 2014, not included in Figure 3.6, intentional fires also declined at a faster pace compared to fires from accidental causes. Accidental fires declined by only 3.4 percent over this period whereas intentional incidents, noted above, declined by 21 percent. However, this differential may also be explained by changing reporting criteria under NFIRS 5.0, i.e., the diminishing importance of intentionally set fires as a leading cause of structural incidents, in particular. Although arson has declined in overall frequency, it continues to pose a threat to the American public. This is especially the case in the urban context. Arson rates are highest in cities with populations of over 250,000 persons, with about 29.6 incidents per 100,000. This compares to about 10.2 arsons per 100,000 in suburban locations, defined as places with 10,000 to 50,000 persons.38 Intentional incidents also remain one of the three leading causes of residential incidents according to the NFPA, and most intentional structure fires occur in residential properties (Campbell 2014, 5). According to a special U.S. Fire Administration publication done on arson in 2009, incendiary fires are still responsible for the most civilian fire deaths in any given year, about 28 percent Years 0

1980–1984

1985–1989

1990–1994

1995–1999

–5

Percentage

–10 –15 –20 –25 –30 –35

Incendiary/Suspicious Accidental

Figure 3.6 Changes in Incendiary/Suspicious versus Accidental Fire Causes in Structures at Five-Year Intervals in the United States, 1980 to 1988. Source: National Fire Association and United States Fire Administration.

78   Fire as a Social Problem of the total, when all property types are considered. Arson remains the leading cause of property damage attributed to fire (U.S. Fire Administration 2009b, 2). Arson also remains an important barometer of changing socio-­economic circumstances. Nowhere is the threat of arson more palpable than in Detroit, which has the highest incidence rate of any large American city. Between 2010 and mid-­2013, 9,000 suspicious fires occurred in Detroit, decimating entire neighborhoods and killing 17 persons (Kurth 2015b). The fire outbreaks in Detroit have brought about competing views of cause, reminiscent of the debates that grew out of the 1970s. Much of the city’s fire problem has been explained using the abandonment/anomie narrative. LeDuff (2014, 49) conveys the view of a firefighter in Detroit who blames many of the city’s arson incidents on residents looking for a form of entertainment: “In Detroit it’s so fucking poor that fire is cheaper than a movie,” the firefighter exclaims! Many fires are also blamed on scrappers who strip buildings of valuable materials and then set them ablaze, on residents’ misuse of fire for heat or cooking after utilities have been cut off or no longer work, and on squatters. Detroit residents have also been known to light fires as an act of vigilantism, burning properties so that they cannot be colonized by drug traffickers or to hasten their demolition (Kinder 2014).39 These explanations are not without merit. Detroit is a community beset by abandonment—of population, of household, and of city services—and as I have argued throughout this chapter, abandonment and fires are related. At the same time, roughly half of Detroit’s “torched” (deliberately set) fires were in occupied homes, and the economic foundations of arson are as much about deliberate forms of disinvestment and white collar criminality as they are about the inevitability of decline. In 2013 a group of men living in the suburbs outside Detroit were found guilty of insurance fraud in connection with numerous fires that had occurred in the city. Initially blamed on broader problems of housing abandonment and deviants running wild, the event led one frustrated journalist to argue that Detroit’s many fires were also the result of wealthy suburbanites seeking to profit from the city’s poor residents and crumbling infrastructure (Dawsey 2013). Some have also blamed the city’s many arsons on renters’ insurance scams, where tenants are in cahoots with the landlords who may be listed as loss payees on policies (Kurth 2015b).40 A special report by Loveland Technologies also found that tax-­ foreclosed residential properties were more likely to burn in Detroit than other residential properties during 2015, suggesting a clear link between Detroit’s fires and economic circumstances.41 The current links between economic motives and arson are not limited to Detroit. Corrigan and Siegfried (2011, 5) have argued that fluctuating property values (especially those going downward) are “highly correlated with arson,” as are high mortgage interest rates. This was especially the case in response to the sub-­prime mortgage crisis and accompanying Great Recession, which lasted from roughly 2007–2011. The U.S. Fire Administration (2009b, 7–8) also drew a link between the sub-­prime mortgage crisis and arson because of a proliferation of abandoned and vacant properties; arson is responsible for as many as 41 percent of fires in vacant and abandoned structures (FEMA 2012, 1; Flynn

Fire as a Social Problem   79 2009). Indeed, U.S. cities with the highest arson rates were also those hit hard by the nation’s mortgage crisis and resulting vacancies, including Flint, Toledo, Buffalo, and Cleveland.42 The U.S. Fire Administration (2009a) has also connected arson to “house-­flipping” schemes where speculators purchase homes in poor condition, or in foreclosure, ostensibly to renovate, but then burn them for profit. Finally, as was indicated earlier, arson-­for-profit can also be “upscale” in nature. Jacobson (2006) argued that a rash of Brooklyn fires since the early 2000s were tied to the borough’s gentrification. Tenants and housing activists in San Francisco’s Mission District have charged that gentrification and surging rental rates have prompted landlords to use fire as a tool to forcibly evict tenants from rent-­controlled units (Carpenter et al. 2015). Since 2012, 130 low-­income Mission tenants have been displaced as the result of 12 separate residential fires. Assessing the nation’s arson problem continues to be difficult, too, because of continuing problems with the investigative process. In Detroit, for example, only one-­third of all fires are even investigated because of budget cuts and the enormity of the city’s fire problem (Kurth 2015b). Also, in Detroit as in other cities, the fire investigative process is hindered by firefighters not wanting to do the job. “Arson investigators trade the camaraderie of the firehouse for the quiet of cubicles,” and the job is considered tedious by firefighting standards, requiring “digging through charred debris to make sense out of chaos” (Kurth and Aguilar 2015). In San Francisco, declining fire rates led to the city’s arson unit being cut from eleven to four investigators, leading to a backlog of uncompleted investigations and public complaints about understaffing (Carpenter et al. 2015; Wenus 2015). Furthermore, although the quality of fire investigations in the United States improved substantially during the 1980s with increased training and the creation of inter-­organizational task forces, there is evidence of slippage. John Lentini (2012, 2) has concluded that it is still the case that “the fire investigation profession has within its ranks a large number of individuals who don’t know what they’re doing.” Much of the problem, he has argued, is that public fire investigators are not formally trained in chemistry or fire science but are rather firefighters that learn “on the job” (Chapter 4, this volume). Recently fire investigators have also come in for criticism for exhibiting a “cognitive bias” in their approach to fire cause determinations, relying more on subjective versus scientific interpretations of physical evidence (Bieber 2012). For example, public fire investigators have traditionally interpreted “alligatoring” burn patterns on wood, which appear as a deeply cut and rounded char, as evidence of a fast-­moving fire and therefore the presence of accelerants used in the act of arson. Critics argue, however, that alligatoring is just as often an indication of “flashover,” a natural explosion that occurs when flame reaches a certain temperature, and that only chemical testing—rather than the appearance of wood—can be used to accurately determine the presence of accelerants at a fire scene (Herrera 2003). Finally, there is the problem of assessing what causes arson fires, particularly as this involves economic motives. Arson-­for-profit was blamed for about 16  percent of all arsons before the implementation of NFIRS 5.0 (U.S. Fire Administration 2004b, ii). After NFIRS 5.0 came into use, however, estimates of

80   Fire as a Social Problem arson-­for-profit diminished statistically to only about 5 percent of all intentional incidents (Flynn 2009, 22). An examination of national clearance rates does little to better estimate the motives behind arson. Although clearance rates have about doubled from what they were 40 years ago (see above), we still have no definitive knowledge of 80 percent of the incidents occurring each year. Moreover, as noted earlier, clearance rates say as much about bureaucratic expediency as they do about the universe of motives behind a particular crime. In short, they reflect those crimes that are easiest to solve (make an arrest) because of a victim’s identification of a witness or other “case structural” factors (Walker and Katz 2011, 273; Reiss and Bordua 1967). Fire officials continue to note that mischief and spite-­revenge motives are behind the lion’s share of arson fires, but it is also true that spite-­revenge arsons are easiest to solve and therefore get more attention from investigators. A higher likelihood of clearing spite-­revenge arsons, however, does not mean that they represent the universe of cases that occur in a community.

The Continuing Problem of Regulating Fires Although the prevalence of fire has declined in the United States over the past 40 years, the U.S. Fire Administration (2009a, 31) has reported that America’s fire casualty rate remains “2 to 2½ times” that of several European nations, and at least “20 percent higher than many other nations.” Global fire data indicate that the United States still has among the highest incident rates for structural fires (i.e., residential and non-­residential buildings). In its annual report on worldwide fire data, the Center for Fire Statistics (CTIF ) found that the U.S. tied with France with 2.1 structural and vehicle fire incidents per 1,000 residents, the highest rate among 21 nations (Brushlinsky et al. 2015).43 But the real story of America’s fire problem is unequal risk. In a special report entitled Socio-­Economic Factors and the Incidence of Fire, the federal government found that “virtually every study of socio-­economic characteristics has shown that lower levels of income are either directly or indirectly tied to an increased risk of fire” (U.S. Fire Administration 1997, 2, 11–14). With echoes of America Burning, the report argued that low-­income persons are more at-­risk to fire because they live in the “oldest and most run-­down” portions of cities where there are overloaded and unsafe electrical systems. Heating mishaps are common because poorer residents attempt to compensate for a building’s inadequate heating system by resorting to “stop-­gap” measures such as space heaters. Property abandonment, resulting from disinvestment, also creates a “self-­fulfilling prophecy” leading to fire in poorer neighborhoods because abandonment leads to vacancies and vacancies attract fires (also see Jennings 1999). Increased abandonment and other problems of neighborhood deterioration, the Fire Administration emphasized, also makes poor residents more at-­risk to being victimized by arson. A more recent study by FEMA (2013b, 4) confirmed the relationship between income and fire. It found that “poorer population groups have the highest risk of

Fire as a Social Problem   81 fire injury or death, while the wealthiest have the lowest.” This is especially the case for African-­Americans. The NFPA (Ahrens 2014, 20, 22) found that for the period 2003–2007, African-­Americans faced twice the risk of dying in residential fires, or 16.3 fatalities per one million persons, compared with the general population whose fire fatality risk was only 8.4 per million. Whites had an even lower chance of dying in a fire with 7.3 fatalities per million. The fire fatality risk of African-­Americans was even greater for the elderly and young for the period 2003–2007. African-­Americans aged 65 and older had a residential fire death rate of 56.3 deaths per million compared with 17.7 per million for whites aged 65 and older. African-­American children aged 14 years and younger had a fire death rate of 14.6 per million compared with 4.3 per million for whites aged 14 years and younger. Using 2013 data, FEMA (2013a, 5) has concluded that there has been a narrowing of the fire-­risk gap between African-­Americans and the rest of the population from 15.9 deaths per million to 11 deaths per million respectively. However, some of this shift may be attributed to reporting criteria. For example, Ahrens’ (2014) study of race and fire-­risk included separate categories of “unclassified race” and “multi-­racial,” meaning that the distinction between African-­Americans and whites was more clearly drawn. FEMA does not make such a distinction in its analysis of race and fire rates. One of the best sociological analyses of race and fire-­risk was published by Hannon and Shai (2003). Using data from the 1990 census and Centers for Disease Control for 199 metropolitan (i.e., urban) counties, the authors found that African-­Americans were three times more likely to die in residential fires compared to whites (129). Drawing on William J. Wilson’s The Truly Disadvantaged (1987), Hannon and Shai argue African-­Americans are at a greater risk to fire not simply because they tend to live in lower-­income areas, but also because of problems of housing segregation, social isolation, poorer housing conditions, and lower levels of community safety. Still, competing narratives for explaining the links between social inequality and fire remain. Although the U.S. Fire Administration’s Socio-­Economic Factors and the Incidence of Fire found that unequal fire-­risk was clearly related to economic disinvestment, the quality of housing stock, and racial segregation, it also argued that “household” and “individual” variables were to blame for the greater likelihood of fires in poorer communities. These variables included a larger proportion of single-­parent households, the decreased supervision of teens, higher levels of careless smoking incidents, especially among the indigent, higher rates of social pathology among the poor such as juvenile fire-­setting, less attentive housing upkeep by renters, a lack of smoke detectors, and a failure of those with lower education levels to “grasp the full import of public fire safety education measures” (U.S. Fire Administration 1997, 18–24). In the end, such explanations would seem to deflect the state’s responsibility for protecting the social rights of citizens, i.e., the right to be protected from harm. What the fire outbreaks of the 1970s showed is that lower-­income populations are victims of conditions well beyond their control that make them more likely to suffer fires and their effects. Not all Americans have equal access to fire

82   Fire as a Social Problem control technologies. Newer and remodeled buildings will be fitted with up-­todate protective systems and be constructed with more fire-­resistant materials, but this is unlikely to be the case in deteriorated structures. Furthermore, even to the extent that fire prevention technologies are present, problems of upkeep and enforcement may be insufficient. “Hard-­wired” heat and smoke detectors, i.e., those that are tied into a building’s electrical grid and that tenants have no role in installing, may be absent or defective. There may also be problems of overcrowding (Hannon and Shai 2003; Goetz 1997b). Finally, arson fires are unlikely to be affected by fire-­safe technologies because offenders may use flammable liquids or disable prevention systems to generate combustion. Therefore, any discussion of America’s fire rates must also consider the ways in which fires are associated with unequal risk beyond technical considerations. The declining prevalence of fires in the United States over the past four decades has proven to be a mixed blessing for local fire departments. Firefighting is dangerous work, and fewer fires mean fewer casualties. At the same time, declining tax revenues on the local level have meant less money for urban fire departments (Miller and Hokenstad 2014). This has meant firefighter lay-­offs and the closing of firehouses, which undermines morale and strains the quality of service as fewer personnel are available to handle community demands (Flood 2010). This is the case even as the workload on local fire agencies has increased over the past four decades, but for non-­fire emergencies and other community needs, especially emergency medical services (EMS) and concerns about hazardous materials (Marrs 1996). In 1980, the nation’s fire agencies responded to about three million fire emergencies out of 10.8 million calls—about one-­third of the total. By 2013, local fire agencies were responding to three times as many calls, 31.6 million in total, but only 1.24 million of these were for fires, about 4 percent of the total (Keisling 2015)! The question of how the state responds to public safety concerns will become even more crucial in coming decades as communities turn to neo-­liberal, market­based solutions for dealing with emergency services and other regulatory activities (see Kinder 2014). In some communities, local leaders have been experimenting with fee-­based services and privatizing public goods and services, including fire protection and code enforcement (Lester and Kraus 2016; Ivory et al. 2016). The use of profit-­based and cost-­saving models of public protection casts doubt over whether those with the greatest need are adequately served. As I will show in the next chapter, some types of code enforcement are revenue generating (e.g., new construction) but others are not, such as the use of routine “maintenance” inspections to ensure adequate health and safety standards, especially in lower-­income rental properties. This may have the effect of jurisdictions prioritizing more lucrative mechanisms of code enforcement over others. In the next chapter I will look more closely at the ways in which government has shaped and reshaped the social problem of fire in the United States. Returning to the theoretical theme introduced earlier in this book, I go “inside the state” to look at dynamics of institutional selectivity and its impacts on social problems and inequality.

Fire as a Social Problem   83

Notes   1 Established in 1896, the NFPA’s primary mission has been the development of fire safety codes and standards for use by government and business, but over the decades it has also produced an extensive research and publication arm. Historically, NFPA non-­members had to purchase the Association’s publications or go to their library in Massachusetts to gain access to them. This has largely changed, however, with the advent of the internet. Now, many NFPA publications are accessible online. See the NFPA’s website at www.nfpa.org/   2 See U.S. Public Law 93–498.   3 Unlike the UCR, Fire in the United States is not produced annually. There have been 17 editions since its first publication in 1978, and there is no consistency as to how often publications come out. Levels of detail also vary in each report.   4 Still, there may be discrepancies between NFPA survey findings and NFIRS data, although these have been minimized in recent years as the agencies work together to provide an accurate accounting of the nation’s fire problem. See U.S. Fire Administration (2016) and Ahrens (2016). NFIRS also incorporates data from other government agencies such as the National Center for Health Statistics (i.e., on fire mortalities).   5 Data for Figure 3.1 come from Fire in the United States published by the USFA in 1993 (8th edition), 2001 (12th edition), 2007 (14th edition), 2009 (15th edition) and 2016 (17th edition). Figures are also from the NFPA (Haynes 2015) for the years 1977 to 1982 and 2014—the last year of published data at the time of this publication. NFPA figures are used for the period 1977 to 1982 because NFIRS data was less reliable during these years, incorporating only a select number of states (see U.S. Fire Administration 2016, 9).   6 The U.S. Fire Administration (1993, 185–187) reported outside and other fires as one category until 1990, after which they reported them separately. For simplification purposes, however, I have continued to report these categories as one.   7 The U.S. Fire Administration (2016, 40, 47) defines residential properties as private dwellings, hotels and motels, residential hotels, dormitories, assisted living facilities, and half-­way houses. Non-­residential properties are those used for commercial, manufacturing, governmental, public assembly or institutional purposes such as hospitals, prisons, and nursing homes. Non-­residential structures also include all vacant structures and those under construction before 1999 (U.S. Fire Administration 2004a). Vehicles or “mobile property” includes cars, boats, railroad engines and cars, and heavy equipment.   8 The exceptions to this rule are large-­scale firestorms such as the one that occurred in Oakland, CA, in 1991, destroying many homes.   9 “Redlining” refers to financial institutions drawing “red-­lines” around certain areas within which they would not invest. See Greenwald (1978). 10 Part I crimes are designated by the FBI to be the most serious violent and property offenses, including murder and non-­negligent manslaughter, armed robbery, forcible rape, aggravated assault, grand larceny, auto theft, and burglary. See Crime in the United States, published annually by the FBI. 11 Boudreau et al. (1977) provide percentages but not necessarily all annual figures on which percentages are based. 12 My definition of white collar crime is consistent with Sutherland’s (1983, 7) definition as “a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation.” My use of the term also assumes Schrager and Short’s (1978, 412) observation that white collar crime (what they call “organizational crime”) is often collective in nature and may occur within the context of an organization’s “normative” goals (i.e., otherwise legitimate business activities). White collar crime, Schrager and Short note, results in not only economic consequences but can result in physical harm, as I assert in the case of arson-­for-profit.

84   Fire as a Social Problem 13 Moynihan became a U.S. senator in 1976 but was best known as the author of the 1965 “Moynihan Report,” formally known as The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, U.S Department of Labor. 14 Clearance rates are defined as the “ratio of crimes solved to the number of crimes reported to the police” (Bayley 1994, 7). “Crimes solved” (i.e., cleared) does not designate a conviction but rather that an arrest has occurred, charges have been filed and a case has been turned over to a prosecutor. Clearances can also occur because of “exceptional” means, meaning that an arrest cannot or has not taken place. This may be because of the death of the suspect or other reasons. For more elaboration on definitions of clearance rates see the 2014 Uniform Crime Reports. Accessed June 5, 2016 from www.fbi.gov/about-­us/cjis/ucr/crime-­in-the-­u.s/2014/crime-­in-the-­u.s.-2014/ offenses-­known-to-­law-enforcement/clearances/main 15 As noted earlier in this chapter, not all intentionally lit fires are considered arson from the legal standpoint. 16 See endnote 10. 17 This discussion is based on my own experiences working with the FBI on behalf of the Hyde Arson Task Force. See Chapter 4. 18 Taken from David Scondras’ testimony before the U.S. Senate (1977, 203). 19 From Proceedings on the Forums on Fire and Arson Prevention Partnerships co-­ organized by Urban Educational Systems and held in San Francisco and New York, January 18 and 25, 1985. Unpublished manuscript. 20 UES eventually renamed the AEWS the “Comprehensive Arson Prevention and Enforcement System” (CAPES). 21 Letter from Fred Ringler, People’s Firehouse, to James Lescault, Urban Educational Systems, December 30, 1985, on convening the Fire and Arson Prevention Partnerships conferences held in New York and San Francisco, January 18 and 25, 1985. 22 Letter from John Barracato, Aetna Life and Casualty, to James Lescault, Urban Educational Systems on convening of Fire and Arson Prevention Partnerships conference held in New York, January 18, 1985. 23 Letter from Emmet Condon, San Francisco Fire Department, to James Lescault of Urban Educational Systems, November 27, 1985, on the convening of the Fire and Arson Prevention Partnerships conference held in San Francisco on January 25, 1985. 24 Neither the civilian nor firefighter fatalities reported here include the 9–11 attacks. Firefighter deaths counted are those occurring “in the line of duty,” which includes not only the act of firefighting itself but also traffic accidents and health-­related events, e.g., heart attacks. Firefighter figures also do not include the inclusion of “Hometown Hero” deaths, included after 2003. If such figures are included then the total number of firefighter fatalities for 2014 increases to 91. See U.S. Fire Administration (2015, 2). 25 Data for Figure 3.3 are from Fire in the United States published by the USFA in 1993 (8th edition), 2001 (12th edition), 2007 (14th edition), 2009 (15th edition) and 2016 (17th edition). Data on residential and non-­residential fires (calculated by subtracting residential fires from all structure fires) for the years 1977–1982 are from NFPA statistics on “Home Fires,” see www.nfpa.org/research/reports-­and-statistics/fires-­byproperty-­type/residential/home-­fires, and “Structure Fires” www.nfpa.org/research/ reports-­and-statistics/fires-­in-the-­us/overall-­fire-problem/structure-­fires. Data for 2014 taken from Haynes (2015, 40–44). Baseline data for vehicle fires are available only from 1978, and for outside/other fires from 1983. Non-­residential incidents include all vacant properties or properties under construction until 1999, even if those properties were used for residential purposes or intended to be used for such purposes. 26 See earlier discussion on the development of the USFA’s NFIRS data program. 27 The USFA did publish annual fire cause data from 1983 to 2001, but these years do not reflect the differences between the 1970s and the present. 28 According to the U.S. Fire Administration (2016, 19) adjusted cause figures are calculated by “distributing the fires for which the data are unknown in the same proportion

Fire as a Social Problem   85 as the fires for which the data are known.” Proportions of unknown causes added to incendiary/suspicious categories are calculated by taking the percentage of all known fires for a given year and dividing that figure by the percentage of known incendiary/ suspicious incidents. Boudreau et al. (1977) reported on arson trends in the 1970s using both known causes and adjusted rates, but they do not provide annual incident frequencies. 29 Data for Figure 3.4 are from U.S. Fire Administration (1982, 15), U.S. Fire Administration (1993, 117), U.S. Fire Administration (2001, 60) and U.S. Fire Administration (2016, 56). 30 Fire cause data for 2007, not shown in Figure 3.4, more-­or-less follow the same shift in cause trajectory as the data for 2013. In 2007, intentional fires slipped to the seventh leading cause of fire just after “open flame” (See U.S. Fire Administration 2009a, 52). The 2007 data further indicate how the shift from NFIRS 4.1 to NFIRS 5.0 has altered our understanding of the national fire experience. 31 Hall (1998, 32) reports that of 78,500 fires reported in 1997 as incendiary/suspicious, 26,500, or 34 percent, were determined to be suspicious. 32 The impact of NFIRS 5.0 was also apparent in 2007 (U.S. Fire Administration 2009a, 54). For this year 7.4 percent of non-­residential fires were attributed to intentional causes, the second leading cause behind cooking, or 14.7 percent of incidents. 33 See U.S. Home Structure Fires Fact Sheet published by the NFPA, derived from Ahrens (2015). 34 Data for Figure 3.5 are based on an NFPA analysis of NFIRS data through year 2010 (Evarts 2012, 13). For 2010 and 2011 they are from the NFPA (Campbell 2014, 1, 5) using two-­year averages for the vehicle and outdoor/other categories. These data do not provide yearly incident frequencies for residential versus non-­residential buildings, but rather for all structures. Because the NFPA refers to residential and non-­ residential buildings as “structures,” I have retained this designation for the purposes of the data reported here. 35 There were 167,500 known incendiary/suspicious incidents in 1977, but only 78,500 in 1997, a reduction of 53 percent (Hall 1998, 8). 36 My analysis ends at 1998 because of the shift to NFIRS 5.0. 37 The analysis presented in Figure 3.6 reflects my own choice of time increments and my own calculations of estimating adjusted figures of accidental versus incendiary/ suspicious incidents using NFPA data drawn from Evarts (2012, 13). See endnote 34 for data source. 38 From Insurance Information Institute website, using FBI data. See www.iii.org/issue-­ update/arson. 39 Detroit has benefitted from millions of dollars in federal funds for demolition and blight removal. The city’s bankruptcy agreement in 2015 also set aside millions for demolition and blight removal. See Kurth (2015a). 40 Renters’ insurance is reportedly easier to get because the policies are purchased online with no inspection and are for much smaller amounts than homeowner policies. 41 See “After the Fire: Assessing the Impact of Fires in Detroit.” Accessed July 12, 2016 from https://makeloveland.com/reports/fire. Also see “A Hurricane Without Water: Detroit Property Tax Foreclosure.” Accessed July 30, 2016 from www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zi6uoRNtVyQ 42 See “A Look At 10 Cities with the Highest Arson Rates in the Country.” Accessed July 18, 2016 from www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2013/03/burning_flint_10_ cities_with_t_1.html 43 See Table 5 and Figure 7 of the CTIF report. The other nations include the UK and 16 other European nations, Japan, and Singapore. Unfortunately, the CTIF does not break out structural and vehicle fires, but as I have noted, vehicles account for only 15 percent of U.S. fires whereas structures account for roughly 40 percent. See U.S. Fire Administration (2016, 37).

86   Fire as a Social Problem

References Ahrens, Marty. 2016. Trends and Patterns of U.S. Fire Loss. Quincy, MA: National Fire Protection Association. Ahrens, Marty. 2015. Home Structure Fires. National Fire Protection Association, Quincy, MA. Accessed February 11, 2016 from www.nfpa.org/research/reports-­andstatistics/fires-­by-property-­type/residential/home-­structure-fires Ahrens, Marty. 2014. Characteristics of Home Fire Victims. National Fire Protection Association, Quincy, MA. Accessed February 12, 2016 from www.nfpa.org/research/ reports-­and-statistics/demographics-­and-victim-­patterns/characteristics-­of-home-­firevictims Alpert, G., D. Flynn, and A. Piquero. 2001. “Effective Community Policing Performance Measures.” Justice Research and Policy 3: 79–94. Aulette, Judith, and Raymond Michalowski. 1993. “Fire in Hamlet: A Case Study of a State-­Corporate Crime.” In Political Crime in Contemporary America: A Critical Approach, 171–206, edited by Kenneth Tunnell. New York: Routledge. Banfield, Edward. 1974. The Unheavenly City Revisited. Boston: Little Brown. Banks, Jerry. 1983. “Selected International Comparisons of Fire Loss, 1979–1980.” Fire Journal (January): 36–65. Bayley, David. 1994. Police for the Future. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bieber, Paul. 2012. Measuring the Impact of Cognitive Bias in Fire Investigation. The Arson Research Project, USA. Accessed January 30, 2016 from http://truthinjustice. org/Cognative_Bias_ARP.pdf Bier, Vicki. 2006. “Hurricane Katrina as Bureaucratic Nightmare.” In On Risk and Disaster: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina, 255–262, edited by Ronald Daniels, and Donald Kettl. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Boston Globe. 1981. Editorial: Making Arson Unprofitable, February 27: 18. Boudreau, John F., Quon Kwan, William Faragher, and Genevieve Denault. 1977. Arson and Arson Investigation; Survey and Assessment. Washington, DC: United States Department of Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice. Brady, James. 1984. “The Social Economy of Arson: Vandals, Gangsters, Bankers and Officials in the Making of an Urban Problem.” Research in Law Deviance and Social Control 6: 199–242. New Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Brady, James. 1983. “Arson, Urban Economy, and Organized Crime: The Case of Boston.” Social Problems 33: 1–27. Brady, James. 1982. “Arson, Fiscal Crisis and Community Action.” Crime and Delinquency 28: 247–220. Brushlinksy, Nickolai, Marty Ahrens, Sergei Sokolov, and Peter Wagner. 2015. World Fire Statistics. The Center for Fire Statistics (CTIF ), International Association of Fire and Rescue Services. Accessed February 2, 2016 from www.ctif.org/sites/default/files/ ctif_report20_world_fire_statistics_2015.pdf Burgess, Ernest. 1925. “The Growth of the City: An Introduction to a Research Project.” In The City, edited by Robert Park, Robert MacKenzie, and Ernest Burgess. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Campbell, Richard. 2014. Intentional Fires. National Fire Protection Association, Quincy, MA. Accessed February 10, 2016 from www.nfpa.org/research/reports-­and-statistics/ fire-­causes/arson-­and-juvenile-­firesetting/intentional-­fires

Fire as a Social Problem   87 Carpenter, Prisca, Toshio Meronek, and Clio Sady. 2015. “Hot Rental Market Sparks Suspicions of Landlord Arson in San Francisco.” Al Jazeera America, April 2. Accessed July 20, 2016 from http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/4/2/hot-­rentalmarket-­sparks-suspicions-­of-landlord-­arson-in-­san-francisco.html Catalina, Frank. 1979. “New York’s Attack on Arson-­for-profit.” Real Estate Law Journal 7: 245–248. Clarke, Michael. 2000. “Arson: Whose Problem? A Question of Administrative Failure or of Professional Remit?” Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal 2: 19–32. Conason, Joe, and Jack Newfield. 1980. “Arson-­for-Hire: the Men Who are Burning New York.” The Village Voice, June 2. Accessed December 14, 2015 from www.­ villagevoice.com/news/arson-­for-hire-­6401815 Corrigan, Frank E. III, and John J. Siegfried. 2011. “Arson and the Business Cycle.” The American Economist 56: 1–6. Cote, Arthur E. 2003. “History of Fire Protection Engineering.” In History of Fire Protection Engineering, edited by J. K. Richardson. Quincy, MA: National Fire Protection Association. Craighead, Geoff. 2009. High-­Rise Security and Fire Life Safety, 3rd Edition. Oxford, UK: Butterworth-­Heinemann. Davis, Mike. 1998. Ecology of Fear. London: Picador. Dawsey, Darrell. 2013. “Some Suburbanites Profit By Tearing Down Detroit.” Deadline Detroit. Accessed February 5, 2016 from www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/4795/ dawsey_suburbanites_who_profit_by_tearing_down_detroit#.UegPf6zOAk4 Delibert, Art. 1984. “Arson-­Prone Buildings: Holding Owners Accountable.” Firehouse (August): 49–54. Donnell, Robert. (1980). Fire in the City; Spatial Perspectives on Urban Structural Fire Problems. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Syracuse University, Department of Geography. Downie, Jr. Leonard. 1974. Mortgage on America. New York: Praegar. Dreier, Peter John Mollenkopf, and Todd Swanstrom. 2014. Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press. Durkheim, Emile. 1951. Suicide: A Study in Sociology, edited by George Simpson. New York: The Free Press. Evarts, Ben. 2012. Intentional Fires. Boston, MA; Quincy, MA: National Fire Protection Association. FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency). 2013a. Fire Risk in 2013. United States Department of Homeland Security, United States Fire Administration, National Fire Data Center, volume 16(6), December. Accessed February 16, 2016 from www. usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v16i6.pdf FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency). 2013b. Nonresidential Building Fires (2009–2011). United States Department of Homeland Security, United States Fire Administration, National Fire Data Center, volume 14(5), June. Accessed February 16, 2016 from www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v14i5.pdf FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency). 2012. Intentionally Set Fires in Residential Buildings (2008–2010). United States Department of Homeland Security, United States Fire Administration, National Fire Data Center, volume 13(10), October. Accessed May 20, 2016 from www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v13i10.pdf FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency). 1979. “Arson: The Federal Role in  Arson Prevention and Control.” U.S. Fire Administration. Report submitted to Congress.

88   Fire as a Social Problem Flood, Joe. 2010. The Fires. New York: Riverhead (Penguin). Flynn, Jennifer. 2009. Intentional Fires. Boston, MA; Quincy, MA: National Fire Protection Association.  Franklin, Ben A. 1981. “Deaths in Major U.S. Fires Linked to Weak Safety Rules and Apathy.” New York Times, February 1. Accessed December 2, 2014 from www. nytimes.com/1981/02/01/us/deaths-­in-major-­us-fires-­linked-to-­weak-safety-­rules-and-­ apathy.html Gale, Dennis. 1996. Understanding Urban Unrest. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Gest, Ted. 1983. “Are Boston’s Fires an Omen for Other Cities?” US News and World Report (February): 55–56. Goetz, Barry. 1997a. “Organization as Class-­Bias in Local Law Enforcement: Arson-­ForProfit as a ‘Non-­issue.’” Law and Society Review 31: 557–587. Goetz, Barry. 1997b. “State Theory and Fire Control: Selection Mechanisms in Local Government.” Critical Sociology 23: 33–62. Goetz, Barry. 1991. The American Fire Department and the State: Government Organization and Social Inequality. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley. Greenwald, Carol. 1978. Home Mortgage Lending Patterns in Metropolitan Boston. Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Commissioner of Banks. Pub. #10204-34-l-­78-CR. Hall, John R., Jr. 2007. Intentional Fires and Arson. Quincy, MA: National Fire Protection Association. Hall, John R., Jr. 1998. U.S. Arson Trends and Patterns—1997. Quincy, MA: National Fire Protection Association. Hall, John R., Jr., and Beatrice Harwood. 1989. “The National Estimates Approach to U.S. Fire Statistics.” Fire Technology (May): 99–113. Hammett, Theodore M. 1984. Arson Investigation and Prosecution: A Study of Four Major American Cities. Washington, DC: United States Department of Justice. National Institute of Justice. Hannon, Lance, and Donna Shai. 2003. “The Truly Disadvantaged and the Structural Covariates of Fire Death Rates.” The Social Science Journal 40: 129–136. Harlow, David W. 1975. “International Fire Losses, 1974.” Fire Journal 69: 43. Haynes, Hylton. 2015. Fire Loss in the United States During 2014. National Fire Protection Association, Quincy, MA. Accessed February 2, 2016 from www.nfpa.org/ research/reports-­and-statistics/fires-­in-the-­us/overall-­fire-problem/fire-­loss-in-­theunited-­states Herrera, Fred. 2003. “Fire Behavior Myths and Misconceptions.” Expert Law. Accessed February 5, 2016 from www.expertlaw.com/library/fires/fire_behavior.html Hinton, Elizabeth. 2016. From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ivory, Danielle, Ben Protess, and Kitty Bennett. 2016. “When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers.” New York Times, June 26. Accessed July 5, 2016 from www.nytimes. com/2016/06/26/business/dealbook/when-­y ou-dial-­9 11-and-­w all-street-­a nswers. html?_r=0 Jackson, Patrick. 1988. “Assessing the Validity of Official Data on Arson.” Criminology 26: 181–195. Jacobson, Marc. 2006. “Brooklyn Is Burning.” New York, New York 39: 33–37. Jacobson, Michael, and Philip Kasinitz. 1986. “Burning the Bronx for Profit.” The Nation (November): 512–514.

Fire as a Social Problem   89 Jahnke, Art. 1981. “Upscale Arson: Condo Conversion By Fire.” The Real Paper (January 1): 4–6. Jennings, Charles R. 1999. “Socioeconomic Characteristics and Their Relationship to Fire Incidence: A Review of the Literature.” Fire Technology 35: 7–28. Jezierski, Louise. 1990. “Public-­Private Partnerships in Pittsburgh.” Urban Affairs Review 26: 217–249. Karchmer, Clifford L., Mary V. McGuire, James Greenfield, and Karen Robinett. 1981. The Government’s Guide to Arson Prevention and Control: A Handbook on Information Systems and Action Programs. Washington, DC: Office of Planning and Education United States Fire Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency. Katz, Jack. 1979. “Legality and Equality: Plea Bargaining in the Prosecution of White Collar and Common Crimes.” Law and Society Review 13: 432–459. Keisling, Phil. 2015. “Why We Need to Take the ‘Fire’ Out of ‘Fire Department.’” Governing the States and Localities, July 1. Accessed May 5, 2016 from www.governing. com/columns/smart-­mgmt/col-­fire-departments-­rethink-delivery-­emergency-medical-­ services.html Kelling, G., and C. Coles. 1996. Fixing Broken Windows. New York: Free Press. Kinder, Kimberly. 2014. “Guerilla-­style Defensive Architecture in Detroit: A Self-­ Provisioned Security Strategy in a Neoliberal Space of Disinvestment.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38: 1767–1784. Kurth, Joel. 2015a. “Clearance Rate Fuzzy in Detroit Arson Cases.” The Detroit News, February 20. Accessed July 6, 2016 from www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/ wayne-­county/2015/02/20/clearance-­rate-fuzzy-­detroit-arson-­cases/23747303/ Kurth, Joel. 2015b. “Detroit Pays High Price for Arson Onslaught.” The Detroit News, February 18. Accessed July 4, 2016 from www.detroitnews.com/story/news/special-­ reports/2015/02/18/arson-­fires-detroit-­cost/22596529/ Kurth, Joel, and Louis Aguilar. 2015. “Inside Arson Squad; Hectic Days, Senseless Fires.” The Detroit News, February 4. Accessed July 5, 2016 from www.detroitnews. com/story/news/special-­reports/2015/02/04/detroit-­arson-fire-­progress/22763107/ LeDuff, Charlie. 2014. Detroit: An American Autopsy. New York: Penguin. Lentini, John J. 2012. “The Evolution of Fire Investigation and Its Impact on Arson Cases.” Criminal Justice 27. Accessed January 29, 2016 from www.americanbar.org/ content/dam/aba/publications/criminal_justice_magazine/sp12_fire_investigation.authcheckdam.pdf Lester, Patrick, and Scott Kraus. 2016. “More Municipal Governments Outsourcing Services.” The Morning Call, July 29. Accessed July 1, 2016 from www.mcall.com/­ business/outlook/all-­government-030908-story.html Levesque, Paula. 2011. Trends and Patterns of U.S. Fire Losses in 2011. Quincy, MA: National Fire Protection Association. Lima, Alfred J. 1980. “The Influence of the Non-­Admitted Insurance Market on Arson-­ For-Profit.” Washington, DC: National Fire Prevention and Control Administration. United States Department of Commerce. Lima, Alfred J. 1977. “Fires In Urban Residential Neighborhoods: A Survey of Causes and Local Efforts At Prevention.” Washington, DC: National Fire Prevention and Control Administration. United States Department of Commerce. Longmire, Dennis R., Gennaro Vito, and John P. Kenney. 1983. “Combatting the Crime of Arson: Detection, Arrest, and Conviction.” Journal of Criminal Justice 11: 359–368.

90   Fire as a Social Problem Marrs, Gary. 1996. “It’s Not Just a Fire Department Anymore.” In Fire Services Today: Managing a Changing Role and Mission, 9–14, edited by Gerald Hoetmer. Washington, DC: International City/County Management Association. Massey, Douglas, and Nancy Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Miller, David B., and Terry Hokenstad. 2014. “Rolling Downhill: Effects of Austerity on Local Government Social Services in the United States.” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare (June) XLI: 93–108. Moll, Kendall. 1974. Arson, Vandalism and Violence: Law Enforcement Problems Affecting Fire Departments. Washington, DC: United States Department of Justice: Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. Mollenkopf, John H. 1983. The Contested City. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Moore, Winston, Charles P. Livermore, and George F. Galland, Jr. 1983. “Woodlawn: The Zone of Destruction.” In The Social and Economic Consequences of Residential Fires, 271–288, edited by Chester Rapkin. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath. Munson, Michael J. 1976. “Residential Fires and the Urban Poor.” Fire Journal (January): 59–61. Munson, Michael J., and Wallace E. Gates. 1983. “Community Characteristics and the Incidence of Fire: An Empirical Analysis.” In The Social and Economic Consequences of Residential Fires, 61–78, edited by Chester Rapkin. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath. National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control. 1973. America Burning. Washington, DC: United States Government. Panneton, John. 1985. “Federalizing Fires: The Evolving Federal Response to Arson Related Crimes.” American Criminal Law Review 23: 151–206. Pontell, Henry. 1982. “System Capacity and Criminal Justice.” In Rethinking Criminology, 131–143, edited by Harold Pepinsky. Beverly Hills: Sage. Pontell, Henry, K. Calavita, and Robert Tillman. 1994. “Corporate Crime and Criminal Justice System Capacity: Government Response to Financial Institution Fraud.” Justice Quarterly 11: 383–410. Reiss, Albert, and David Bordua. 1967. “Environment and Organization: A Perspective on Police.” In The Police: Six Sociological Essays, 25–55, edited by David Bordua. New York: John Wiley. Schrager, Laura Shill, and James F. Short, Jr. 1978. “Toward A Theory of Organizational Crime.” Social Problems 25: 407–419. Shapiro, Susan. 1990. “The Road Not Taken: The Elusive Path to Criminal Prosecution for White Collar Offenders.” Law and Society Review 19: 179–217. Skogan, Wesley. 1990. Disorder and Decline: Crime and the Spiral of Decay in American Neighborhoods. Berkeley: University of California Press. Slade, Steve. 1978. “The Business of Arson.” The Nation (March): 307–309. Smith, Neil. 1996. The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. New York: Routledge. Sternlieb, George, and Robert W. Burchell. 1983. “Fires in Abandoned Buildings.” In The Social and Economic Consequences of Residential Fires, 261–270, edited by Chester Rapkin. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath. Suchy, John T. 1976. “Arson: America’s Malignant Crime.” Washington, DC: National Fire Prevention and Control Administration, National Academy for Fire Prevention and Control. U.S. Department of Commerce.

Fire as a Social Problem   91 Sullivan, Mercer. 1992. “Crime and the Social Fabric.” In Dual City: Restructuring New York, 225–244, edited by John Mollenkopf, and Manuel Castells. New York: Russell Sage. Sutherland, Edwin H. 1983 [1949]. White Collar Crime. New Haven: Yale University Press. Ta, Van M., Shannon Frattaroli, Gwendolyn Bergen, and Andrea C. Gielen. 2006. “Evaluated Community Fire Safety Interventions in the United States: A Review of Current Literature.” Journal of Community Health 31: 176–197. Tabb, William. 1970. The Political Economy of the Black Ghetto. New York: W.W. Norton. Tierney, Kathleen. 2006. “Social Inequalities, Hazards and Disasters.” In Disaster: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina, 109–228, edited by R.J. Daniels, D.F. Kettl, and H. Kunreuther. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 1978. Insurance Crisis in Urban America. Washington, DC: Federal Insurance Administration. U.S. Fire Administration. 2016. Fire in the United States, 17th Edition, 2004–2013. Washington, DC: National Fire Data Center, Federal Emergency Management Agency. U.S. Fire Administration. 2015. Firefighter Fatalities in the United States in 2014. Washington, DC: Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security. U.S. Fire Administration. 2011. Fire Death Rate Trends: an International Perspective. Topical Fire Report Series, Volume 12, Issue 8. Washington, DC: Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security. Accessed February 3, 2016 from www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v12i8.pdf U.S. Fire Administration. 2009a. Fire in the United States, 15th Edition, 2003–2007. Washington, DC: National Fire Data Center, Federal Emergency Management Agency. U.S. Fire Administration. 2009b. Arson-­For-Profit: National Arson Awareness Week Media Kit. Washington, DC: Federal Emergency Management Agency. U.S. Fire Administration. 2007. Fire in the United States, 14th Edition, 1989–1998. Washington, DC: National Fire Data Center, Federal Emergency Management Agency. U.S. Fire Administration. 2004a. Fire in the United States, 13th Edition, 1992–2001. Washington, DC: National Fire Data Center, Federal Emergency Management Agency. U.S. Fire Administration. 2004b. Attacking the Violent Crime of Arson: A Report on America’s Fire Investigation Units. Washington, DC: Department of Homeland Security. U.S. Fire Administration. 2001. Fire in the United States, 12th Edition, 1989–1998. Washington, DC: National Fire Data Center, Federal Emergency Management Agency. U.S. Fire Administration. 1997. Socio-­Economic Factors and the Incidence of Fire. Washington, DC: National Fire Data Center, Federal Emergency Management Agency. U.S. Fire Administration, 1993. Fire in the United States, 8th Edition, 1983 to 1990. Washington, DC: National Fire Data Center, Federal Emergency Management Agency. U.S. Fire Administration. 1982. Fire in the United States, 2nd Edition. Washington, DC: National Fire Data Center, Federal Emergency Management Agency. U.S. Fire Administration. 1981. Report of the Arson Information Management Systems Conference. Washington, DC: Office of Fire Protection Management, Federal Emergency Management Agency. U.S. General Accounting Office. 1978. “Arson-­For-Profit: More Could be Done to Reduce It.” Washington, DC: Office of Comptroller General, Document #79–664. U.S. Senate. 1979. Senate Subcommittee on Governmental Affairs by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Arson in America. 96th Congress, 1st Session.

92   Fire as a Social Problem U.S. Senate. 1978. “Arson-­for-Hire.” Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, 95th Congress, 2nd Session. U.S. Senate. 1977. “Arson-­For-Profit: Its Impact on States and Localities.” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs. 95th Congress, First Session. Vollmer, Ted. 1988. “Bradley Proposes Law to Upgrade Fire Safety.” Los Angeles Times, May 17. Accessed February 12, 2016 from http://articles.latimes.com/1988-05-17/ news/mn-­2832_1_extensive-­fire-safety-­installations Walker, Samuel, and Charles Katz. 2011. The Police in America: An Introduction. 7th Edition. New York: McGraw-­Hill. Wallace, Deborah, and Roderick Wallace. 1998. A Plague on Both Your Houses: How New York Burned Down and National Public Health Crumbled. London: Verso. Wenus, Laura. 2015. “Fire Commission Says SF Mission Fires Aren’t Arson.” Mission Local, December 19. Accessed May 5, 2016 from http://missionlocal.org/2015/12/fire-­ commission-says-­sf-mission-­fires-arent-­arson/ Williams, Howard E. 2006. Investigating White Collar Crime, 2nd Edition. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas. Wilson, William J. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, J.Q., and George Kelling. 1982. “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety.” The Atlantic Monthly 249: 29–38. Wright, John P., Francis T. Cullen, and Michael B. Blankenship. 1995. “The Social Construction of Violence: Media Coverage of the Imperial Food Products Fire.” Crime and Delinquency 41: 20–36. Zangar, Mark. 1979. Arson Action Guide. Boston, MA: Urban Educational Systems.

4 Fires, Arson, and Institutional Selectivity

Fire departments play a critical role in the lives of Americans, responding to a wide array of emergencies from traffic accidents to large-­scale disasters. In this way fire departments represent the highest ideals of a “decommodified” welfare state, extending to all citizens basic social rights as these pertain to being protected against risk and disaster (Esping-­Anderson and Hicks 2005, 510). Yet, as I argued in the last chapter, urban fire agencies also play a role in the enhancement of fire-­risk. Here I elaborate on this dynamic through an examination of the City of Hyde (pseudonym) during the 1970s and 1980s when fire and arson were defined as social problems requiring a governmental response. Returning to the theoretical concerns outlined in Chapters 1 and 2, I argue that the normative order of state structures and practices created distinct dynamics of institutional selectivity that shaped and reshaped Hyde’s social problem of fire. These dynamics of institutional selectivity will be shown to exist at the level of the Hyde Fire Department (HFD) itself, at the level of the city’s arson investigation process, encompassing not only the HFD but also the Hyde Police Department (HPD) and district attorney’s office, and at the level of fire prevention and code enforcement activities. For the purposes of this book I have defined “normative order” as the interplay between bureaucratic structures and procedures, agency subcultures, and the “micro-­foundational” aspects of organizational life, i.e., the cognitive processes of state actors and “taken-­for-granted” assumptions about what particular agencies do.

The Social Problem of Fire in Hyde Hyde is a pseudonym for a large western city in the United States. With only 50 square miles, the city has always been thickly settled, with population and building densities rivaling New York or Boston. Because my primary focus in this chapter is on social problems and reforms that occurred during the late 1970s and 1980s, I will use land-­use data that most closely corresponds to what the city looked like during that period. In 1980, Hyde had a population of 680,000, with 16,000 persons per square mile, much higher than other typical western cities.1 Many buildings were contiguous to one another or separated by only a few yards, and it was not

94   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity uncommon to see mixed-­use commercial and residential uses within the same structure. Most of Hyde’s residents were renters, and more than half the city’s residential structures contained three or more separate rental units, about one-­ third of these with ten or more units. Only one-­third of residential structures were single-­family homes. Hyde was also a city of older structures, with 70 percent of the city’s residential occupancies in 1980 built before 1939.2 In 1976, one of Hyde’s two major daily newspapers declared the city was in the midst of an “arson nightmare,” tracking a 700 percent increase in incendiary (arson) incidents over a 12-year period. These fires included those within buildings (i.e., residential and non-­residential structures) and those that were outside (e.g., in refuse containers), but the effect on the community was the same: a growing fear of being victimized by fire. Incendiary fires in Hyde increased even more by 1978, reaching a post-­World War II high of 570 incidents. To understand Hyde’s arson surge requires a discussion of context. In Chapter 3 I documented increases in U.S. arson and fire frequencies during the 1960s and 1970s and subsequent declines over the following decades. Similar patterns were apparent in Hyde. Hyde averaged about 6,150 total fire incidents per year during the latter half of the 1950s. There were 6,340 incidents recorded in 1960 and 10,882 by FY 1969–1970, an increase of 72 percent (see Figure 4.1).3 This occurred even as Hyde’s population declined from 740,000 to 716,000 persons between 1960 and 1970. Fire incidents declined somewhat throughout the 1970s, especially in buildings, but remained at historically high levels, averaging about 9,000 per year from 1971 to 1975 and about 8,200 per year from 1976 to 1980. By the first half of the 1980s, fires incident frequencies declined to roughly 6,900 annually even as the city’s population began to rebound. In the year 2000, there 12,000

All Fires Outside/Other Building Vehicle

Fire Incidents

10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000

1960 62–63 63–64 65–66 66–67 67–68 68–69 69–70 70–71 71–72 72–73 73–74 74–75 75–76 76–77 77–78 78–79 79–80 80–81 81–82 82–83 83–84 84–85 85–86

0

Year/Fiscal Year

Figure 4.1  Fire Incidents in Hyde from 1960 to 1986, by Property Type.

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   95 were only 3,363 fire incidents in the City of Hyde, a 50-year low that occurred even as the city’s population reached the historic high of 775,000 persons.4 The most plausible argument for why Hyde’s number of fire incidents increased during the 1960s was urban unrest caused by racial and other types of social conflict, including youth opposition to the Vietnam War. Figure 4.2 shows that incendiary (deliberately set) fires surged in Hyde from 79 incidents during FY 1963–1964 to 375 by FY 1969–1970.5 However, incendiary fires increased in Hyde even as the social tumult of the 1960s and early 1970s had ebbed, peaking at 570 incidents in FY 1977–1978. Indeed, yearly frequencies of incendiary fires increased during the 1970s even as yearly fire frequencies overall decreased. As noted above, fire totals reached their height in Hyde in 1970 and declined thereafter. This suggested that increases in arson were not reflective of an increase in fire overall. Rather, they were being “discovered” as a social problem within the overall context of Hyde’s fire experience.6 Arson incidents were especially pronounced in just three out of 15 “planning districts”7 in Hyde, designated here by their pseudonyms of Southside, Oaklawn, and Midtown. These districts contained 58 percent of the city’s “greater alarm” (larger) fires, both accidental and incendiary, from 1974 to 1978. Southside had experienced one of Hyde’s deadliest fires in 1975 at the “Sixteen Arms” apartment house, an arson that killed 14 civilians. An additional 41 fires between 1974 and 1976 occurred in the close vicinity of the Sixteen Arms, killing an additional three persons and one firefighter. Oaklawn’s fires were occurring in just an 11 block portion of the district where there had been 36 arsons over a 26-month period between 1976 and 1978, mostly in residential structures. One 600 Incendiary Fires

500

Frequency

400 300 200 100

62–63 63–64 65–66 66–67 67–68 68–69 69–70 70–71 71–72 72–73 73–74 74–75 75–76 76–77 77–78 78–79 79–80 80–81 81–82 82–83 83–84 84–85 85–86

0

Fiscal Year

Figure 4.2  Incendiary Fire Incidents in Hyde, 1962 to 1986.

96   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity such property had over 15 fires in an eight-­year period. One observer remarked to a local paper that parts of Oaklawn looked like “London after the Blitz.” The Official Response Given Hyde’s population and building densities, fire officials would tell me that their city was “built-­to-burn” (Chapter 3, this volume). This was especially the case in Oaklawn and Southside where there were large numbers of wooden structures built in the late nineteenth century. Still, the population and building densities of Oaklawn, Southside, and Midtown were not unlike other areas in Hyde that had lower fire rates. Moreover, fires were just as likely to occur in newer masonry structures built after 1910 in these districts as in older wooden structures. Built-­to-burn factors were therefore insufficient to explain why some neighborhoods had a greater fire-­risk than others. What did distinguish Midtown, Oaklawn, and Southside was that they were lower-­income rental districts with many absentee landlords. Much of the housing in these three districts was in disrepair or had been declared substandard by city code enforcement officials, sometimes leading to abandonment or vacancies. Hyde’s fire officials recognized that deteriorated building conditions enhanced fire-­risk, but they tended to blame such conditions—as discussed in Chapter 3—on the inevitable “cycles of abandonment” and anomic social conditions facing America’s cities during the 1960 and 1970s. Although Hyde did not see the wholesale abandonment of neighborhoods as had been the case in some northeast industrial cities, it still had its own share of “white flight” with traditional working-­class residents moving to the suburbs. From the standpoint of fire and police officials, changing urban neighborhoods, and newcomers with socially unconventional lifestyles, could be blamed for the city’s increase in arson. Oaklawn was home to a growing gay and lesbian population, and Chief Brophy,8 who headed the HFD from 1976 to 1982, blamed the district’s arson outbreak on acts of “revenge” and “lover’s quarrels” involving same-­sex couples. Fire and police officials labeled these “fruit-­beefs,” with Chief Brophy telling the media about one incident where “a man returned to the apartment of the male lover that rejected him, spread paint thinner on the floor, and ignited a blaze.” Fire and police officials blamed the heightened fire and arson risk of the Southside and Midtown districts on “transients, alcoholics and drug addicts.” Southside was the city’s Mexican-­American barrio, and also attracted immigrants from Latin America and Southeast Asia. The lower rents and urban “feel” of Southside also attracted artists, political activists, college students, and young singles. As a result of its cultural diversity, Southside was bustling with bodegas, bars, cafes, alternative bookstores, and popular night venues. Southside was also home, however, to single-room occupancy (SRO) “residential hotels” that lined the district’s main business corridors. The SROs provided a viable housing option for the city’s poor, many of them retirees, the severely mentally ill, parolees or those just released from jail. Some SROs also had reputations for tolerating drug-­addicted populations, chronic alcoholics and those engaged in the sex

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   97 trade. This was especially the case in Midtown, Hyde’s “red light” district, where 70 percent of the district’s population lived in SROs. Midtown also had Hyde’s highest drug overdose death and crime rates. That Southside and Midtown had higher fire rates, then, came as no surprise to public safety officials given the deviant lifestyles associated with these districts. Officials also blamed mental illness for many of the city’s incendiary fires. In the wake of the Sixteen Arms tragedy, officials announced that they were searching for a “deranged” arsonist, a theme also picked up by the media. One of Hyde’s major dailies published a feature on the Sixteen Arms entitled “A Doctor’s Profile of the Sick Arsonist.” In it a local psychiatrist was quoted as saying that “after long hours of weekend research” he had come to the conclusion that the fire was likely set by “a suffering young man with below average intelligence and a history of job dissatisfaction, physical disfigurement, sexual problems, bedwetting and childhood trauma involving his parents.” As late as 1981, six years after the Sixteen Arms fire, Hyde’s largest afternoon newspaper published an article with the byline “The Portraits of ‘Crazies’ Who Set Fires.” (The paper’s use of the term “crazy” was not their own but rather used by a district attorney interviewed for the piece.) The piece summarized the views of psychologists and city officials, stating that a “frighteningly large number” of arsons were caused by “emotionally disturbed persons.” The article stated that “virtually every conviction,” for arson in Hyde “involved an arsonist with some kind of mental problem, or a fire where the motive was revenge or jealousy,” affirming the view of fire and police officials that Hyde’s fires were largely the result of behavioral and social pathologies. The reality was that Hyde’s public officials had little information on what was causing the universe of arson cases. In 1980, the city’s “clearance” rate for arson, or “crimes solved,”9 averaged only about 11 to 12 percent. This meant that there was no official explanation for over 85 percent of Hyde’s incendiary incidents. Moreover, as a general rule, clearance rates are a better measure of the capacity of the police to make arrests for certain types of crime than they are a tool to explain the universe of motives behind crime (Walker and Katz 2011; Reiss and Bordua 1967). For example, arsons-­for-profit, unlike “street” arsons, are designed to evade detection by investigators. Therefore, they will be much more difficult to clear than street arsons. The explanations offered by Hyde’s officials to account for their city’s fire problem presented a gap in logic. Their arguments were not necessarily incorrect, but incomplete, failing to account for their own bureaucratic failures as well as the housing dynamics associated with changing urban neighborhoods to help explain increased fire-­risk. Real Estate Speculation and White Collar Criminality Following the trend of many American cities in the mid-­twentieth century, Hyde experienced economic decline as its key industries of warehousing, food processing, and maritime support industries abandoned the central business district

98   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity seeking cheaper land, newer facilities, and access to super-­highways. Hyde’s population, primarily whites, followed the jobs, leading to a decline in the city’s population—by about 35,000 between 1950 and 1960. But there were counter-­ trends as well. Increasingly, a “post-­industrial” transformation was occurring in Hyde as its economy became more organized around the finance, real estate, insurance, and legal service aspects of the economy. Moreover, Hyde had always been a city with a large tourism industry, resulting in a demand for new luxury hotel space. Post-­industrial growth led to a boom in commercial real estate in the city’s central business district, where new services and attractions were located. This economic shift also created pockets of gentrification in neighborhoods surrounding the central business districts, reflecting what Jezierski (1990) has called “worthy living environments for economic growth.” Well-­paid professionals, many with no children, were beginning to move back into neighborhoods that had long been low-­income. By 1980, the average home in Hyde cost about $144,000, up from $24,000 in 1965. As discussed in Chapter 3, a consideration of the economic environment beyond “cycles of abandonment” allows for a counter-­narrative to explain the social problem of fire. In Hyde, gentrification pressures had created a demand for architecturally unique properties near the urban core, creating ripe conditions for arson-­for-profit. This was especially true for Oaklawn. Contiguous to Hyde’s civic center containing its city hall, public library, opera house, and gorgeous new concert hall, Oaklawn’s high concentration of “Italianate” style Victorian homes would become a popular “back to the city” destination. Initially constructed as single-­family homes for the well-­to-do, these Victorians were sub­ divided into apartments after World War  II as the district became home to a largely working class population. Much of the area was labeled “blighted” by local planners during the late 1950s and early 1960s, paving the way for urban renewal efforts. Over 3,000 housing units were demolished between 1960 and 1970, almost a quarter of its housing stock, with over 3,000 families displaced. However, many blocks with Victorians next to the civic center were saved from the wrecking ball. During the 1970s, young urban professionals, many of them gay, were moving in, and real estate developers became increasingly interested in Oaklawn as a new “hot” real estate destination. The number of male households without children increased by 52 percent during this period while the Victorian residences in Oaklawn saw their market value increased three-­fold. Another effect of Hyde’s post-­industrial transformation and gentrification was that many of Hyde’s structures were worth less than the land upon which they sat. In the Southside, the building of a new rapid transit line and the district’s close proximity to the downtown made it a magnet for young workers looking for an easy commute and urban living. This increased demand and created upward pressures on rents, providing an incentive for converting lower-­income apartments into condominiums or high rental flats. This dynamic also had the effect of increasing fire-­risk. One prominent Latina named Riegos who served on the Hyde Fire Commission, a civilian entity that oversaw HFD Administration, was concerned about “parcel clearance arson” (a form of arson fraud) in

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   99 Southside. “People are coming to me because they think that the rise in land values is causing all the fires,” she divulged to me outside of a Fire Commission meeting in 1984. Sandwiched between one of Hyde’s tourist centers and the city’s civic center, gentrification was also an issue in Midtown. Hyde’s Department of City Planning had tracked the disappearance of 6,000 SRO units in the city between 1975 and 1980, either through demolition or conversion to luxury accommodation. The bulk of the affected units were in Midtown, where by 1980 28 of the district’s residential hotels had been converted to tourist use and five had been demolished to make way for brand-­new luxury developments. An organization called the Midtown Planning Coalition, a consortium of local residents and community organizers, mobilized to pass an eviction control ordinance, especially after reports emerged that landlords were trying to get tenants to “voluntarily” vacate their units. Some tenants reported that landlords were cutting off heat and shutting down elevators as a strategy to vacate buildings, but others reported more serious forms of harassment. In an episode on arson-­for-profit in Hyde aired by a local PBS affiliate, for example, a journalist focused on one former SRO facility in Midtown. During the special the building’s former tenants are heard to say that their landlord used fire to force them out of their units so that he could convert his building to luxury use—which he eventually did. This prompted the host of the special to ask the landlord, on air, whether he had committed arson. Arson-­by-Neglect Neighborhood coalitions also conflated the problem of arson-­for-profit with the problem of substandard properties and the proliferation of fire code violations. Delibert (1984, 50) argued that an owner’s failure to keep up his or her property—allowing it to become unsecured, full of trash, vacant and open to intruders—increased the risk of “arson-­by-neglect,” where “disinvestment creates conditions that end in a fire.” From Delibert’s standpoint, property owners who let their buildings fall into decline are “responsible for burning their buildings just as surely as if they had put the match to it themselves.” The arson-­by-neglect scenario fits closely with the narrative surrounding the deadly Sixteen Arms tragedy. According to one newspaper, when it first opened in 1912 the Sixteen Arms was “a handsome five-­story building” and a “clean, genteel place.” By the time it burned in 1976, however, it was a home for “transients, some pensioners, and more than a share of potheads, pushers, prostitutes, both male and female, and winos.” Drunks reportedly slept on the stairway, and the building was open to street people who regularly crashed in vacant apartments. Southside residents would blame the Sixteen Arms tragedy not on the arsonist that started the fire but on the owner of the property for allowing unabated code violations, including a lack of sprinklers, to fester on the property. Noting that many of the violations had been in existence for years, residents also blamed the

100   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity City of Hyde for its lax enforcement practices. Delibert (1984) has argued that one way for residents to seek justice when victimized by arson-­by-neglect is to sue an owner for endangerment “after-­the-fact.” This is what happened in the case of the Sixteen Arms when the families of the victims killed in the fire sued both the property’s owner and the City of Hyde for failing to abate fire hazards. Eventually, the case was settled out of court. In 1973 the publication of America Burning blamed much of the nation’s urban fire problem on local control policies that emphasized fire suppression (i.e., extinguishment) to the detriment of prevention. Its authors raised the hypothetical example of a fire in an urban tenement and asked: “If part of the money spent on responding to the tenement fire had been spent instead on enforcing a tough fire prevention code, would the fire have occurred at all?” (National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control 1973, 18). My examination of the Hyde Fire Department as it existed during my period of research in the 1980s picks up on this critique. First, however, it is important to understand the historical reasons for why the American fire service has favored suppression over other forms of fire control.

The Insurance Industry and Public Fire Departments It should be remembered that the earliest fire departments in the United States were formed and supported by the insurance industry. Therefore, it is not surprising that many, if not most, city fire departments are organized and operated according to the standards established by the fire insurance industry. (International City Management Association 1979, 60) Up until the late 1700s in the United States, fire control was largely a communal or personal responsibility, mediated in large part by the population densities of where one lived. By the turn of the nineteenth century, however, urban fire control was becoming more and more of a specialized task that fell to private and volunteer suppression companies, many of them organized as neighborhood or ethnically-­based mutual-­aid societies (Tebeau 2003). The financial support for these companies was often provided through dues, but some municipalities picked up an increasing share of the tab through the sponsoring of “fireman’s balls,” purchasing new equipment, appropriating public land for firehouses, the provision of clothing allowances, and the building of water works (Zurier 1982, 21). As the nineteenth century progressed, firefighting became largely commodified in urban centers, with insurance companies selling fire suppression and salvage services as part of their policies. Insured properties would have “firemarks” or plaques affixed to them announcing to volunteer companies that they would be rewarded if they responded to an incident at that address (Zurier 1982, 30; Tebeau 2003). The volunteer system came under increasing scrutiny as cities faced increasing threats of conflagration and as fire companies themselves proved to be a public order problem. Firehouses were centers of socializing and drinking, and

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   101 the system of fee-­for-service rewards had engendered a “smoke-­eating subculture” that encouraged competition among volunteer companies (Tebeau 2003, 214). Volunteer companies were “part athletic team, part secret society, and part fraternity,” and firefighting itself was a form of urban spectacle and entertainment (Zurier 1982, 29) The public played the role of the audience, cheering on their favorite firefighting companies in the event of a blaze and “gustily applauding acts of daring” (Hall and Burks 1982, 20). In Boston, volunteer companies were always a “potential source of riot” in that “firefighting for young men was a rugged and even vicious form of sport” (Lane 1971, 22). Those companies that were able to successfully put down a fire were rewarded not only with social honor, but with cash prizes or booty. In San Francisco, competition among volunteer companies “reached a state of madness during the 1860s,” where firefighters themselves were suspected of lighting fires just so they could “be first to the scene to extinguish them” (Hall and Burks 1982, 21). In 1852, Cincinnati responded to the chaos of the volunteer system by establishing the nation’s first fully paid and government-­run fire department after competing companies fought with each other throughout the night as a wood-­ planing mill burned to the ground around them (Zurier 1982, 76–77). By the 1870s, most large cities in the U.S. had established paid, full-­time departments that represented an expanding local welfare state committed to citizen protection. Tebeau (2003, 164) argues that the emergence of firefighting as a key public good “paralleled, if not preceded, the growth of other municipal services at mid-­century, such as police departments, public health departments, and sewer and waste systems.” City life was increasingly dangerous, marked by disease, workplace accidents, and the threat of fire. Within this context, Tebeau argues, political leaders “developed the belief that cities had an obligation to provide for fire safety.” The American fire department should be seen, then, not only as an institutional adaptation to urbanization but also as a de-­commodified social good that all citizens depended on for their daily protection. The Material Foundations of the American Fire Department The formation of the American public fire service represents one of the earliest contradictions of the welfare state. Ostensibly organized to protect the whole of the community, its creation was largely shepherded by the priorities of the insurance industry (Tebeau 2003; International City Management Association 1979). A former chief interviewed for this analysis who had been in the fire service since 1920 and had eventually become the chief of a major department told me that fire departments “work for the insurance companies.” Not only does the public fire service subsidize suppression costs, he explained, but they also keep insurance rates as low as possible. The insurance industry was responsible for setting the operational priorities of local departments. After conflagrations in Baltimore (1904) and the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, the National Board of Fire Underwriters (NBFU) developed a “grading survey” of municipalities that insurers could use

102   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity to help determine policy rates. The survey “exhaustively studied every facet of everyday urban life,” including its civic affairs, topography, street layout, weather, the types of fuel most commonly used by residents and its firefighting capabilities (Tebeau 2003, 258). Using a deficiency point system, those jurisdictions with the most points would receive a lower grade symbolizing that they were a higher insurance risk. Most of the NBFU’s deficiency points were linked to a city’s fire suppression capacity, particularly the volume and availability of water, the size of the fire department, the types of apparatus used, numbers of public pull boxes available, and the efficiency with which departments dispatched their units in an emergency (Brearley 1916). After municipalities were graded, the NBFU “pressured municipal leaders to heed its recommendations,” for the reduction of deficiency points. Recommendations typically pertained to the placement of firehouses, officer assignments, types of preferred firefighting apparatus, optimal numbers of firefighters needed to man a particular type of apparatus, and even firefighter salaries and departmental organization (Tebeau 2003, 260). For example, the decision over where to place firehouses was based on determinations of water flow availability, departmental response time acceptability levels (often requiring no more than 240 seconds for the first company due), and fire company workloads (Zurier 1982). Because a municipality’s grade was viewed as connected with preferable insurance rates, municipalities would devote their resources to meeting NBFU recommendations, including the purchase of new apparatus if this would result in a reduction of deficiency points. The insurance industry also became directly involved in the development of new fire prevention technologies. Nearly one-­third of insurance losses were tied to conflagration during the mid-­nineteenth century, and underwriters were looking for loss control methods that would supplement suppression. New England insurers had been involved with the development of sprinkler technologies to prevent losses in textile mills since the mid-­nineteenth century. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), organized in 1896 to serve the insurance industry, developed standards for the performance of fire protective devices such as hoses, hydrants, sprinklers, extinguishers, doors and shutters and other flame retardant materials. The NFPA also developed a model fire code still in use today by municipalities around the United States (Grant 1996). In 1905 the NBFU developed a model building code for use by underwriters. In collaboration with the newly formed Underwriters Laboratories, the NBFU was also engaged in setting fire-­safe electrical, heating, and lighting standards for household products. Furthermore, the insurance industry also played a key role in promulgating acceptable fire safety standards pertaining to building and roofing materials, the provision of electrical, lighting, and heating services, amounts of square footage, the placement of doors and windows, the density of construction, and the uses of combustible materials in manufacturing and commerce. Although the safety guidelines developed through industry efforts would be regulated privately through the insurance contract, they nevertheless “begun to reconstruct [sic]—literally and permanently—the urban environment according to its assessment of the problem of fire” (Tebeau 2003, 257).

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   103 The insurance sector and other aspects of private industry were also influential in the development of municipal code enforcement structures. Arthur Cote (1991, 37), a fire prevention expert with the NFPA who had helped to write the organization’s model fire code, has argued that “the development of building codes and standards in the United States is predominantly private sector enterprise,” a situation that he distinguishes from Europe where this task has tended to be public. Moreover, over time, the insurance industry convinced municipalities to allow the code standards that they were using to “supersede” existing public ordinances (Tebeau 2003, 254). The problem with this system was that the fire codes and standards developed by the insurance industry had been designed primarily to protect commercial properties and inventories. Code enforcement measures designed to protect life, in contrast, have emanated not from the private sector but from the development of housing health and safety codes that were designed to protect the health and safety of residents living in urban tenements (Chudacoff and Smith 2005; Listokin and Harris 2004). Still, about two-­thirds of most municipal housing codes are concerned with fire prevention (National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control 1973). Fire Prevention and Insurance Rates Better fire prevention practices have had little impact on NBFU’s rating and grading criteria historically, at least to the extent that they resulted in fiscal savings for government agencies (California Assembly 1959). Since the middle of the twentieth century, municipal officials argued that their manpower requirements were “unreasonably high” given the fire control requirements of their community (California Assembly 1959, 59). At the same time, no city administration wanted to make cuts to suppression that would mean the accumulation of deficiency points. As one former chief of the HFD who served from 1956 to 1971 told me, public officials always had “the National Board of Fire Underwriters looking over their shoulder.” By the late 1950s, governments began to challenge what they argued was an “over-­reliance” on NBFU grades, where fire control policy decisions were driven more by what the insurance industry wanted as opposed to what was best for taxpayers (International City Management Association 1979, 60). In hearings before the California State Assembly in 1959, the American Municipal Association (AMA), forerunner of the National League of Cities, openly criticized the influence of the insurance industry on the public fire service, suggesting that: It is at least thought-­provoking, perhaps, that in the field of fire insurance, where we spend billions of dollars in public funds for protection, the standards are set by a private organization—and the standards not only determine the rates which people in cities pay for fire insurance but, also, directly influence what cities pay for fire protection. There is no other city operation which is so influenced by standards set by private organizations. (California Assembly 1959, 92)

104   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity Noting that an average of one-­fifth to one-­quarter of municipal expenditures of municipalities went into providing fire protection, the AMA went on to ask (p.  82) “. . . hasn’t the city’s expenditure indirectly benefitted the insurance industry at the expense of its citizens?” Eventually, the NBFU was reorganized into the Insurance Services Office (ISO). While the ISO has continued to use the quality of a local fire department for rate determination purposes, other factors such as a jurisdiction’s claims and fire history, the presence of fire protection systems, and security considerations have become increasingly important. By the end of the 1960s, the linkage between insurance rates and the organization of the public fire service loosened, allowing municipalities more freedom in how they spent their fire control dollars (International City Management Association 1979). Nevertheless, the normative order of America’s fire service had already become organized around fire suppression as the primary objective of fire control policy.

Institutional Selectivity in the Hyde Fire Department The Hyde City Charter, formulated at the end of the nineteenth century, laid down basic legal protocols for the organization of a municipally run fire department. It called for civilian oversight of the agency through a five-­member Fire Commission appointed by the mayor. The Commission would then appoint the chief of department who would manage the agency on a day-­to-day basis, whose policies would be subject to the Commission’s approval at bi-­monthly public meetings. The Charter also called for the fire department to be organized around three fire control objectives including suppression (also defined as including search and rescue operations), investigation and prevention. From its beginnings, however, the normative order of the HFD reflected a “core–periphery” distinction where fire suppression functions pushed the other functions of investigation (i.e., figuring out what was causing fires in the first place) and prevention to the periphery of the organization.10 The Core–Periphery Distinction The HFD was organized around a paramilitary “chain of command.” Hyde’s fire chief and his deputies were at the top of this chain, overseeing five operations divisions, four devoted to suppression and one devoted to code enforcement and post-­incident investigations. Suppression divisions were geographically-­based and provided emergency services on a 24-hour basis. Therefore, they absorbed most of the personnel and material resources of the HFD. There were 52 rotating “assistant” and “battalion” chiefs,” 305 rotating captains and lieutenants, and 1,150 “ranked” firefighters. These personnel were responsible for manning 44 engine and 20 truck companies city-­wide in addition to mobile rescue and support companies (hose-­carriers, etc.). HFD’s code enforcement and fire investigative unit was comparative tiny compared to any one suppression division. The Division of Fire Prevention and Investigation, as it was officially called, had

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   105 just one assistant chief, although this person also held the title of the city’s “fire marshal” and had law enforcement powers. The Division was further divided into the Bureau of Fire Prevention (BFP) and the Bureau of Fire Investigation (BFI). The BFP comprised six officers and 34 “inspectors” who worked four days a week from 7:30 to 6:00. The BFI comprised 11 rotating “investigators” who worked 24-hour shifts so that they could be on-­site to respond to incidents, and depending on the time-­frame, one or two supervising officers. During the time of my research, both the BFP and the BFI were located in the HFD headquarters near Hyde City Hall. The firefighting profession has long viewed the paramilitary model of organization as essential for assuring efficient and effective fire suppression and life-­ saving operations. Fire suppression is similar to other “high-­reliability” systems of managing work in that errors or lapses in performance can lead to “catastrophic outcomes” (LaPorte and Consolini 1991, 23). Performance failures on the fire-­lines, of course, can result in the loss of life, maximum property loss, or conflagration. The watchword of a paramilitary system is discipline, and discipline is assured through a “tightly-­coupled”11 chain of command where decision-­ making and tasks are executed quickly and without question. High-­reliability systems also assume a good deal of training and knowledge among organizational members. In the case of firefighting, for example, every battalion has its own division of labor and fire companies (e.g., ladder or hose) must be expert at managing firefighting technologies (e.g., pumps and hydraulic ladders) and carrying out life-­saving and suppression “drills” such as “tending” hoses, ventilating roofs and walls, and knowing how to “attack” versus “contain” a fire. Secondarily, the paramilitary model plays an important socialization function in  the fire service. All uniformed members of the HFD, for example, began their careers as firefighters, and entered the organization as part of a cohort of recruits trained at the agency’s “fire academy.” Here they went through physical endurance tests and learned the basics of fire suppression. But they also learned respect for rank, which was viewed as equivalent to one’s job responsibilities. The paramilitary model of organization has been called into question, however, as a system for managing non-­suppression activities. Dittmar (1996, 52) has argued, for example, that the “quasi-­military fire structure” runs counter to the procedures and work culture of Emergency Medical Service (EMS) responders. This observation is especially important in that over the past few decades EMS and other types of emergency response activities (e.g., hazardous materials) have comprised an increasing and even dominant proportion of what American fire departments do compared with the act of fighting fires (Keisling 2015; Marrs 1996). In the City of Hyde, the fire department gets more calls for service than ever before—almost 100,000 annually. Most of these calls, however, are now for EMS or other emergencies. In 2000, for example, only 5 percent of all calls to the HFD were for actual fires.12 In the fiscal year 1962/1963, by contrast, the HFD responded to just over 40,000 calls for service with 41 percent of the calls involving actual fires.

106   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity Paramilitarism also impeded investigative and prevention functions within the HFD. Unlike suppression, HFD inspectors and investigators worked individually, and did not respond to emergencies. The values of obeisance, loyalty, and bravery, so prized within suppression, played no role in the Division of Fire Prevention and Investigation. Here, inspectors and investigators needed to be self-­ directed, e.g., officers were not with them on an inspection or incident site to tell them what to do. Furthermore, while one’s rank and job skills were closely aligned in the HFD’s suppression ranks, this was not necessarily the case in the BFI or BFP where underlings might actually have more training than their superiors. The job of the inspector or investigator was also much less physically demanding than that of the firefighter, and required different kinds of skills than those used on the fire-­lines. For BFI personnel this meant knowing how to detect the cause of a fire and helping the police apprehend arsonists. In the case of the BFP this meant knowing how to be a regulatory official. In both units, paperwork was a fact of life—a duty disdained among firefighters and the responsibility only among officers in the suppression ranks. Still, the normative foundations of the core–periphery distinction meant that inspectors and investigators were immersed in an occupational subculture marked by the love of fighting fires—what Kaprow (1991) referred to as “magical work” (also see Tebeau 2003; Chetkovich 1997). One firefighter turned inspector told me “you come into the fire department to do one thing, to fight fires. The last thing you want to do is go out and inspect buildings.” One HFD inspector, interviewed about performance problems in the BFP in 1981, told a reporter that “he can’t stay away from fires.” He described “the thrill of racing through the streets in gleaming red engines,” along with the “billowing smoke, the crackle of the flames, the glow of red against the sky.” One former fire marshal lamented the life in prevention versus the life in suppression telling me “there is no job in the world like a fireman. The fella that hangs off the rear step . . . that was the best job in the world. You had no worries. No cares. You did your job and everything was fine.” After leaving the BFP, however, the marshal told me: All I did was walk out the door, close the door and leave. I had no feeling about it. If I had to walk away from the firehouse I would cry all the way home. I loved that job. Everybody would rather be in the firehouse. Furthermore, one’s status within the HFD was usually conferred based on one’s performance on the fire-­lines. The most courageous firefighters were known as “smokeaters,” known for their eagerness to be first into a burning building and their capacity for withstanding smoke and other noxious fumes over an extended time period.13 Smokeaters also sought assignments with those firehouses responding to the most fire incidents, which themselves carried reputations. One such firehouse in Hyde was nicknamed “Animal House,” and was featured in a 1981 newspaper article. Its reputation was personified by one of its captains, “Crazy Bob,” who told a reporter that he and his men “like to go to fires. That’s what we’re down here for. We’re just waiting around so we can put one out.”

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   107 The firehouse itself was also an essential fixture in defining the culture of the HFD. Here there was a camaraderie that was reinforced by 24-hour work shifts where firefighters ate, slept, spent leisure time and swapped personal stories with one another. In her work on the Oakland Fire Department, Chetkovich (1997, 27) argued that “working a twenty-­four hour shift not only puts firefighters into close, extended contact with one another, but it also isolates them from the regular work-­home-leisure cycle of most other people.” A similar sense of solidarity was expressed by men interviewed for a 1982 photography book on the HFD: There is a closeness that is hard to describe . . . partly because we spend a lot of time together, almost as much as with our families. But more than that it’s because we get in these life and death struggles, combat situations really, and we all know we can depend on each other. These guys have bailed each other out so many times there is no way to count it. You get in a jam, they will be coming for you, no matter what. “A firefighter only trusts another firefighter,” one lieutenant told me, and chose my status as a civilian to make his point by saying “you walk into a firehouse and you are not going to get the same goddamn respect” as a firefighter gets. From its beginnings, Hyde’s Division of Fire Prevention and Investigation played a peripheral role to the core. In the words of one of my informants, fire prevention and investigation had long been considered the “bastard children” of the fire service. Still, fire departments needed a mechanism for “taking care of their own,” and fire prevention and investigation units provided a large pool of “light duty” assignments away from the stresses of emergency response. These positions were especially important for aging firefighters, who found it more and more difficult to endure the physicality required of fighting fires. Light duty assignments were also important for firefighters who were injured, became sick, or became addicted to alcohol and drugs. Firefighters also needed alternative assignments to recover from the mental trauma of witnessing tragedy, not only resulting from fires but from vehicle and other accidents. One firefighter in the HFD told me that he could not eat meat for a year after being exposed to the smell of a burned human. Within the HFD, the Division of Fire Prevention and Investigation provided a career option for those unwilling or unable to endure a life in fire suppression. This was mostly the case for older firefighters nearing retirement who had never been promoted out of the rank of a line firefighter into an officer assignment. Inspectors and investigators were considered a promotion according to civil service pay-­grades and one would get more money once one retired, compared with those at the rank of firefighter. One might also have the opportunity for a promotion to an officer’s rank within the BFP and BFI. For most, however, the Division of Fire Prevention and Investigation was where one was “put out to pasture.” This was especially the case for the BFP. One officer told me “old timers like me came down [to BFP] for two or three years, and ‘pfsst’ [waves his

108   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity hand], inspector’s pension.” Turnover was as high as 40 percent. Inspectors showed little interest in their work. Rather, they would “show up, do their job, and get out.” As a consequence of the core–periphery distinction, inspectors and investigators received little formal training to do their work. Captain Day, who supervised the BFI off and on throughout the 1980s told me that when he was a rookie investigator he was given a “flashlight and pat on the back.” Most of what he learned on the job, Day told me, was through spending time with veteran investigators, his own experience, and his former training as an electrician. Lentini noted as late as 2012 that training for public fire investigators in the American fire service remains “on the job.” In the BFP officers told new inspectors that their jobs were mostly about “common sense.” An officer who had spent 16 years in suppression but then transferred to prevention told me: When I first went to the BFP, I wanted to see what they do. I didn’t have the faintest idea. Unless you are in the BFP or BFI you don’t have the faintest idea of what we do. That is the fault of the department. The department has no interest whatsoever in prevention and investigation. It is therefore unsurprising that both the BFI and BFP had dubious reputations within the HFD as a whole. The BFI, for example, was created after World War  II as a way to relieve battalion chiefs of having to expend the time and energy on determining fire cause and all this entailed with regard to pursuing arson and other responsibilities. Many chiefs still believed that they were better able to determine fire cause than an investigator. One suppression chief commented that BFI investigators could “not find sand at the beach.” Also adding to the status problems of the BFI and BFP were discipline issues. A firefighter turned inspector or investigator was left largely unsupervised when working in the field, and would usually have their own vehicle. Such a work situation was much different from that of a firefighter in the firehouse who is always under close supervision and had no way to get around but on a fire truck, engine or rescue unit. One fire marshal named Mendoza, in particular, became especially concerned about discipline when he became head of the BFP in the early 1980s, claiming that the unit had some “real slugs” that spent their time “boozin’ all day.” Suppression chiefs also complained to Mendoza that BFP inspectors were seen in the field “out of uniform,” which usually meant that they were not wearing their military style “caps” (what inspectors themselves called “saucers”). To tighten up discipline in the BFP, officers imposed periodic inspections where inspectors would have to dress in full uniform and clean their desks. The attention to discipline was ironic given that so many inspectors and investigators were otherwise undertrained for the jobs they were performing. Another structural element that marked the core–periphery distinction was the dual promotional system that existed within the HFD. People could only climb the ladder to a chief position in the HFD if they were in suppression. This included the rank of fire marshal, a position that was filled by transferring a

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   109 division chief from suppression. In the meantime, officers in BFI or BFP could only go as far as captain within these units. And, if they wanted to become fire marshal they would have to resign their post and go back to the rank of firefighter. This logic made sense in that the skill-­set required of being in prevention and investigation was distinct from that in suppression. But the same logic did not work in reverse. In short, those made fire marshal often knew nothing about what fire inspectors and investigators did. One fire marshal, for example, told me how he was serving in suppression one day and then running the Division of Fire Investigation and Prevention the next: I was called down on a Tuesday. Told that I would have the day (to train) on Wednesday, and my predecessor talked to me for about four hours of the day that I went down there, and that was the induction that I got. The Underside of the Culture of the Core While the firefighting subculture could be viewed as functional for breeding an esprit de corps, it also encouraged what Gouldner (1954, 45) called an “indulgency pattern” where workers sought to be “left alone” to do their jobs without interference from outsiders, including city administrators. Firefighters took their heroic persona to heart, and they saw the firehouse as an insular space where they could be left alone. Reports of drinking or firefighters traveling to other firehouses to socialize would circulate through the HFD, but firefighters saw this as a necessary coping strategy for a high-­stress job. Firefighters even celebrated their indulgences “off the job” in a widely circulated poem about dogs from different labor unions being asked to perform tricks using a dozen cookies and milk. The auto worker’s dog was named “T-­Square,” and he did math calculations on ways to divide the cookies. A steelworker’s dog named “Slide-­Rule” fetched the cookies and divided them into different piles. An oil and chemical worker’s dog named “Measure” was able to “get a quart of milk and pour seven ounces into a ten ounce glass,” to have with the cookies. Finally there was the dog from the firefighters’ union named “Coffee Break.” He “ate the cookies, drank the milk, and screwed the other three dogs, claimed he injured his back, filed for workmen’s compensation and went home on sick leave.” The occupational subculture of firefighting could also be construed as problematic for parallel worlds of prevention and investigation. Tebeau (2003, 128) has contrasted the physical and passionate enterprise of physically fighting a fire with the “dispassionate and rational” world of fire prevention. Where the fire-­fight involves the human drama of protecting the community from disaster, fire prevention largely goes unnoticed, relying on “built-­in” protection systems, code standards, and actuarial methods of reducing fire-­risk. Within the HFD, the culture of the core devalued work that did not involve the tangible act of fighting a blaze or responding to some other kind of an emergency. One BFP lieutenant mimicked this attitude in the first person, saying “we’re gonna stand here and suck up smoke and show what he-­men we are and fight fires, save lives and be heroes.”

110   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity Socialization into the firefighting subculture could also mean facing a variety of informal loyalty tests that might take on ethnic, racial or sexual tones. Chetkovich (1997, 61) has documented the “gendered” aspects of firefighting, detectable through the initiation rituals that recruits undergo. Women, in particular, are subject to “name-­calling, heckling, practical jokes, and various forms of subjugation” that are used by the firefighting community to “test the newcomer’s character and composure.” Likewise, in the HFD, firefighters had to face “having their legs broken” to see if they had a “thick skin,” a trait that was viewed as functional for assuring loyalty in the face of high-­stress emergency work. As an outsider, I was also subject to these tests. For example, at a school fire one day fire investigators had retrieved some blank hall passes used for students and brought them back to headquarters. One of these was presented to me with the statement that “Barry is allowed in short and kosher areas only” (I am both Jewish and short). If I had complained about the incident, of course, my workmates would have shunned me as untrustworthy. While ethnic or sexual humor was explained away by firefighters as a method of building solidarity, it could prove to be problematic for investigation and particularly prevention. Fire inspectors spent their days not within the insular and joke-­infused world of the firehouse, but rather in the public realm where they would be interacting with Hyde’s incredibly diverse citizenry of women, persons of color, a growing gay population and immigrants. Such contradictions between the firefighting culture and the job of fire prevention would become manifest in particular events. After one black inspector discovered a swastika on his desk, he went to the media with his find, challenging the heroic and politically neutral image of the firefighter by telling a reporter “these people” (meaning firefighters) “are protecting your lives . . . what happens when they drive up to your house to respond and see that you are black or Jewish?” The core and periphery in the HFD resulted in a dynamic of institutional selectivity that prioritized the functions of fire suppression over prevention and the need to adequately account for what was causing fires in the first place (i.e., investigation). This dynamic, I argue, played a determinant role in shaping the social problem of fire in Hyde, particularly as it occurred during the 1970s.

Institutional Selectivity and Arson Control The BFI’s responsibility in Hyde was to determine the cause and origin of larger fires (over two alarms) and to conduct preliminary criminal investigations in the event of an incendiary incident. For most small incidents battalion chiefs conducted the cause and origin investigations given that these tended to be self-­ explanatory (e.g., a cooking accident). The exception was when there was a death. A cause and origin investigation begins as officials arrive on a scene and note any telltale smells or visuals that might indicate why a fire started. Once it is extinguished, investigators attempt to finalize their determination of cause. Theoretically, investigators are to use deductive reasoning, ruling out obvious

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   111 factors that might have led to an incident (see Lentini 2012). But in the case of many accidental and especially smaller fires, building occupants simply tell fire officials how an incident started (e.g., a cooking accident), and this gets listed as the official determination. Short of such information, investigators must complete a thorough examination of a fire scene. This entails scrutinizing burn patterns, determining points of origin (e.g., mattresses or other upholstery, curtains, heating systems, etc.), looking for indicators of flammable liquids or vapors, looking for telltale signs of arson (e.g., multiple points of origin) and collecting, as needed, evidence for forensic analysis. Investigators are also supposed to interview the first firefighters and civilian witnesses on the fire scene to record their observations. If the BFI found evidence of arson the case would be turned over to the Hyde Police Department (HPD).14 It was at this level that the organizational deficiencies imposed by the core–periphery distinction became apparent. The HPD argued, for example, that the BFI’s cause and origin reports were insufficient for establishing that arson had actually occurred. An assistant district attorney assigned to the ATF told me in an interview that “the most frequent problem that prosecuting attorneys face in arson cases is the lack of evidence that arson was committed at all.” Although his comments partially referenced the technical problem of evidence in an arson case being altered or destroyed at a fire scene, he was also remarking on the competency of the BFI. For example, he told me that “a good fire investigator must have a good set of skills, must be part cop, part scientist, firefighter and structural engineer,” but these skills were often lacking among BFI investigators. Police officers handling arson cases complained that cause and origin reports were often “full of opinion,” “incomplete,” and failed to “do away with all possibilities that a fire was accidental before concluding it was incendiary.” BFI investigators also failed to get sufficient forensic evidence to establish the use of accelerants or the presence of other combustibles. But the impediments to arson investigation also involved policing attitudes and procedures. As in other jurisdictions, police officers saw arson as a fire department matter, and as a result tended to give it short shrift. When arson cases did get assigned in the police department, they were channeled to a “general works” bureau that also handled low-­priority FBI-­designated “Part 2” criminal cases.15 This prompted HFD officials to complain that arson got no more attention from the police than did bicycle thefts. The Arson Task Force The rising arson and fire rates of the 1970s created pressure on the HFD to improve detection and prosecution capabilities. Chief Brophy had wanted to form an inter-­organizational task force of fire, police, and assistant district attorneys (ADAs) in 1976 but was rebuffed by the HPD. By 1978, however, arson was redesignated a Part I crime and this made the police in many jurisdictions around the United States more willing to cooperate as investigative partners.

112   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity It also helped that the federal government was willing to subsidize the formation of task forces. The creation of Hyde’s Arson Task Force (ATF ) was announced by Chief Brophy in 1978. It would comprise all BFI investigators, HPD inspectors, and a specially-­designated ADA. The ATF would be funded, in part, by a grant from the U.S. Law Enforcement Assistance Association (LEAA), who would pick up the tab for non-­HFD personnel and other ancillary costs. The federal government was promoting task forces as a method for overcoming inter-­organizational impediments to arson investigation and facilitating a working relationship among public safety officials. Brophy saw the ATF as a means of forging linkages with local FBI, U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and IRS officers, who would assist the HFD on fraud investigations. Brophy also saw the task force as a concept for introducing citizen input into the fire control process, creating a number of community-­ based “arson task forces” made up of neighborhood representatives and local interest groups, including the city’s business and gay communities. As an operational matter, all ATF personnel would be housed together under the same roof. This would allow them to work together on cases and to learn each other’s procedures. The LEAA would pay for ATF members, including police officers and the ADA, to receive formal training in fire cause and origin at the National Fire Academy in Maryland. BFI investigators would also assist police officers with criminal investigations, and get special training in criminal procedure and evidence search and seizure law. Effective leadership, too, provided by Captain Day and a new lieutenant promoted from within the BFI, named Rickert, provided a sense of integrity and mission to the unit. Rickert had received formal training in cause and origin determination at the National Fire Academy in Maryland, and was now one of its instructors. The most respected investigator within the HFD, he helped investigators to construct effective investigative narratives linking a chain of evidence to a fire cause determination. The LEAA also paid for the funding of an “arson information management system” (AIMS), a computerized intelligence database used to track the locations where arsons occurred and relevant information surrounding an incident such as the name of a building owner, lessee, or the person calling in an incident (Chapter 3, this volume). Furthermore, the ATF was to take advantage of a new law passed at the state level that granted insurers immunity from lawsuits for privacy rights violations if they shared policy and claims information with public officials short of the execution of a subpoena. If ATF officials suspected fraud then it would now be much easier for them to obtain insurance information in the interest of building a case. The formation of the ATF went a long way toward reforming the arson investigation process in Hyde. Cause and origin determinations were viewed as more reliable, and the BFI was accorded more respect among ranking suppression and police officers. The HPD and Hyde district attorney had committed personnel to work exclusively on arson investigations, and gone were the inter-­organizational turf squabbles that marked the pre-­Task Force era. The positive impact of the ATF was reflected in an increase in the clearance rate for arson crime from

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   113 12 percent in 1978 to 19 percent in 1984. When it came to establishing community relations, however, the ATF was less successful, remaining insulated from citizen input and perceived as unresponsive to fire safety concerns in those neighborhoods such as Oaklawn, Southside, and Midtown that had seen the heaviest concentrations of arson. The Arson Early Warning System In 1978 Chief Brophy made a surprising announcement to the press saying that “we used to look at arson fires as the work of poor people seeking revenge, but we now think many arson fires to be white collar crimes.” Brophy also validated the speculation thesis, claiming that the motive behind many incidents had to do with “individuals bent on lowering property values.” There were primarily two reasons why Brophy had changed his position on what was causing Hyde’s arsons. One was that Hyde’s neighborhoods-­oriented mayor and a member of the HFD’s Fire Commission, a prominent Latina named Riegos, sided with activists in Southside who claimed that the fires in their neighborhoods were linked to either arson-­for-profit or fire hazards created by owner neglect. A political animal who wished to keep his job, Brophy thought it wise to acknowledge the potentiality of arson-­for-profit as a prominent issue afflicting Hyde’s changing neighborhoods. Two, arson-­for-profit was gaining more and more attention as the primary cause of urban fires (U.S. Senate 1978; U.S. Senate 1977). If Brophy was to be relevant in national policy circles, and if he wanted to attract federal dollars to support fire control efforts in Hyde, he would have to embrace arson-­for-profit as one of his causes. The reality was that Hyde had never prosecuted an arson-­for-profit case throughout the 1970s, and no member of the ATF or HFD could recall anyone ever being prosecuted for the crime during previous decades either. To put this in perspective, between 1972 and 1979 there were 3,459 confirmed incendiary fire incidents in the City of Hyde. Given that arson-­for-profit was on the rise in urban America during the 1970s, it seemed implausible that Hyde was free of the crime (U.S. Senate 1977). Promising to address the arson-­for-profit issue, Brophy was able to obtain a grant from the United States Fire Administration in 1979 to develop an “arson early warning system” (AEWS) that would seek to gain intelligence about both arson-­for-profit and arson-­by-neglect and develop strategies to prevent their occurrence. The AEWS proposal was written by a fire inspector named Redmond who was pulled from the BFP to serve as Arson Task Force “Coordinator.” It addressed concerns over the links between real estate speculation and arson especially in a district south of Hyde’s downtown where a new convention center was under construction. The proposal predicted that “old buildings” in the district, many of them residential hotels, would become “prone to destruction by fire by design” [sic] as their land values skyrocketed in response to development incentives created by the convention center. The HFD would complete a “building-­by-building profile” of the blocks surrounding the convention center

114   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity site using public records as a way to gauge the arson risk of particular properties. Those determined to be “target-­hazards” (at-­risk) would prompt the BFP to “task force” with inspectors from various enforcement agencies. Owners would face “criminal action” for outstanding code violations. The tax assessor would also “tag” properties with “arson indicators” where sales and tax arrears would be “noted.” Insurers of designated high-­risk properties would also be notified. Redmond, however, did not want to run the AEWS. It was complete serendipity, then, that I called Chief Brophy on the telephone one day in 1979 just after the AEWS had been funded. I had just moved to Hyde from Boston where I had spent over a year engaged in internships for the Massachusetts Arson Prevention Task Force and Urban Educational Systems (UES). My hiring as a consultant to run the AEWS, however, was resisted by Captain Day, who saw Redmond as “Brophy’s man” and resented his involvement with the workings of the ATF. Furthermore, Day and police officials were concerned about bringing a civilian into what was considered a law enforcement operation. My first task in developing the AEWS was to identify the variables predictive of arson or major alarm fires, and this required doing background research comparing properties that had major incendiary or suspicious incidents with those that had not. Instead of examining the convention center district, however, I chose to sample 227 properties from Oaklawn (n = 49), Midtown (n = 65), and Southside (n = 39) because these were the most fire-­prone districts. An additional 74 residential properties (all rentals) were also included in the study not because of their location but because of their association with owners identified by neighborhood groups or HFD officials as connected with suspicious incidents or those associated with arson-­by-neglect. Sampled properties were then divided into three groups: those that had had incendiary fires, those that had had accidental fires only, and those that had had no fires at all between the years 1974 to 1979.16 In 1981 I released the findings of the AEWS research outlining which variables were most predictive of arson and major alarm fire incidents. These included the presence of vacant units or structures, serious code violations, tax arrears and utility liens, and for owners, fires at other properties. In addition, consistent with the speculation thesis, the largest fires were associated with properties that sold frequently over time and whose values were on the increase, i.e., indicating profitable versus depressed real estate markets. Also consistent with the speculation thesis, the higher property values associated with these fire-­prone properties were associated with high debt to equity ratios, particularly through the use of multiple mortgages. The study also revealed that there was an increased likelihood for greater alarm fires on those properties where the government has been forced to file civil injunctions for the failure to correct housing and fire code violations. As stipulated in Redmond’s proposal, the AEWS developed a list of “target-­hazards” for purposes of taking remedial action by way of stepped-­up code enforcement or other interventions. Nevertheless, neither the HFD nor the ATF had developed any measures for these purposes, resulting in much of AEWS’s information being shelved, at least for purposes of before-­the-fact interventions.

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   115 The AEWS would continue to be used in after-­the-fact investigations. Chief Brophy, for example, enlisted the AEWS to assist the FBI in developing a case against a local contractor and landlord named Mancini (pseudonym) under the “RICO” or Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Mancini and his associates had some kind of ownership or reconstruction interest in at least 24 properties in the City of Hyde during the years 1974 to 1979, and had experienced fires in half of these. Captain Day wanted to use the AEWS as a way to verify the accuracy of property ownership information listed on fire incident reports. Taken at a fire scene, witnesses, often tenants, wrongly identified lessees or management companies as “owners.”17 If HFD officials wanted to verify ownership, they would have to either call or walk over to the tax assessor’s office—a task that was not routinely done. Day also asked me to train ATF personnel on how to do public records research. In the event of a major structural fire, I would take it upon myself to look into the background of the property and its owner, perhaps requesting insurance information. I would then discuss my findings with ATF investigators, offering to help them move forward with a fraud inquiry if warranted. In one case, for example, I worked with a police inspector named Bill on a suspected parcel clearance arson that had destroyed most of a city block in Midtown containing SROs and “red light” retail (later, a luxury hotel was built on the site). Bill asked me to sort out the ownership of the various burned properties on the block. Arson-­for-Profit as a Non-­Issue Bill and I would also work together on a four-­alarm fire in Oaklawn that had previously belonged to an individual named Hayes. Shortly before the fire, public records showed that Hayes had sold the property to an owner who had made little down payment to purchase the property. To finance the sale, two large private mortgages were executed, one with Hayes as the mortgagee. Hayes therefore retained a substantial financial interest in the property when it burned, and stood to gain the most from insurance proceeds because the note he financed was for the largest amount. The Hayes case was typical as an arson-­for-profit scenario. An owner would take his or her name off the legal title of a property by selling it—at least on paper—to a “straw” owner. A mortgage—again on paper—would be executed to establish one’s financial interest in the property and therefore a right to insurance payouts. Beyond the Hayes, Midtown and some other select cases, however, arson-­forprofit had been relegated to the status of a “non-­issue”18 as an investigative matter within the ATF. Investigators would tell me that arson-­for-profit was an “east coast problem,” a code word denoting the Mafia. Captain Day used to tell me that any arson fraud existing in Hyde was limited to the “housewife that needs a new kitchen.” Among other investigators there was a feeling that arson-­ for-profit was an “insurance company matter,” and still others explained it away as a “good business decision” used by owners to get out from under a bad investment. An assistant chief who had taken over Captain Day’s position as head of

116   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity the ATF in 1981 was quoted in a local newspaper as saying “we’ve never arrested anyone for arson-­for-profit [in Hyde], mainly because there’s not much of it here.” Underlying these attitudes were procedural biases within local law enforcement that were oriented toward solving street crimes versus white collar crimes, a phenomenon also discussed in Chapter 3. After an incendiary incident was confirmed in Hyde, investigators would set out to identify the “torch” by canvassing neighbors, interviewing witnesses, and talking with potential victims. The identity of a suspect, to the extent that it occurred, would be provided by a victim or witness, and sometimes the arsonist himself or herself would confess. This process was more problematic in the case of arson-­for-profit. In the words of one ADA: “I can’t say arson-­for-profit does not occur [in Hyde] because I’m sure it does,” but “we tend to get [catch] more crazies” for arson because “these people are less careful.” The professional torch, the ADA went on, could light a blaze “without getting caught.” Such solvability barriers went a long way to explain how Mancini had eluded capture. Two major fires associated with the contractor were blamed on “flammable vapors ignited by open flame,” which occurred when a fireplace was lit to speed up the drying of paint. In another incident, a fire was blamed on debris piled around a hot water heater. All of these incidents were determined to be accidental, despite their suspicious circumstances. Either way, the HPD would not pursue a case without an incendiary fire designation. Finally, the investigative orientation of local law enforcement agencies around street crimes meant there was pressure on officers to drop cases that could not be expeditiously cleared through arrests. White collar criminality was inherently more complex, and investigators required time to sort out evidence and look for clues of criminality (Pontell et al. 1994; Shapiro 1990; Katz 1979). As a result, such cases tended to get ignored by local law enforcement agencies (Williams 2006). The detection of arson-­for-profit would therefore require an investigative methodology and timeline designed for identifying white collar offending. Investigators would have to build “paper trails” of legal and financial records that might suggest fraudulent motives behind an incident or incidents. These included tax arrears, multiple liens, high debt/equity ratios, civil injunctions, including those to abate code violations, significant increases or decreases in property value, frequent property transfers, an owner’s/mortgagee’s history of fires at other properties and increases in insurance coverage. Nevertheless, Captain Day, Lieutenant Rickert and another of the police officers assigned to Hyde’s ATF (nicknamed “The Rock”) considered such indicators “circumstantial evidence,” and saw them as irrelevant for their purposes. Although it was true that circumstantial evidence was insufficient to make an arrest, it could provide leads for further case development. By not taking paper trails seriously the ATF had constructed a “blind spot” in its investigative agenda that virtually guaranteed that arson-­for-profit would go undetected. This was especially the case as it applied to the utilization of insurance information about a fire incident. The ATF had the capability of requesting insurance information about any incident for which they

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   117 had suspicion. Yet, the only insurance information ever requested by the ATF was through me in my attempts to get investigators to look at potential fraud cases, and I was the only one to examine this information. Otherwise, it sat at the bottom of a cabinet in the ATF ’s office unexamined by fire and police officials. Day had argued that arson-­for-profit could be detected and controlled primarily through technological tools, i.e., the AIMS system. Because AIMS information could be cross-­listed, Day argued, it would be easy for investigators to see if certain owners had been involved with fire incidents at other properties. Day also proposed that the property and owner background information being collected manually by the AEWS be included as an “online” interface with AIMS. For a time, the AIMS did include property ownership information provided by Hyde’s department of Real Property Assessment. This allowed for a cross-­check of the property owner information collected by HFD officials at fire scenes. The AIMS also interfaced with Hyde’s Tax Collector, providing information on tax arrears associated with a particular parcel. But eventually these interfaces would be discontinued because of cost and because The Rock convinced Captain Day that because AIMS was technically a law enforcement database it should not be linked to other government offices where information could be accessed by non-­ criminal justice officials or the public. In the end, the only useful information contained in the AIMS database pertinent to the investigation of fraud had to do with whether an owner had had fires at other properties. Ultimately, then, the AIMS database proved insufficient for tracking fraud. Furthermore, as a matter of training, ATF investigators lacked the training in real estate, banking, and insurance to recognize the existence of white collar wrongdoing. When Bill and I worked the Hayes case, he expressed concern that he would not be able to recognize a fraud even if presented with evidence that one had occurred. Bill was therefore nervous about interviewing landlords and other business actors who might recognize his lack of knowledge about financial matters. My training of investigators in public records research was to partially rectify this problem by showing investigators which documents to collect and explaining why they were important. However, Day eventually reversed his earlier decision to have me train all investigators, arguing that it was not “cost-­ effective” to have fire and police investigators “spend their time doing research in government offices.” Instead, I was to train one investigator named Rick. After a couple of sessions at the County Recorder with Rick, however, it became clear that he had limited patience or skill for doing research. He was simply, as they liked to say in the HFD, a “warm body” that was made available to do a task that no one else wanted to do. The question remains as to whether the relegation of arson-­for-profit to a “non-­event” was a function of elite influence—either directly or indirectly—over governmental actions. The Hayes fire, for example, involved the brother of a prominent local attorney, and real estate interests tended to wield both political and economic power in Hyde. From the standpoint of a “two-­dimensional” view of power, elite actors may be able to manipulate governmental process in their favor, or governmental actors may choose to avoid actions that invite the

118   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity retaliation or scrutiny of the politically or economically powerful (Lukes 2005, 29; Crenson 1971). ATF members were certainly aware that it was risky for them personally and for their representative agencies to pursue investigations directed at key elites. At the same time, there was no evidence that elites had attempted to manipulate the structures and procedures of the ATF, nor was there any evidence that fear of elite retaliation caused investigators to ignore fraud cases. Bill would eventually drop his inquiry into the Hayes case, for example, not because of the reputations of the principals involved but rather because of procedural concerns, i.e., that he did not have the time or the expertise necessary for uncovering white collar criminality. “Jawboning Against Arson” I indicated earlier that neither the HFD nor the ATF had developed any fire prevention strategies pertaining to AEWS-­identified target-­hazard structures. This changed in 1981 after a BFP district inspector named Tom began working with the AEWS. Tom was a former police officer and close to retirement. His objective was to work as an arson investigator but there were no spots available. AEWS was therefore the next best thing, allowing him to work with the ATF, specifically from the standpoint of implementing arson prevention strategies through the use of code enforcement and other types of interventionist measures. The story of Tom’s role in the AEWS provides instructive insights into the functioning (or non-­functioning) of municipal code enforcement. I have argued in this book that code enforcement agencies may be considered a part of the welfare state in that they promote social rights, and in particular, the protection of low-­income tenants from the risks and dangers associated with substandard living conditions. Nevertheless, while code enforcement standards may sound tough “on the books,” they are often lax in practice (Davis 1998; Hartmann et al. 1974). This was certainly true in Hyde, where the municipal code allowed for the use of criminal penalties (e.g., fines, jail, or both) to sanction violators of local housing, health and safety violations. Nevertheless, the district attorney for the City of Hyde maintained a “no prosecutions” policy, based on the premise that regulatory infractions constituted civil “liability” but not criminal culpability, a position that has resonance with the view that white collar offenses should not be considered criminal acts absent evidence of willfulness or intent (Frank 1983, 533). But there was also a political dimension to using civil or administrative sanctions to abate code violations in that they symbolized a more “cooperative” government posture as this pertained to gaining regulatory compliance (Scholz 1991, 115). This was especially the case in the 1980s when penal remedies for handling health, housing, and workplace regulations were criticized as impeding economic life and criminalizing otherwise well-­intentioned financial actors (Bardach and Kagan 1982). Hyde, like many other municipalities, therefore maintained a civil model of code enforcement. Non-­compliant owners received a “notice of violation” stipulating that they would have a certain amount of time, usually between 30 to 90

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   119 days, to correct infractions. If a landlord failed to comply with HFD orders, the case would be turned over to Hyde’s city attorney, who would seek a court injunction against an owner that would revoke their occupancy permit. If the owner did not comply, they could, by law, be jailed for contempt although I never saw this happen in my five years with the ATF. The civil remedies process could stretch on for months and sometimes years. Abatement complaints often required the correction of numerous violations, and this could involve substantial remodeling. If owners could show “good faith” by doing some work or simply getting permits, judges were likely to grant them extensions to complete necessary work. Courts also tried to empathize with an owner’s financial situation, and would use this as a basis for granting extensions as well. Other times owners could not be found or were unresponsive, delaying the abatement process. Furthermore, inspectors themselves might serve as weak advocates for the state, unwilling to take a hard line against an owner. Sutherland’s (1949) classic on white collar crime found that the use of civil remedies advantaged economic elites by allowing them to avoid fines or even jail, representing a class-­bias in law enforcement. This observation was not lost on tenants, who argued that Hyde’s code enforcement process left them unprotected and vulnerable to fire hazards and substandard living conditions. Shortly after the Sixteen Arms tragedy an alternative newspaper published an investigative article entitled “Who’s to Blame For the Firetraps,” reporting that 700 multiple-­unit residential properties in the district had been designated substandard by the city’s Bureau of Building Inspection (BBI). The article concluded that “firetrap hotels and apartments exist because landlords know city agencies will allow them to get away with life-­threatening violations,” and demanded that the Hyde district attorney pursue criminal charges and fines against Hyde’s “20 biggest scofflaw landlords.” The district attorney, however, reiterated the no prosecutions policy. Tom’s work for the AEWS attempted to circumvent Hyde’s normal regulatory process through a process BFP officials called “Accelerated Code Enforcement” (ACE). Tom would use AEWS information from both the BFP and the BBI to learn about a property, allowing him to overcome the problem of the two agencies sometimes not knowing about actions that they were taking against a particular property or owner. Two, the AEWS file would provide Tom with the ownership history of a property and its use of actual deeds and mortgages would allow him to discover the proper names of elusive absentee owners that might attempt to hide behind corporate names or agents. Three, Tom invoked the police powers of Hyde’s fire marshal to compel immediate compliance with the fire code. Unlike other inspectors, Tom would make sure that he appeared at injunction hearings to oppose official work extensions for unresponsive landlords. He would also take the opportunity to encourage judges to invoke available criminal remedies as a way of exhibiting the state’s commitment to remedying severe code violation matters. Tom also sought more unorthodox prevention strategies. For example, because the AEWS file contained information on the lenders and insurance

120   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity companies associated with target-­hazard properties, Tom would call these institutions as a way to “fill them in” about existing fire hazards. Tom was fond of telling stories about how he would call an insurer on a “Friday night,” saying that “he hated to ruin their weekend,” but that one of their exposures was facing an imminent fire. Tom also used his own personal interactions with landlords or their agents as a way to make his concerns known. “I don’t want to have a fire in here,” he would tell them, or “a lot of people could die in here, including firefighters, and I’m trying to keep that from happening.” These comments, of course, were a kind of bluff, but Tom hoped that they would serve to deter both arson-­for-profit and arson-­by-neglect. Tom was also willing to work with local housing activists, who were largely ignored by other BFP officials, to correct fire hazards. Tom was also media-­savvy. He was not averse to “inviting” reporters to witness the hazardous conditions existing on particular properties, leading to a number of locally televised pieces on the AEWS. An insurance industry underwriting journal also carried a cover story entitled “Hyde Arson Early Warning System Discovers Hotel Set Up for Torching,” complete with photos of Tom, me, Chief Brophy and others. It focused on a residential hotel in Midtown, called the Emperor, which had been in the local news as an example of how owners were trying to illegally evict tenants to subvert conversion ordinances. The Emperor was a block away from a new multi-­million dollar luxury tourist hotel development and was in substantial disrepair. Its owner claimed that the only way for him to make needed improvements was to evict the tenants. The tenants claimed that the owner’s agents were using threats to get them out, “busting into their rooms with guns and billy clubs and telling them that they had to be out by the end of the week,” and also turning off the utilities. They had obtained a temporary restraining order to halt evictions and to restore building services. The Emperor nevertheless became totally vacant, with rumors circulating that tenants had been paid to leave. An AEWS investigation found that the land on which the vacated structure sat was worth substantially more than the building itself and that the fire insurance had been recently increased from 250,000 to 700,000 dollars. Tom called the owner and his insurance company into HPD headquarters to express his concerns about the Emperor, telling them that “he did not want a fire in there,” and that he would monitor the property. Tom’s tactics made him somewhat of a cause célèbre locally. One local social columnist did a piece on him in which he called his tactics on behalf of the AEWS “jawboning against arson.” The increased media attention to the AEWS meant that insurers began to refer properties to the program for intervention purposes. Despite the growing notoriety of the AEWS, the HFD was still unwilling to fund a civilian to do property research unless outside funding was forthcoming. Federal government support had become more and more difficult to access with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and subsequent funding cuts at the USFA. The message to insurance companies was that if they wanted to benefit from the AEWS, a publically sponsored program, then they would have to help support it.

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   121 Their response was a two-­year reprieve funded through contributions that would be proportional to whatever a company was assessed for the maintenance of the state-­level FAIR Plan program. After this, the companies assumed, the city would absorb the costs of the program into its annual budget. In 1983 both the AEWS and the ATF were credited in the local press for bringing down arson frequencies by one-­third between 1977 and 1983. Nevertheless, long-­term funding, primarily to support a civilian researcher, remained a problem. Furthermore, the program’s relationship with community groups began to sour. This was especially the case with the Southside Community Association (SCA) that was formed in the wake of the Sixteen Arms tragedy. The SCA used Saul Alinsky-­style mobilizing tactics in the interest of encouraging neighborhood residents to organize around the fire issue. The group published a weekly newsletter that included exposés on particular landlords, lessees of SROs, or properties associated with large fires or fire hazards. Depending on the situation, the SCA might imply that an arson-­for-profit had occurred or they would link unabated code violations with an accidental fire, an arson “by-­neglect,” or an elevated safety risk before-­the-fact. Often the HFD would also be targeted for criticism by the SCA for failing in its investigative or regulatory mandate. But the SCA was also a referral source for the AEWS. One such referral was a property owner named Ingram. Two of Ingram’s buildings located in Southside had had large fires, one of which resulted in a fatality. Tom and Lieutenant Rickert asked Ingram to come to HFD headquarters for a meeting just before Christmas in 1983 where he was told that his properties were considered “target-­hazards” and were being monitored by the AEWS. The SCA was not invited to the meeting, however, because HFD officials did not want it to appear as if they were associated with the group. In April of the following year, another of Ingram’s properties had a multiple alarm fire. The lack of a fire sprinkler, a code violation first noted by officials as early as 1978, was blamed for allowing the fire to spread. The SCA held the city largely responsible for the fire, arguing that the AEWS had “frozen out” neighborhood activists from the prevention process and was failing to protect the safety and security of low-­income residents in Hyde. After the Ingram incident the SCA enlisted the support of a state representative from their district to pressure both fire officials and insurance companies to fund an alternative arson early warning program that would be managed by neighborhood groups. The SCA also argued that neighborhood activists would be more effective at preventing fires because they had the ears of tenants who had “inside” information about the fate of particular buildings. Moreover, the tenants did not trust the fire department. One activist told a community newspaper that there is no way that people living in buildings are going to talk to the fire department . . . a guy driving around in a big red car, with a uniform—he’s a cop to them. Those cops don’t have the time it takes to get people’s confidence, and they don’t know the neighborhood.

122   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity The SCA–Ingram situation revealed the failure of Brophy’s plan to have community-­based arson task forces. The SCA wanted to be an equal partner in the fire control process. HFD officials, however, had no intention of getting involved with neighborhood organizations that used very public organizing strategies such as negative media coverage and public protests to get their way. For these reasons, the SCA would also find itself rebuffed by the insurance industry. The Legacy of the AEWS By the mid-­1980s arson was trending downward in Hyde and was no longer a focus of either the media or policy-­makers. In 1982 Chief Brophy left the HFD to take a job with the federal government, and was replaced by Chief Conley. Conley did not consider arson a priority, although he retained the AEWS but defunded the civilian researcher position, arguing that this work could be done by regular inspectors. Conley even assigned another inspector to Tom part-­time for this purpose. But fire prevention inspectors were no more willing to do property research than were ATF personnel. The normative orientation of HFD personnel simply precluded it. As a result, the property research emphasis of the AEWS was diminished, and with it the program’s special concern with arson-­ for-profit. For all intents and purposes, the AEWS had become equivalent to Accelerated Code Enforcement and a focus on abating physical hazards. In 1995, 18 years after Hyde’s “arson nightmare” had first come to light, the contractor Mancini, his son, and a retired Hyde police officer were arrested and charged with arson in connection with a structural fire in a community just east of Hyde. Newspaper coverage of the event noted that Mancini and his associates had earlier been involved with “12 fires that damaged or destroyed 12 buildings” in Hyde throughout the 1980s. The incidents also resulted in two deaths. The Mancini case served to validate suspicions about the existence of arson-­for-profit in Hyde, and further illustrated the institutional selectivity within the ATF, namely, the focus on arson as a street crime as opposed to a white collar crime.

Institutional Selectivity and Unequal Prevention Fire prevention inspectors are code enforcement officials. Therefore, fire prevention divisions are organized more like policing agencies than fire suppression units, and are similar to fire investigation units to the extent that they are both engaged in law enforcement. The duties of Hyde’s Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) involved three primary mechanisms of regulatory oversight. One was permit-­based, meaning that after contractors obtained lawful permission to do construction inspectors would be dispatched to confirm compliance with all applicable state and municipal fire codes. Permit-­based inspections, unlike other types of inspections, were revenue generating through fees charged to property owners for doing plan checking and other types of regulatory oversight. The second level of regulatory oversight was routine, meaning that fire inspectors would conduct periodic “maintenance” inspections of properties to ensure

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   123 compliance with state and municipal fire codes. The third level of oversight was responding to public complaints about fire hazards. The enforcement process was done by either geographically-­based “district” inspectors or by inspectors assigned to specialized responsibilities such as schools or high-­rise. The 1980s marked a significant period of changing service demands on local fire departments, especially concerning suppression and prevention activities. America’s central business districts were being transformed by an explosion of new high-­rise commercial and residential structures, a process which began in the late 1960s and 1970s (Mollenkopf 1983).19 These changes in the urban landscape prompted concerns among fire officials about their capacities to fight fires in such mega-­structures. Rescue operations proved more difficult because upper stories were unreachable by conventional fire truck rescue ladders. This required that building occupants file upwards to rooftops where they would theoretically be rescued by helicopters.20 Suppression itself was also a problem because it was difficult to get water to upper floors, requiring the use of elevators to transport firefighters throughout a structure. These concerns became national news in 1980 when a fire at the brand-­new 26-story MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas killed 85 and injured over 700 (Lindsey 1981). Firefighters were largely ineffective in responding to the blaze, and the spread of fire was exacerbated by a lack of fire sprinklers, code deficiencies, and structural design flaws (Franklin 1981). In the aftermath of the MGM tragedy, many communities passed ordinances requiring the installation of “life-­safety” systems in their larger buildings (Vollmer 1988). Life-­safety systems included two-­way voice communication systems, elevators that would work on emergency power allowing for the transport of persons and equipment during emergencies, protected stairwells or “smoke-­towers” with automatically unlocking doors, and a network of sprinklers, directional fans, ventilation ducts, and smoke and heat alarms. Chiefs would direct the suppression process through command and control centers where computers, linked to sensors distributed throughout a building, could track the movement of fire, rescue, and suppression operations. Life-­safety systems required that firefighters be able to manage increasingly complex technologies, and code enforcement activities became all the more important for assuring that life-­safety systems—and the electronics that they relied on—were functional before-­the-fact (Coffman 2013).21 Fire code violations, such as malfunctioning standpipes, had always impeded the efficiency of fire suppression, but there were also ways to work around these problems (e.g., running hose lines to portable pumpers or other water sources). If a life-­safety system failed in a high-­rise structure, however, fire suppression and rescue operations could be completely shut down. Budgetary constraints emerging in the 1980s also forced a reassessment of the relative importance of fire suppression versus prevention activities. In Hyde, there was less reliance on NBFU grading schedules by the end of the 1960s (see above), and this meant that municipal managers were no longer concerned about spiking insurance premiums if they made cuts to the HFD. In 1969, city managers hired consultants from outside the municipal administrative structure to

124   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity analyze the efficiency and effectiveness of the HFD. The result was a reduction in uniformed firefighters, from 1,780 in 1976 to 1,577 by 1980. Consultants also recommended that the HFD put more resources and manpower into prevention operations, including the use of suppression battalions to do routine residential and commercial inspections when not on emergency calls. Although the HFD initially resisted this recommendation, the agency created the “Community Inspection Program” (CIP) by 1977, assigning suppression units a limited quota of structures to inspect every month. Subsequent fiscal pressures, including a tax roll-­back imposed by state-­wide referendum in 1978, prompted Hyde’s City Council to commission another efficiency audit from outside consultants in 1980. Called the “Flowers Report” for its lead analyst, it called for additional cuts to suppression, including the closing of six firehouses. Such cuts were justified on the basis that there would be greater investment in prevention. Citing evidence from International City Management Associated, Flowers argued that “fire frequency rates appear to be substantially lower in cities where all buildings are inspected annually.” Flowers therefore called for a doubling of the CIP inspection quota. Noting that the BFP was burdened by high turnover rates and uncommitted firefighters nearing retirement, Flowers proposed revamping the unit. This included replacing uniformed HFD officials with a new and young cadre of civilians who chose fire safety (although not necessarily firefighting) as a distinct career path. The HFD, together with Hyde’s local union of the International Association of Firefighters (IAAF ), rejected the Flowers Report. The HFD took the position that fires were fortuitous events whose potential enormity could not be predicted. The possibility of a “big event,” (e.g., a natural or man-­made disaster) meant that firefighter staffing needed to remain high. Fire officials also rejected civilianization on the basis that it was primarily a cost savings measure that would ultimately compromise fire safety in the city. The authors of the Flowers Report retorted that it was the HFD that was compromising fire safety because of the low priority that the agency gave prevention functions. The debates over the Flowers Report were ultimately about the normative order of the HFD and the ways in which it prioritized suppression over other fire control functions. In the words of one of my informants, “suppression looked on prevention as a kind of adversary,” and HFD officials were resistant to any measures that they believed would transform firefighters into building inspectors. A sequence of events that commenced in the wake of the Flowers Report publically embarrassed the HFD and raised questions about its organizational priorities. A two-­alarm blaze occurred that killed a woman. An early witness to the fire ran to a nearby firehouse to report the incident, but found it empty. This was not so unusual in that fire companies are often “out of service” when responding to other calls. It was later revealed, however, that the company was not on another call but rather at a dinner hosted by another firehouse. In response to the apparent failure of the HFD to respond to a major and fatal fire, one of Hyde’s major dailies sponsored a three-­day series in 1981 entitled “Crisis in the HFD.” The series focused on all aspects of the fire department, and included one

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   125 article on the BFP entitled “Fire Inspections Neglected in Hyde: Haphazard, Understaffed.” It described a unit with an antiquated file system, out-­of-date or missing records, and unmanned districts. The article went on to report that: The fire department does not even know with certainty when many multiple­unit dwellings or commercial buildings were last inspected . . . some buildings—[sic] including small apartment houses, flats and even private and public schools—might go for years without a full inspection. “Crisis in the HFD” also noted that the BFP lagged in assuring Hyde’s compliance with new state government-­mandated high-­rise fire safety codes. The High-­Rise Issue and Reform in Hyde Defined by state codes as any structure over 75 feet, high-­rise structures proliferated in Hyde during the 1970s. Its tallest building ever, over 850 feet, was completed in 1972. Hyde had 550 high-­rises by 1980, many more than many American cities of its size, and more were in the planning stage. In 1965, high-­ rise structures accounted for only about 7.8 million square feet of office space in the city. By 1980, however, this figure had quadrupled to 31 million, and did not include the square footage attributable to new high-­rise hotels and residential buildings. What many called the “Manhattanization” of Hyde took front stage politically throughout the 1980s. Proponents of high-­rises argued that they were a necessary aspect of Hyde’s post-­industrial transformation to an economy built around high finance, international trade, and tourism. The buildings would house a well-­paid white collar workforce, many of whom would choose to live in inner city neighborhoods or in the city’s CBD where the high-­rises were concentrated. Opponents argued that high-­rises were invading neighborhoods contiguous to the CBD creating an increase in land values and the displacement of lower-­ income tenants. High-­rises were nevertheless a boon to the HFD and Hyde city coffers. High-­ rise construction was a huge construction endeavor, involving hundreds of city permits. Property owners would have to pay substantial fees for these permits and the regulatory oversight associated with them. This included a central role for the BFP to assure that life-­safety systems were lawfully and properly installed. In addition, a study by Arthur Andersen estimated that Hyde’s high-­ rises would require 300 additional hours of fire control services and require that the city purchase new specialized suppression and search and rescue equipment, and officials seized on this argument for rejecting the suppression cuts recommended under Flowers. The HFD had nevertheless been slow to respond to state government mandates, issued in the mid-­1970s, requiring that Hyde and other municipalities assure the installation of approved life-­safety systems in all new high-­rises within a three-­year period. As part of this mandate, municipalities were also required to do annual follow-­up inspections. The HFD justified their tardiness on

126   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity the basis that they had had a high-­rise inspection program since 1971, which they developed in concert with the “codes committee” of the Hyde Chamber of Commerce, which had some say in the design of Hyde’s building and housing codes. Hyde argued that the adoption of state standards would upset their longstanding negotiations with the Chamber, but the state rejected this claim, suing the city, and telling HFD officials to “get their ass in gear” if they did not want a state takeover of the BFP. The HFD capitulated to state pressures, and in 1980 hired two full-­time fire protection engineers (FPEs) to help implement a state-­ approved high-­rise fire safety program. The hiring of the FPEs represented the first time that civilians were hired into the HFD as regular staff to perform non-­ administrative tasks. Their hiring also represented the first time that operational functions within the HFD were performed by individuals who were not sworn firefighters and who had not first served on the fire-­lines before being transferred into other responsibilities. Most importantly, the hiring of the FPEs altered the existing operations of fire prevention in Hyde. Initially, the engineers were assigned not to high-­rise but to the CIP where they were supposed to advise suppression units on types of internal fire prevention systems. “The department did not know what to do with us,” one of the engineers told me. Eventually, the FPEs were assigned to high-­ rise full-­time where they essentially operated a fire prevention bureau within a fire prevention bureau. The FPEs had no rank but would exercise supervision over the inspectors with whom they worked. The FPEs also rejected the use of the BFP’s inspection forms and filing system, devising their own bureaucratic system for managing the high-­rise program. The engineers would also accompany inspectors on site visits, allowing them to go “toe to toe” with developers’ own staffs of engineers. By the time I stopped working with the ATF in 1984, “high-­rise” was considered an “elite” assignment within the HFD, bringing much-­needed credibility to the same Bureau of Fire Prevention that had been maligned in the “Crisis in the HFD” series of 1981. Still, legacies of the core–periphery distinction remained. Re-­inspections, as mandated by state codes, were not getting done on a timely basis. Furthermore, FPEs were concerned that uniformed inspectors lacked the formal training required for overseeing the workings of computerized and sophisticated fire protection systems. Finally, the FPEs complained that HFD officials wanted them to adhere to the “chain of command.” For example, the engineers were expected to adhere to general orders emanating from the chief ’s office, and could only communicate their wants or needs through a ranking lieutenant without risking insubordination. HFD officials also wanted the FPEs to be subordinate to uniformed inspectors as part of the high-­rise program. The FPEs, in turn, wanted to know why they should be subordinate to those they were training. Eventually the FPEs worked out an informal compromise where they would supervise inspectors but consider HFD officers their supervisors.

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   127 Community Inspection Program Mike Davis (1998) has pointed out the irony of public fire officials in southern California spending millions of dollars to protect million-­dollar homes from brush fire while doing little to prevent the deadly fires occurring in many of the run-­down residential properties in downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts. This irony existed in Hyde as well. Although high-­rises presented a significant fire safety risk, it was in Hyde’s lower-­income neighborhoods where fire casualties were concentrated. Between 1974 and 1984, for example, 307 civilians and firefighters had perished in fires occurring within Hyde, and 86 percent of these were in older, non-­high rise units. Flowers had noted that Hyde’s fire death rate was “higher than statistically normal” when compared to other municipalities, and used this data as an argument for ramping up prevention efforts. Under state health and safety codes, all rental properties in Hyde with three or more units were to have their common areas inspected on an annual basis by municipal authorities. While the health and safety code contained fire safety provisions, HFD had traditionally left the routine inspection process to the BBI, which had a special hotel and apartments unit. The implementation of the CIP in 1977 meant that the HFD would now be more involved with the routine inspection process, although suppression units were not supposed to perform full inspections. Rather, they were to provide a survey about the basic fire protection capacities of structures (e.g., placement of standpipes, existence of sprinklers, etc.), with the intention of automating this information for electronic distribution to fire battalions en route to an incident. Furthermore, the CIP was not designed to become involved in abatement actions, although suppression personnel were expected to make the BFP or AEWS aware of any obvious fire hazards noted in the field. Suppression officers resented the CIP, seeing it as primarily a cost-­saving measure that was burdening them with needless “paperwork.” Furthermore, suppression personnel argued that while they might be able to assess fire protection capacities in a structure, they knew little of the fire code and were unclear about what information they should pass on to the BFP about potential violations. Deficiencies associated with the CIP were publicized in the 1981 “In Case of Fire: Crisis in the HFD” series. Reporters noted that “thousands” of the CIP’s inspection reports sat “disorganized and virtually useless in a file drawer at FD,” because no method had been devised for centralizing and disseminating the program’s information. Within the HFD, fire personnel would tell me that the CIP was “a joke.” In April of 1986, the CIP again came under scrutiny after a near-­conflagration, called the “Portside” fire, killed eight people and destroyed three square city blocks of warehousing and residential properties. The incident spread quickly because of flammable materials stored in the building of fire origin, leading to questions about the existence of proper storage permits. CIP files indicated that an earlier inspection did note hazardous materials, but the information was never passed along to the BFP for purposes of confirming the existence of appropriate

128   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity permits. After the press pressed the HFD for answers about the regulatory oversight, officials blamed it on a new computer system that was being established for the centralized storage of CIP and BFP inspection records. BFP personnel themselves, however, considered the CIP “a joke,” and complained that referrals coming from the program were put “on the back burner” so that inspectors could devote more attention to complying with the state’s high-­rise code enforcement order. Frustrated with the scrutiny of the HFD’s CIP program and other prevention efforts in the wake of Portside, Hyde’s Chief of Department testified to his Fire Commission that yearly fire safety inspections of all commercial and residential properties in the city were “too great a task.” Civilianizing the BFP The decision to hire civilians to oversee high-­rise came from HFD brass themselves, who were facing the enormous challenge of regulating high-­rise fire safety and sophisticated life-­safety systems. Flowers’ proposal to civilianize all of the BFP, however, was viewed as an unwanted imposition coming from outside the department, threatening to do away with “light duty” assignments for firefighters. The HFD attempted to stop the civilianization of the uniformed inspector ranks by making the compelling argument that trained firefighters made the best inspectors because of their experience in the field. In the words of one fire marshal: . . . the greatest advantage that uniformed personnel has over civilians is the firefighting experience, because he takes that experience out into the field to conduct inspections. And I know the argument is made that civilians can learn that, well, you can’t learn firefighting experience unless you’ve actually had it. At the same time, when the HFD actually chose to use the light duty assignment argument as a reason for blocking civilianization, this simply confirmed concerns among city managers that prevention was still being used to warehouse older or injured firefighters. The Flowers recommendations would eventually be implemented and the HFD created 18 civilian “fire safety inspectors” positions in the BFP. The HFD, however, would attempt to define their roles within the context of its normative order. For example, the unit would be able to retain 23 of its original 34 uniformed positions, and they would serve as district inspectors. Fire safety inspectors, on the other hand, would be assigned to ancillary tasks such as working with the high-­rise inspection teams, regulating hazardous materials or inspecting schools. One inspector was assigned to take care of the HFD’s mascot, a Dalmatian with which she did school fire safety presentations. Like the FPEs, fire safety inspectors were made part of the chain of command. Unlike the FPEs, however, they would be made subordinate to uniformed inspectors, a status that

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   129 would be symbolized by their having to wear uniforms with a “blue stripe” on their sleeves whereas uniformed inspectors wore white. When fire safety inspectors protested this arrangement, they were rebuffed by fire marshal Mendoza, who told them that “they were not really part of the fire department,” but rather “civilians employed by the fire department.” Nevertheless, civilianization served to professionalize the BFP almost in spite of what the HFD expected. “I think they expected to get some youngster straight out of school” who they could shape how they wanted, a fire safety inspector named Marion told me. However, fire safety inspectors had various types of experience before they went into the HFD. They were required to have at least an associate degree in fire science or some other kind of fire prevention specialty and some had backgrounds as firefighters in other jurisdictions. Fire safety inspectors also brought with them a different type of occupational orientation compared with traditional firefighters. Marion explained that for uniformed inspectors, their “perspective is suppression,” and “they want to know if there were a fire in the building how would we put it out.” The fire safety inspector, she explained, is more concerned with “the big picture,” such as “the community and demographics,” and what a fire control system is “going to mean for this square block or neighborhood.” Marion argued that the fire safety inspector is inspired by an exposure to “different disciplines.” She elaborated that “I’m looking at all sorts of potential incidents,” and not just the challenges of “the immediate fire.” The second change brought about by civilianization was increasing social diversity. Since 1970 the HFD had been under political pressure to hire more women and persons of color. A federal judge had ordered Chief Brophy during the time of his tenure to promote ten blacks to the rank of lieutenant, “skipping over” ten white firefighters who had scored higher on the department’s promotional test. Racial tensions permeated the HFD, including physical altercations between white and black firefighters. In a cynical move, the HFD took advantage of the BFP’s civilianization mission to demonstrate the agency’s commitment to hiring women and minorities. Of the 18 hired in as fire safety inspectors, for example, 13 were female, non-­white, or both. Changes to the HFD’s prevention mission reflected dynamics of institutional selectivity. The prioritization of high-­rise fire prevention activities may be seen in the context of protecting the integrity of the HFD’s suppression mission. Fire officials in Hyde recognized that firefighting was becoming increasingly reliant on making sure that life-­safety systems were functioning, and that their failure to do so could be catastrophic. Adequate oversight was therefore essential, a responsibility that fell to new fire protection engineers and specially assigned fire protection inspectors. Where other types of code enforcement were concerned, however, the HFD appeared to have changed little. In 1996 local media carried a story on the continuing weakness of fire code enforcement in many of Hyde’s older residential occupancies and commercial structures, especially those in poorer neighborhoods where run-­down properties, as well as fire casualties, were more common.

130   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity The story charged that the city had failed to follow state mandates requiring it to conduct annual inspections of multiple-­density rentals, and had also failed to abate over 80 percent of the code violations that it had detected in properties throughout Hyde. The article noted that the HFD’s CIP program had been introduced as a solution to conducting routine inspections, but that after decades of operation it remained in “disarray.” The HFD had assigned one person—a lieutenant—to process the CIP inspection reports, but he complained that he was “overwhelmed” by the amount of paperwork generated by the program, which had “collapsed under its own weight.”

Forty Years of Institutional Selectivity The HFD is in many ways a different department than the one I first encountered. At the time of writing this book the department had a female chief— unfathomable in 1980—and a large proportion of the department is now composed of persons of color, females, or both. The days of a masculine-­ oriented, ethnic-­white department where one was subject to loyalty tests featuring off-­color or offensive taunts appear to be gone, at least on the surface. The HFD now has a formal “values statement” that promotes “respect for each person” within the agency and within the Hyde community, including the right to be free from “harassment, discrimination or retaliation.” The HFD has also created new divisions, among them one devoted entirely to emergency medical services (EMS). The changes in the HFD have reflected broader changes in the City of Hyde itself. Since 1970, the city has grown by 25 percent, and is wealthier, on average, than ever before. The Oaklawn district, transitional during the 1970s and 1980s, is now almost completely gentrified. The larger Southside district, traditionally mixed-­income with many immigrants, is now one of the hottest real estate districts in all of Hyde, increasingly populated by young workers employed in the computer, finance, media, and design industries who are employed both within the neighborhood or who do a “reverse commute” to jobs outside the city. Midtown remains a center of many of Hyde’s poor and marginalized, including the drug addicted, sex workers, and those just released from jail or prison. But the Midtown too has seen a significant degree of gentrification with the building of new luxury hotels and the conversion of SRO residential units into short-­term tourist units. In many ways, however, the normative order of core and periphery within the HFD appears to have remained intact. The decision to create an EMS division was resisted by those who saw it as eroding the agency’s core commitment to firefighting. Although the ATF is still in existence, a former captain in charge of the BFI has complained that HFD administrators still “don’t care” about investigations. Indeed, the BFI’s staffing has been cut from the 11 investigators that I encountered when I worked in the unit to four. Although there are still police assigned to the ATF, they no longer work with the unit full-­time as had been the case in the 1980s, and there is no longer a dedicated district attorney handling

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   131 arson cases. Moreover, ATF members no longer travel to the National Fire Academy in Virginia for professional training. Fire investigators are required to have two courses in fire investigation and one in criminal process as a precondition for becoming permanent members of the ATF, but investigators must pay for this training out of their own pockets, symbolizing the continued marginalization of fire investigation as a basic function of the HFD. Furthermore, the choice to revert to the practice of using only uniformed firefighters in the Bureau of Fire Prevention would appear to be a step backward in terms of the professionalization of the HFD’s code enforcement unit. Although civilianization was a way for the City of Hyde to save money, the civilian inspectors tended to have at least two-­year associate’s degrees, often in fire science or engineering related activities. This was not the case for ranking firefighters. Moreover, a civilianized unit would deny fire officials from using the fire prevention unit as a way to put aging or ailing firefighters “out to pasture.” The objective of this chapter has been to show the ways in which the dynamics of institutional selectivity within the state shape and reshape social problems. As this pertains to the HFD and its sister agencies (e.g., the Hyde Police Department and the Bureau of Building Inspection), my argument is not that government “caused” fires in the first instance. I have made the case that urban fires are linked to broader socio-­economic factors linked to housing values and upkeep. At the same time, I have also shown how the inaction or “nondecisions” on the part of local government helped to shape Hyde’s fire problem and the social inequities associated with it. As arson surged in Hyde during the late 1970s, the HFD found itself struggling to deal with the problem, hindered by the shortcomings of a fire control infrastructure that prioritized suppression objectives to the detriment of fire detection and prevention functions. Cause and origin investigations were often of poor quality, and Hyde’s police officials and district attorney’s office were reluctant to cooperate with the HFD for purposes of prosecuting an arson case. It was the poor and the working class that bore the brunt of the state’s regulatory failures given that Hyde’s arson incidents were most likely to occur in lower-­income rental properties or in commercial units connected to such properties. Furthermore, Hyde’s arson outbreak, like other such outbreaks occurring in Boston, New York and other cities during the 1970s, appeared to be linked to arson-­for-profit or “arson-­by-neglect.” Fires were concentrated in just three poor or working class neighborhoods on the cusp of gentrification, contiguous to Hyde’s expanding central business and tourist districts. Nevertheless, Hyde’s public safety officials ignored the possibility that the city’s arson surge was related to fraud or broader housing trends. They instead blamed the fires—as did public officials in other communities—on a combination of built-­to-burn factors and the socio-­demographic make-­up of particular neighborhoods, including the behavioral pathologies and deviant subcultures attributed to some residents. The formation of the inter-­agency Arson Task Force in Hyde vastly improved the fire investigation process and led to an increase in the city’s arson clearance rate as well as a reduction in fires. Still, the Task Force continued to define arson as a “street crime” as opposed to a white collar offense.

132   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity Arson-­for-profit was therefore “organized out” of Hyde’s reform agenda as this concerned fire control and was relegated to the status of a non-­issue. Low-­ income residents were therefore just as vulnerable to arson-­for-profit—and the disinvestment, speculation, and gentrification that accompanied it—with the Task Force as they were without it. The HFD did take the extraordinary step of creating the AEWS as a program devoted to the prevention of arson-­for-profit. Nevertheless, the AEWS was marginal to the operations of the ATF and the HFD. Once outside funding lapsed the HFD was no longer willing to pay for that part of the program that tracked the relationship between fires and socio-­ economic factors. The HFD also rejected the overtures of neighborhood activists that wanted to supplant the efforts of the AEWS with their own early warning program that would inform fire officials about imminent fire hazards linked to substandard housing. The effects of institutional selectivity are still detectable in Hyde. Cut-­backs to the ATF became an issue in 2015 amid concerns that a new round of fires in the Southside was arson-­for-profit, caused by landlords wanting to convert low-­ income apartment units to luxury use. The ATF drew the ire of community activists and tenants affected by the fires when many of the incidents were blamed on “built-­to-burn” factors such as overloaded electrical systems in older properties. In response to the HFD’s findings, one journalist charged that the HFD was incapable of recognizing the “geopolitical” context of fires, i.e., landlords wanting higher rents. In areas of prevention, the HFD reorganized around a new mission to assure effective code enforcement in high-­rises and new construction, but did little to alter its response to fire hazards in lower-­income neighborhoods where fire losses were concentrated. Tracking a “rash” of fires in its SRO properties, the HFD announced as late as 2016 that these incidents were caused by “aged housing, tenant behaviors, and a general lack of knowledge about fire safety and prevention information.”22 Forty years after Hyde’s arson crisis in the 1970s, the HFD was still blaming the city’s fires on “built-­to-burn” factors and the behaviors of neighborhood residents while failing to consider fire as a social problem linked to housing market dynamics and speculative real estate practices.

Notes   1 In 1980 Los Angeles had about 7,500 persons per square mile and Phoenix 3,000.   2 This information is taken from a 1980 master plan done by Hyde’s Department of City Planning.   3 Incident frequencies for the 1950s and data shown in Figures 4.1 and 4.2 come from Hyde Fire Department records. Data were not available for 1962 and for fiscal year 1964–1965. From 1963 the HFD measured its fire frequencies by fiscal year (FY).   4 From Hyde Fire Department data.   5 For debates over the concept of an incendiary fire and its distinction from arson and intentional fires see Chapter 3. Hyde did not collapse suspicious incidents into incendiary designations as was the case with national statistics. All fires reported as incendiary in Hyde were assumed to be conclusively determined as such.   6 See Steven Pfohl (1977) on the “discovery” of social problems as socially constructed phenomena.

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   133   7 Planning districts were officially drawn and named by Hyde’s Department of City Planning to reflect major sub-­communities/districts within the city. The information on greater alarms comes from the “Flowers Report,” a 1980 budget analysis of the HFD done for Hyde City Council.   8 This proper name and all others in the chapter are pseudonyms, as are the names of places. See Chapter 1 for more discussion of this choice.   9 A clearance means that an arrest has occurred, charges have been filed and a prosecution is underway. See 2014 Uniform Crime Reports. Accessed June 5, 2016 from www.fbi.gov/about-­us/cjis/ucr/crime-­in-the-­u.s/2014/crime-­in-the-­u.s.-2014/offenses-­ known-to-­law-enforcement/clearances/main. The term “solved” from the standpoint of clearances does not mean a conviction. 10 Here I draw on James Thompson’s (1967) classic Organizations in Action. Thompson argues that all organizations are built around a particular “technical rationality” or “core” (pp. 18–19), a system through which their main outputs (commodities or services), or organizational rationality, are produced. 11 The concept “tightly-­coupled systems” in the sociology of organizations means that workers are closely supervised and have little discretion in the ways they carry out their assigned tasks. In the words of W. Richard Scott (1981, 254), “managers command” and “performers obey;” “managers decide” and “performers implement.” 12 This percentage approaches 20 percent if false alarms are included. Indeed, the HFD has now decided not to post separate counts for actual fires and false alarms. These calls are now collapsed into one category under “fire calls,” giving the impression that all calls are for actual incidents. 13 Tebeau’s (2003, 324) work has similarly found that a “man’s worth as a fireman” is largely determined by his physicality, bravery, and “ability to eat smoke.” 14 Although Hyde’s fire marshal had legal powers to pursue an arson case through the local district attorney, this responsibility was ceded to the police. Fire officials, by and large, were willing to assist on arson cases but did not see themselves as having the skills necessary to conduct a criminal inquiry, including the requirement of taking a suspect into custody, perhaps through the use of force. Also see Chapter 3 on “turf ” issues in arson investigation. 15 See Chapter 3 on the distinction between Part 1 and Part 2 crimes and complaints among fire officials nationally that arson cases did not get enough attention from the police. 16 The data for the Study Program were drawn manually from BFP records on file at the HFD and at other city and county offices including the tax assessor, recorder, county clerk, housing code enforcement bureau devoted to apartments and hotels, building permit bureau, and the public library. The data themselves included fire incidents (properties and principals), property deeds, mortgages, tax arrears, mechanics, tax and utility liens, code violation notices and enforcement actions through the BFP and Hyde’s Bureau of Building Inspection (BBI), building reconstruction permits, lawsuits, newspaper records and any other pertinent information. The data were used to measure fire incidents as the key dependent variable. Causal variables were chosen that would measure the ownership and financial characteristics of a property as well as its physical condition, These included ownership turnover rate (including whether a transaction was “arms-­length”), land to building value ratios (i.e., was land worth more than structure?), types and levels of indebtedness, physical condition (e.g., deteriorated housing or vacant structure), legal actions for code violations, reconstruction activity, lawsuits by tenants or business associates indicating financial stress or fraud, and whether property was in an urban redevelopment district. Furthermore, since previous fires were a good indicator of subsequent incidents, this fact too would be included in the causal assessment. Although many of the databases that I used to develop the AEWS were in their early stages of computerization, there was no money to pay for the computerization of the AEWS itself. As a result, analytical conclusions were based on manual comparisons of frequencies and percentages.

134   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity 17 Properties were often absentee-­owned and it was not uncommon for tenants to have no idea of who owned the building in which they lived. 18 See Chapter 2. A non-­issue is defined as a social problem ignored by the state’s regulatory agenda (Goetz 1997, 567; Crenson, 1971, 4). 19 The tallest buildings ever constructed in America’s cities were completed during the early 1970s. These included the Sears Tower in Chicago (1,451 feet) and the World Trade Center in New York (over 1,360 feet). 20 This was the plan for the rescue of the upper tenants of the World Trade Center on 9/11, a strategy that proved to be fallacious. 21 “Trends in Fire Protection and Life Safety for the Global Built Environment.” Jensen-­ Hughes, Inc., Baltimore, MD, 2015. Accessed July 29, 2016 from www.jensenhughes. com/wp-­content/uploads/2015/09/JensenHughes-­TrendsReport-20152.pdf 22 From HFD website.

References Bardach, Eugene, and Robert A. Kagan. 1982. Going By the Book: The Problem of Regulatory Unreasonableness. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Brearley, Harry C. 1916. Fifty Years of a Civilizing Force; A Historical and a Critical Study of the Work of the National Board of Fire Underwriters. New York: Frederick A. Stokes. California State Assembly. 1959. “Fire Grading and Rating.” Sacramento, CA: Transcripts from Interim Committee on Municipal and County Government.  Chetkovich, Carol. 1997. Real Heat: Gender and Race in the Urban Fire Service. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Chudacoff, Howard, and Judith E. Smith. 2005. The Evolution of American Urban Society, 6th Edition. New York: Pearson Prentice-­Hall. Coffman, Ben. 2013. “Code Enforcement: Critical for a Successful Fire Prevention Program.” Fire Engineering, January 1. Accessed February 24, 2016 from www.fire engineering.com/articles/print/volume-­1 66/issue-­0 1/features/code-­e nforce-critic-­ success-fire-­prevent-prog.html Cote, Arthur E. 1991. “Will Firesafety Standards Survive into the 21st Century?” NFPA Journal (July/August): 36–44. Crenson, Matthew A. 1971. The Un-­politcs of Air Pollution; A Study of Non-­Decision Making in the Cities. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Davis, Mike. 1998. Ecology of Fear. London: Picador. Delibert, Art. 1984. “Arson-­Prone Buildings: Holding Owners Accountable.” Firehouse 9: 49–54. Dittmar, Mary Jane. 1996. “EMS: An Overview.” In Fire Services Today: Managing a Changing Role and Mission, 9–14, edited by Gerald Hoetmer. Washington, DC: International City/County Management Association. Esping-­Andersen, Gosta, and Alexander Hicks. 2005. “Comparative and Historical Studies of Public Policy and the Welfare State.” In The Handbook of Political Sociology, 509–525, edited by Thomas Janoski, Robert Alford, Alexander Hicks, and Mildred Schwartz. New York: Cambridge University Press. Frank, Nancy. 1983. “From Criminal to Civil Penalties in the History of Health and Safety Laws.” Social Problems 30: 532–543. Franklin, Ben A. 1981. “Deaths in Major U.S. Fires Linked to Weak Safety Rules and Apathy.” New York Times, February 1. Accessed December 2, 2014 from www.nytimes. com/1981/02/01/us/deaths-­in-major-­us-fires-­linked-to-­weak-safety-­rules-and-­apathy.html

Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity   135 Goetz, Barry. 1997. “Organization as Class-­Bias in Local Law Enforcement: Arson-­forProfit as a ‘Non-­Issue.’” Law and Society Review 31: 557–588. Gouldner, Alvin. 1954. Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy. New York: Free Press. Grant, Casey Cavanaugh. 1996. “History of the NFPA.” Accessed February 19, 2016 from www.nfpa.org/about-­nfpa/nfpa-­overview/history-­of-nfpa Hall, George, and John Burks. 1982. Working Fire. Mill Valley: Baron Walmon/Squarebooks. Hartmann, Chester, Robert Kessler, and Richard T. LeGates. 1974. “Municipal Housing Code Enforcement and Low Income Tenants.” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 40: 90–104. International City Management Association. 1979. Managing Fire Services, edited by J. Bryan and R. Picard. Washington, DC: International City Management Association. Produced for the Institute for Training in Municipal Administration. Jezierski, Louise. 1990. “Public–Private Partnerships in Pittsburgh.” Urban Affairs Review 26: 217–249. Kaprow, Miriam L. 1991. “Magical Work: Firefighters in New York.” Human Organization 50: 97–103. Katz, Jack. 1979. “Legality and Equality: Plea Bargaining in the Prosecution of White Collar and Common Crimes.” Law and Society Review 13: 432–459. Keisling, Phil, 2015. “Why We Need to Take the ‘Fire’ Out of ‘Fire Department.’ ” Governing the States and Localities, July 1. Accessed May 5, 2016 from www.governing. com/columns/smart-­mgmt/col-­fire-departments-­rethink-delivery-­emergency-medical-­ services.html Lane, Roger. 1971. Policing the City: Boston 1822–1885. New York: Atheneum. LaPorte, Todd, and Paula Consolini. 1991. “Working in Practice But Not in Theory: Theoretical Challenges of ‘High-­Reliability Organizations.’” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 1: 19–47. Lentini, John J. 2012. “The Evolution of Fire Investigation and Its Impact on Arson Cases.” Criminal Justice 27. Accessed January 29, 2016 from www.americanbar.org/ content/dam/aba/publications/criminal_justice_magazine/sp12_fire_investigation.authcheckdam.pdf Lindsey, Robert. 1981. “MGM Hotel in Las Vegas is Reopened.” New York Times, July 31. Accessed February 24, 2016 from www.nytimes.com/1981/07/31/us/mgm-­hotel-in-­ las-vegas-­is-reopened.html Listokin, David, and David Harris. 2004. “Building Codes and Housing.” Unpublished Manuscript, Rutgers University and Building Technology, Inc. Lukes, Steven. 2005. Power: A Radical View, 2nd Edition. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Marrs, Gary. 1996. “It’s Not Just a Fire Department Anymore.” In Fire Services Today: Managing a Changing Role and Mission, 9–14, edited by Gerald Hoetmer. Washington, DC: International City/County Management Association. Mollenkopf, John H. 1983. The Contested City. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. National Commission On Fire Prevention and Control. 1973. America Burning. Washington, DC: United States Government. Pfohl, Steven. 1977. “The Discovery of Child Abuse.” Social Problems 24: 310–323. Pontell, Henry, K. Calavita, and Robert Tillman. 1994. “Corporate Crime and Criminal Justice System Capacity: Government Response to Financial Institution Fraud.” Justice Quarterly 11: 383–410.

136   Fires, Arson and Institutional Selectivity Reiss, Albert, and David Bordua. 1967. “Environment and Organization: A Perspective on Police.” In The Police: Six Sociological Essays, 25–55, edited by David Bordua. New York: John Wiley. Scholz, John T. 1991. “Cooperative Regulatory Enforcement and the Politics of Administrative Effectiveness.” American Political Science Review 85: 115–136. Scott, W. Richard. 1981. Organizations: Rational, Natural and Open Systems. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-­Hall. Shapiro, Susan. 1990. “The Road Not Taken: The Elusive Path to Criminal Prosecution for White Collar Offenders.” Law and Society Review 19: 179–217. Sutherland, Edwin H. 1949. White Collar Crime. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Tebeau, Mark. 2003. Eating Smoke: Fire in Urban America, 1800–1950. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Community Press. Thompson, James D. 1967. Organizations in Action. New York: McGraw-­Hill. United States Senate. 1978. “Arson-­for-Hire.” Washington, DC: Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, 95th Congress, 2nd Session. United States Senate. 1977. “Arson-­For-Profit: Its Impact on States and Localities.” Washington, DC: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs. 95th Congress, First Session. Vollmer, Ted. 1988. “Bradley Proposes Law to Upgrade Fire Safety.” Los Angeles Times, May 17. Accessed February 12, 2016 from http://articles.latimes.com/1988–05–17/ news/mn-­2832_1_extensive-­fire-safety-­installations Walker, Samuel, and Charles Katz. 2011. The Police in America: An Introduction. 7th Edition. New York: McGraw-­Hill. Williams, Howard E. 2006. Investigating White Collar Crime, 2nd Edition. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Zurier, Rebecca. 1982. The American Firehouse: An Architectural and Social History. New York: Abbeville Press.

5 Local Policing, the Welfare State, and Drug Control

In 1992 one of the largest urban uprisings in American history occurred in Los Angeles, resulting in the deaths of 63 persons, thousands of injuries and billions of dollars in property loss (McDonald 2012). The uprisings were sparked by the acquittal of four police officers charged with the 1991 beating of motorist Rodney King. King had been attempting to evade officers who were chasing him for speeding. He finally came to a halt at the northern edge of the San Fernando Valley, at which time he was ordered out of his car by the police and told to lie on the ground. After all was said and done, the police had delivered 56 baton blows and six kicks to King’s body in the process of restraining him, actions that were caught on videotape by a nearby citizen. Soon the tape would be shown to the world, and to this day the King beating stands out as one of the most blatant examples of police brutality ever recorded. For their part, the Los Angeles Police Department defended their actions, arguing that King failed to comply with their orders and could not be subdued without significant physical restraint (Independent Commission 1991). The City of Los Angeles convened the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in 1991, better known as the “Christopher Commission” (named for chair Warren Christopher), to get to the bottom of the King incident. Among their findings, the Commission reported that the LAPD harbored a “hard-­nosed” culture that created a “siege mentality” among officers when dealing with Los Angeles’s lower-­income and minority residents. Members of the city’s African-­American and Latino/a communities, in particular, complained that LAPD officers treated them with “rudeness and disrespect.” The LAPD defended its aggressive enforcement methods as effective in reducing gang violence and drug trafficking, but the Commission argued that no effective law enforcement strategy could be sustained if the police were mistrusted and feared by much of the population. The Commission criticized the LAPD’s “traditional style of law enforcement with an emphasis on crime control and arrests,” and argued that they should adopt “community policing principles” that would place “service to the public and prevention of crime as the primary role of police in society.” Instead of focusing on the maximization of “arrest statistics,” LAPD officers would focus on “problem-­solving,” and elicit “active citizen involvement in defining those matters that are most important to the

138   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control community.” The Commission also argued that police officers should “spend less time in their cars communicating with other officers and more time on the street communicating with citizens” (Independent Commission 1991, xiv–xv). The “traditional” style of law enforcement referred to in the Christopher Commission is often referred to as the “professional” policing model (Skogan and Roth 2004, xvii). Commencing around 1920, the professionalization movement in policing was associated with other Progressive Era reforms connected to reforming public service. This included getting political patronage out of the officer recruitment and promotions process and imposing strict rules of discipline over policing conduct (Uchida 2001). The professionalization movement in policing also transformed the “bobbie on the beat,” primarily concerned with public order issues such as vagrancy and public drunkenness, into an expert crime-­fighter (Skogan and Roth 2004, xvii). By World War II the control of major crime came to define the policing mission, and a police department’s effectiveness was measured largely in terms of its “clearance” rate, i.e., its ability to “solve” crimes through the apprehension or identification of specific offenders, and the maintenance of low crime rates overall (Bayley 1994, 7).1 High clearance rates were viewed as an effective way to maintain public safety because offenders were kept off the streets and the public was sent a message that criminal wrongdoing would not be tolerated (Kelling 1982). Professionalization also meant doing away with many of the social welfare functions that were associated with policing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries such as providing lodging for the homeless and food-­aid to the poor (Walker 1977). Community policing has served as the primary alternative to the professional policing model. The community police officer is not simply a crime-­fighter but a “community-­builder” who uses innovative methods of maintaining social control that may or not involve making arrests (Goetz and Mitchell 2003, 222; Pino 2001). Although definitions of community policing have varied in theory and practice, the concept typically encompasses four elements (see Skogan and Roth 2004). One is the need for community outreach as a means to improve police– citizen relations. Two is a focus on community-­based crime prevention efforts that focus on stopping crime “before-­the-fact,” often in cooperation with ordinary citizens and non-­police government agencies. Three is the incorporation of “problem-­oriented” policing strategies.2 This means that officers focus not only on incident response and arresting offenders, but also on finding ways of ameliorating the social problems and environmental conditions giving rise to crime and social disorder. An example of this approach involves the use of code enforcement and related “grime-­fighting” strategies to reduce “physical incivilities” (e.g., run-­down or vacant buildings) that are likely to attract disorderly behavior or criminal activities ranging from graffiti to illegal drug use (Taylor 2001, 5). Four, community policing should reinforce the public’s sense of safety by reducing the fear of crime. Foot patrols and bicycle patrols are two methods that help achieve these objectives (Trojanowicz and Bucqueroux 1990). Community policing, however, is too often presented as a politically neutral concept. In the Christopher Commission Report, citizen engagement alone was

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   139 viewed as sufficient for increasing the political legitimacy of the police. Distinct community policing reforms may nevertheless favor one set of community values over others (Thracher 2001; Lyons 1999). Some in the community may be more concerned with law enforcement effectiveness, such as bringing down crime, whereas others may be more concerned with the fair treatment of citizens and broader social equity issues (Eck and Rosenbaum 1994). Some view community policing as a mechanism for solving social problems, including the incorporation of social welfare functions, such as those of an earlier era, that offer “succor to the deserving poor and disadvantaged” (Mastrofski 1988, 47). Conflicting values and social interests associated with the community policing movement are reflected in what Crank (1994, 342) has identified as “conservative” versus “liberal” social control philosophies underlying reforms. Wilson and Kelling’s theory of “broken windows” is the most notable example of a conservative philosophy, based on the premise that crime stems from the broader problems of social disorder and public apathy giving rise to it. “Crime and disorder are inextricably linked,” Wilson and Kelling (1982, 30) argue. A broken window left unrepaired is a physical sign that a community has stopped caring about its upkeep, inviting the breaking of even more windows. The same sequential logic applies to the problem of disorderly social behavior, which Wilson and Kelling associate with the presence of “disreputable or obstreperous or unpredictable people: panhandlers, drunks, addicts, rowdy teenagers, prostitutes, loiterers, the mentally disturbed.” Disorderly behavior is not necessarily violent or even against the law, Wilson and Kelling assert, but it does increase the sense that no one cares about their neighborhood and enhances the community’s fear of crime, providing fertile conditions for serious forms of wrongdoing. As a method of community policing, “broken windows” models are intended to enhance a community’s ability to fend off threats to its stability. In particular, there is an emphasis on “forceful” and often coercive social control tactics designed to stamp out minor offenses and acts of public disorder such as panhandling, public intoxication, soliciting, drunkenness and public drinking, vandalism and graffiti “tagging,” unlicensed vending and peddling and “obstructions” of public spaces, i.e., sleeping or hanging out in parks or on public streets (Terrill and Mastrofski 2004, 112; Kelling and Coles 1996, 15). Broken windows policing has been celebrated for reversing cycles of crime and reviving urban neighborhoods (Kelling and Coles 1996; Bratton 1996). Critics, however, have criticized broken windows policing for morphing into “zero-­tolerance” law enforcement tactics that unfairly target persons of color and socially marginalized populations (Greene 1999, 171). This is especially the case through the use of so-­called “quality of life” policing measures used in New York and elsewhere that feature “stop and frisk” tactics (done to discover drugs or weapons) and crackdowns on minor misdemeanor offenses, including vagrancy, public drunkenness, and minor drug abuse violations (Goldstein 2013; Alexander 2010; Bass 2001; Harcourt 2001).3 Broken windows policing has also been blamed for creating the type of highly charged law enforcement atmosphere that led to the deaths of Eric Garner at the hands of New York City police

140   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control officers in 2014 (detained for unlicensed peddling of cigarettes) and Freddie Gray who died in Baltimore Police custody in 2015, leading to citizen uprisings (Baker et al. 2015; Keller 2015). Kraska (2007, 511) notes that some police departments have employed paramilitary units such as “SWAT” (special weapons and tactics) units to assist with quality of life policing, symbolizing a militaristic and “martial” approach to maintaining civil order. “Liberal” philosophies of social control underlying the community policing movement also assume a need for order maintenance but not at the cost of alienating citizens and sacrificing goals of equity. Instead, there is an emphasis on enhancing policing legitimacy, especially among those populations that have felt marginalized or threatened by the police. From the liberal perspective, community policing can offer “crime prevention through community service” (Crank 1994, 343). Nevertheless, “service” has never been well-­defined or elaborated in the community policing literature. Mastrofski (1988, 56) has described it as the “velvet glove” aspects of police work, designed to improve police–community relations through “newsletters, block watch, foot patrol, friendly getting-­toknow-­you police-­citizen encounters, victim follow-­up and so on.” Eric Klinenberg (2015, 150) has gone one step further arguing that community policing has served as a policy response to cut-­backs in other areas of the welfare state. Using the example of Chicago in the late 1980s and 1990s, Klinenberg shows how federal and state resources for spending on health, housing and other types of human services decreased as they increased for law enforcement. Policy-­makers therefore seized on community policing as a policy that could promote law and order while at the same time making police officers “brokers for basic city services.” Under the Community Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS), a community policing initiative implemented by the Chicago Police Department in 1993, all officers were expected to “provide more face-­to-face contact” with citizens and to expand their role in the community beyond traditional law enforcement and order maintenance functions. The police were instead envisioned as “neighborhood organizers,” “community leaders,” and “liaisons to other city agencies.” Officers were expected to assist in varied forms of community assistance such as “infrastructure repair,” and the “closing and clearing of abandoned buildings and empty lots.” In the context of community disasters such as Chicago’s heatwave of 1995 that killed over 500 people, the focus of Klinenberg’s analysis, the CAPS philosophy meant that officers could play a central role in reaching out to the “old and vulnerable city residents who needed special attention and support.” Social service outreach has been a foundational element of the community policing movement. “Social service agency” models of reform emerged in the post-­1960s era as a way to restore policing legitimacy through enhanced community engagement (Walker 1977, 173–174; Goldstein 1977). From this standpoint, police officers were “uniquely situated to deal with a wide range of social problems, including race relations, chronic alcoholism, and family disputes,” especially in cooperation with other community-­based organizations. By engaging in social service outreach, the theory went, the police could prevent crime

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   141 and disorder by mitigating the social strains underlying their cause (also see below on August Vollmer). The theme of social service outreach carried through into formal statements of community policing reform. In Understanding Community Policing, for example, the U.S. Department of Justice (1994, 15) argued that officers should help facilitate “emergency social services and referrals to those at risk,” including “adolescent runaways, homeless persons, the intoxicated and the mentally ill.” The creation of “crisis intervention teams” (CITs) in many American police departments over the past few decades serves as an additional example of how the police have adapted to a social service mission, especially involving mentally ill offenders and citizens (Bonfine et al. 2014; Watson and Fulambarker 2012). Community policing has also figured in crime prevention and diversion programs involving domestic disputes and juveniles (Morash and Robinson 2002; Guarino-­Ghezzi 1994). As I will show in this and the next chapter, community policing has also been promoted as a way to soften the punitive impact of America’s drug war through detoxification/treatment diversion and other mechanisms designed to promote social service outreach. There are limitations to Crank’s conservative/liberal dichotomy for analyzing the community policing movement. It is unclear, for example, where popular problem-­oriented policing models, such as those relying on environmental crime control strategies (e.g., nuisance abatement or “grime-­fighting”) fit within his framework (Taylor 2001, 5; Green 1995; Eck and Spelman 1987). However, Crank’s conceptual framework serves as a useful starting point for understanding the contradictory elements of the community policing movement. In this chapter, I present the police as central actors in urban welfare states— “agents of civic governance”—who are expected to respond to a range of community problems beyond their coercive role in assuring law and order (Loader and Walker 2001, 14–15). I argue that models of policing vary over time conforming to a dialectic that reflects broader social conflicts and changing ideas about how to assert social control and regulate social problems. I begin by linking the emergence of urban policing to the emergence of the modern welfare state. Then I turn to an examination of the three central functions of policing— order maintenance (or peacekeeping), crime-­fighting, and community service— with the purpose of showing how one or the other of these may be emphasized at particular historical moments with differential social impacts. I focus on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as an era where the community service and order maintenance aspects of policing were paramount, including an emphasis on social welfare interventions and services. I show, however, that the movement to professionalize the police had the effect of prioritizing crime-­fighting and law enforcement objectives, resulting in the diminished importance of the officers’ other community functions, particularly as these pertained to social outreach and helping citizens gain access to needed services. I then turn to the 1960s as a critical moment of reform when an overemphasis on the police officers’ crime-­fighting mission was blamed, paradoxically, for making cities less safe and engendering strained community relations, culminating in racial uprisings. I argue that the foundations of the community policing movement were laid

142   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control during the 1960s and 1970s, including experiments with social service agency approaches. I then turn to examining the role of local police in regulating illegal drugs, showing how a punitive shift in national and local drug control policies pre-­empted and redirected the community policing movement in the direction of aggressive order maintenance and crime control strategies. The “war on drugs” would have the effect of exacerbating already existing racial and class biases associated with law enforcement practices while doing little to address the broader social problems of drug addiction and illegal use. The last part of the chapter will be devoted to showing how a backlash to the drug war during the  1990s led to the re-­emergence of community policing as a way to restore policing legitimacy. Taking a cue from Europe, some reformers argued that community policing could serve as an alternative drug policy in itself, helping to link users and street addicts to treatment services and other social supports. Questions would remain, however, about whether the police could engage in effective social outreach given the inherent contradictions between broken windows approaches to community policing versus those calling for social service linkages.

The “New” Policing and the Welfare State Urban policing as an exclusive province of government is a relatively new phenomenon. Before the middle of the nineteenth century, urban policing in the United States was largely avocational, organized around a “constable-­watch system” that had been in place since the British colonial period (Monkkonen 1981, 35; Klockars 1985). Constables were private citizens, appointed or elected to the post, who for a fee would issue summonses and execute arrest warrants on behalf of local justices or magistrates. Constables also performed basic patrol functions, keeping roads free of obstructions, attending to public health concerns (e.g., dead animals), and raising the “hue and cry,” a call to all adult males in a community to help apprehend a criminal. Constables were also responsible for keeping their eyes out for “potentially riotous occasions,” and organizing the “night-­watch,” a cadre of local citizens, often pressed into service, who assisted with law enforcement and order maintenance activities after dark (Lane 1971, 9). The constable-­watch system was severely limited as an effective, trustworthy, and equitable public service. Detective services, for example, were “largely a private matter,” in that “neither state nor town made any provision for the identification or pursuit of the unknown offender, except through a coroner’s inquest” (Lane 1971, 7). Constables were happy, however, to accept “tips or rewards” in exchange for tracking down perpetrators or recovering stolen property. Constables often hired themselves out as “thief-­catchers,” a form of private, entrepreneurial policing that was prominent in England and the United States during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Thief-­catchers functioned like “fences” in that they were go-­betweens with the criminal underworld. Owners of stolen property funneled a “ransom” through thief-­catchers to recover their goods (Monkkonen 1981, 35). A kind of ersatz property insurance system, the

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   143 thief-­catching system highlighted the ways in which one’s ability to pay for policing services determined the levels of protection that one could expect. Inequities associated with the constable-­watch system were not limited to investigative services. One New York journalist wrote in 1812 that constables were the “worst bloodsuckers” on the community, a situation stemming from a fee-­for-service system that brought compensation for producing arrests. This meant targeting the poor and powerless for any minor offense (Richardson 1970, 19). Ferdinand (1980) reported that some constables made a continuous income simply by arresting drunken offenders. The watch, too, was criticized as a force that functioned to protect the rich and powerful, as in Boston where it sought to protect the wealthy residents of Beacon Hill from the city’s poor (Lane 1971). Members of the watch were also not reliable, sleeping on the job or running away from danger (Monkkonen 1992). Societal changes in both England and the United States resulting from the Industrial Revolution put an end to the constable-­watch system (Manning 1997, 58). Large-­scale population shifts were underway as more and more rural migrants came to cities in search of work. London’s population was an estimated 676,000 in 1750 and had doubled in size to about 1.2 million by 1820. Boston’s population grew from 49,000 in 1822 to more than 90,000 by 1840. Increasing urbanization meant actual and feared increases in crime and violence, as well as threats to public health. This resulted in the expansion of penal and regulatory (e.g., health and fire) codes that needed to be enforced, expanding the formalized social control responsibilities of government. The job of the constable also became more complex and onerous, and in many communities it was becoming a full-­time position that would be reappointed on a yearly basis with many of the same candidates. Law enforcement itself was becoming more dangerous as city life became more dynamic, busy and unpredictable (Richardson 1970). More and more citizens were looking for a way to unburden themselves of the civic obligation of policing by the early decades of the 1800s, and the watch increasingly became a cadre of paid substitutes as opposed to civilian volunteers. Methods of private policing that had operated with legal impunity, such as thief-­catching, were now being rejected as forms of corruption and criminality. By the 1830s, both Philadelphia and Boston looked to government as the mechanism for administering a “new” policing, a model implemented in England under the leadership of Home Secretary and social reformer Sir Robert Peel (Manning 1997, 77; Walker 1977, 3). Peel created the Metropolitan Police of London in 1829 as a “bureaucratic organization of professionals,” staffed exclusively by government officials, that would replace the avocational and decentralized approach that had been the norm in Britain and much of Europe (Silver 1966, 7). The emergence of the new policing represented a critical moment in the expansion of the welfare state in America, “decommodifying” law enforcement services and transforming public safety into a social right available to all citizens.4 From the standpoint of modernization theory, policing represents an important moment of institutional differentiation whereby a secular and democratic state comes to supplant traditional authority structures rooted in family

144   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control and religion as a system of social control (Badie and Birnbaum 1983; Durkheim 1997[1893]). The modernization standpoint is most evident in the major historical works on policing in urban America. Richardson’s (1970, 25) book on New York, for example, argues that the city was once a “homogeneous community with a common culture and a shared system of values and moral standards.” By the 1840s, however, rapid population growth and immigration had transformed the city into a “mosaic of sub-­communities, separated from one another by barriers of class and culture and by attitudes and behavior derived from different traditions, or in the case of many immigrants, the destruction of tradition.” Such a situation made it difficult to “determine what was normal and what was deviant,” Richardson argues, and between what was “acceptable” versus “anti-­ social” behaviors. The city’s demographic shifts were also occurring against a backdrop of “dizzying” cycles of boom and bust that were part of the city’s industrialization process, which further exacerbated anomic conditions. All of these changes resulted in an upsurge in crime, vice, and disorder. Mob violence was also a growing concern, especially in working-­class districts such as “Five Points,” where problems of overcrowding, disease, and poverty intersected with nativist anger over the influx of Irish immigrants to the United States. Lane (1971) argues that the need to regulate mob violence and rioting became a primary impetus behind the creation of a new police force in Boston in the 1830s. Although many of Boston’s upheavals were anti-­immigrant and anti-­ Catholic in nature, “small riots” also accompanied sporting events and theatrical performances, and were a feature of the rivalries between volunteer fire companies (Chapter 4, this volume). Rioting was also a problem in other cities, staged to achieve a range of political objectives from shutting down brothels to protesting the use of cadavers in medical research, requiring the need for a 24-hour and dedicated policing presence (Uchida 2001; Walker 1977). New policing was not just about maintaining civil order and regulating differences. It also served to facilitate the growth of capitalist economies and reinforced capitalist social relations. Urbanization concentrated class conflicts, and municipal police departments would play a central role in helping industrialists put down labor unrest (Harring and McMullin 1975). But more than agents of repression, the police also played a role in legitimating economic orders and democratic governance. New ideas about policing in the nineteenth century represented new “technologies” of managing social conflict and asserting social control through attempts at normalizing individual behavior and thereby preventing crime and deviance (Foucault 1979, 89). The emergence of democratic revolutions meant that traditional systems of social relations and control were unraveled and challenged, and urban elites turned to government as the only legitimate mechanism for regulating the “dangerous classes,” whose numbers were proliferating in London, New York and the other industrial cities of Europe and the United States. Government was expected to enforce “standards of daily decorum” that would minimize “daily and casual violence” and “riotous demand.” Methods of social control could not appear to be capricious or political in their orientation, however, but must be organized around a “constitutional

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   145 imperative” that emphasized the rule of law, a respect for the rights of democratic citizenship, and the “moral consensus” of the community (Silver 1966, 1, 14, 20). Enter the London Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 as a managerial solution to regulating city life. Manning (1997, 74) argues that Robert Peel saw policing as a “political strategy” that grew out of his experiences of regulating the ongoing religious and political conflicts that underscored Ireland’s becoming part of the United Kingdom in 1801. His views on social control were informed by utilitarian theorists, notably Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), who saw European approaches to law enforcement as weighted too heavily on fear and too little on rational approaches to deterring destructive behaviors.5 Peel called for the repeal of the death penalty for many of England’s minor offenses. Looking to the problem of social upheaval in France, Peel also argued that militaristic and repressive state actions could not win the popular consent of common people. The model of the Metropolitan Police would therefore be based on principles that called for the limited use of physical force as a tactic of social control. Officers would also be committed to the impartial enforcement of laws, and not wear any uniforms or carry weapons that could symbolize their alliance with military authorities or particular political interests. The Metropolitan Police would also have the goal of maintaining good relationships with the public, skills that they would be expected to develop in their regularized patrols of neighborhoods looking to prevent crime. This discussion illustrates the ways in which the new policing in Europe and the United States was not only focused on regulating the “dangerous classes” but also expanding social rights of citizenship, and therefore new protections of an emerging welfare state. Manning (1997, 67–68) argues that the establishment of the London Metropolitan Police fit within the Victorian paradigm for creating a welfare state, where there was a “growing awareness” among civic leaders that the “state had some responsibility for the protections of the risks to which individuals in urban areas were subjected.” Hewitt (1991, 225) discusses the links between nineteenth-­century policing, emerging social policies, and the “bio-­ politics” of regulating individual behavior, especially as this pertained to ensuring “health, security and stability” and an overall “quality of life” for urban populations. Similarly, Lane (1971, 19) notes that in mid-­nineteenth century Boston the municipal police had less to do with “crime” and “criminals” and more to do with the prevention of disease. Indeed the City of Boston maintained an entire branch of police officers dedicated to enforcing public health ordinances, included the rounding up of stray dogs, regulating butchery and the keeping of pigs and other animals, and making sure that privies and alleys were cleaned of refuse. Although it could be argued that the concern for public health was largely to protect the wealthy, it was also true that the working class and the poor benefitted from the reduction of disease. Nevertheless, police work often reflects contradictory goals of service versus coercion connected to broader contradictions in the welfare state overall. These contradictions can be observed by examining the ways in which central policing functions have evolved over time

146   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control in response to changing service demands, social conflicts, and ideas about how to best organize social control practices. Beyond the political context, Monkkonen (1981, 55) has argued, the reorganization of policing services in the mid-­ nineteenth century had as much to do with doing away with the inefficiencies of “entrepreneurial” models of local government as with concerns of regulating class and other forms of status conflict.

Crime-­Fighting, Order Maintenance, and Community Service Policing in the United States is organized around three primary functions: crime-­ fighting, order maintenance, and community service. These are nevertheless fluid in terms of how they are defined and applied. When police officials and the public talk about crime-­fighting, they are usually referring to the suppression of major felonies such as murder, armed robbery, burglary and others delineated by the FBI’s “Part I” index.6 Drug abuse violations,7 sex offenses, certain financial frauds (e.g., cyber crime), trafficking in stolen property and various kinds of organized crime activities are also considered crime-­fighting concerns. At the same time, only detectives and officers assigned to special units (e.g., warrant enforcement) spend most of their time dealing with crime. Patrol officers, who comprise the majority of police officials in terms of numbers and contacts with the community, spend only a limited amount of time on crime control, especially if this is defined as stopping offenses in progress or arresting perpetrators (Greene and Klockars 1991).8 Furthermore, when officers are dispatched to an incident involving crime they often come to discover that it is a false alarm or that it involves fairly insignificant violations from the “crime-­fighting” standpoint, for example simple assault, shoplifting, and vandalism. Most of what patrol officers do in a typical day can in fact be defined as “non-­crime” in scope, divided between “order maintenance” and “community service” activities (Mastrofski 1983, 40).9 Order maintenance activities involve the mediation of interpersonal disputes (e.g., fights and arguments), traffic-­related regulation and enforcement duties, and attending to a range of minor offenses and disruptive behaviors such as solicitation, loitering, panhandling, trespassing, noise violations, rowdiness and public inebriation (Sykes 1986). Community service activities include responding to various kinds of emergencies (e.g., vehicle accidents, medical calls, inclement weather or assisting the elderly) and non-­emergencies such as taking reports or giving directions. The ways in which the police carry out their various functions will have a significant impact on the ways in which the state handles social problems and may serve to mitigate or exacerbate community inequities. J.Q. Wilson (1968, 140) delineated between distinct “styles” of patrol. The “watchman” style affords officers a great deal of discretion in doing their job, and emphasizes the order maintenance or “peacekeeping” powers of the police over their capacity to enforce the law. Officers are likely to use informal mechanisms (e.g., reprimands, warnings or geographic containment) as the primary means of handling a

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   147 variety of misdemeanors. The choice to make an arrest will depend on the “seriousness” of an offense, a criterion that has less to do with legal statute and more with whether physical harm has been inflicted or a victim’s decision to press charges (Wilson 1968, 141). Officers pride themselves on having a good deal of familiarity with their communities, and spend much of their time “keeping an eye” on individuals whom they view as particularly suspicious (Bittner 1967, 702). Although watchman approaches may appear to be more tolerant of the types of behaviors found in cities, in particular, they were historically associated with corruption and arbitrary uses of authority. “Legalistic” patrol styles afford officers little discretion and all police matters tend to become a matter for the courts. Legalistic patrol styles would appear to be overly repressive, e.g., arresting the homeless on charges of vagrancy. But they have also been celebrated for protecting the due process rights of citizens and elevating problems such as domestic violence, which had been treated as order maintenance concerns before the 1980s, to the level of a criminal matter. Finally, “service” styles of patrol are said to be found in middle-­class areas where crime is at a minimum and where the police orient their services to the demands of residents. Nevertheless, the police are frequently engaged in offering services, and particularly social services, to citizens in lower-­income communities as well. In his classic work on policing “skid-­row,” Bittner (1967, 703) found that police would often “aid people in trouble,” helping them obtain food, shelter and employment, and gain access to welfare and health services. Huey’s (2007, 117) more recent work on policing skid-­rows similarly finds that the police are often engaged in a “social work” role helping homeless find shelter and taking public inebriates to detoxification centers. Plotkin and Narr (1997, 58) have described the police as the “forgotten” service providers, asked to respond to entrenched community problems such as homelessness, including linking those in need to soup kitchens, shelters, and other remedial resources. The evolution of the different policing functions and styles of patrol needs to be viewed within a historical context that considers broader dimensions of social change as well as notions of citizenship rights. Policing in the nineteenth century was oriented largely around goals of order maintenance and to some extent the delivery of social services. As noted earlier, the majority of arrests occurring during this period were for relatively minor offenses associated with vice activities, and crimes of violence were most often associated with public drunkenness, mob actions or interpersonal conflicts (as opposed to say, armed robbery). Because officers were on foot, a custodial arrest meant that officers had to physically escort perpetrators to the station house. For reasons that had to do with little more than proximity and convenience, then, officers often turned to informal versus formal methods of social control. Furthermore, officers might choose not to make arrests because they were “on the take,” allowing certain crimes to occur, such as prostitution or gambling, as long as they could be contained and did not disturb law-­abiding citizens. Monkkonen (1981) indicates the effects of order maintenance approaches to policing on urban arrest rates, which declined between 1860 and 1920.

148   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control A lack of formal law enforcement training also engendered an emphasis on order maintenance policing. Although police officers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were “formally engaged in law enforcement,” Haller (1976, 303) has noted, they were untrained in law and “placed little emphasis upon legal procedure.” Indeed, the nineteenth-­century police officer, similar to other blue collar workers, had little formal schooling beyond the age of 13 or 14 (Monkkonen 1981). When coming into a job, a police recruit was given a “hickory club, a whistle, and a key to a call box.” They would then be made to listen to a speech by a high-­ranking officer, and later sent out into the streets with a training officer (Haller 1976, 303). Officers were known for dispensing a highly “personalized” form of “curbside justice,” including the indiscriminate use of “billy clubs” (Walker 1977, 16). Alexander Williams, nicknamed “the Clubber,” became known for his brutality as a street officer, directed at those who disobeyed his orders. Far from being punished for his actions, Williams was  rewarded and eventually promoted to the rank of captain (Richardson 1970, 204). The officer as watchman role that predominated during the nineteenth century has often been celebrated as a mythical symbol of “small-­town” American life, but it was nevertheless problematic from the standpoint of protecting citizenship rights (Crank 1994, 325). Officers often illegally engaged in acts of violence and discriminated against particular groups. New York’s African-­Americans and immigrant sub-­populations were especially distrustful of the police, and had the most to fear in terms of violence being used against them. Police departments were also heavily politicized institutions, built upon a patronage model of recruitment, appointment, and promotion that was closely aligned with local political machines. Officers might even pay for their positions. Should a politician be toppled in an election, it was likely that his constituents holding policing jobs would also lose their jobs. Furthermore, the patronage model fed into tremendous problems of corruption where the police might be in cahoots with criminals and members of the professional underworld, serving as go-­betweens for particular politicians and allowing for the quid pro quo that fed the perpetuation of vice activities (Uchida, 2001). There was also little trust in the police insofar as their reputation as crime-­fighters was concerned. As a result, many businesses and wealthier urban residents continued to hire private police agencies such as the Pinkertons if they needed protection or investigative services. But order maintenance approaches to policing also had a surprisingly benevolent side that incorporated social service strategies for handling a wide array of social and crime problems. Cleveland’s police chief, Fred Kohler, instituted a “Common Sense” policy in 1910 that discouraged officers from making arrests for minor crimes on the basis that they “might do more harm than good” (Monkkonen 1981, 74). Instead, many communities used service outreach as a mechanism of regulating disorderly behavior. Walker (1977, 18) has argued that “the police were one of the most important social welfare institutions in the nineteenth-­century cities.” Skogan (1990) has noted that they sometimes provided emergency housing for the homeless or operated soup kitchens, and their

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   149 uniformed presence made them “beacons” for parents who solicited their help in finding their lost children. George Shaw, an alderman in Boston during 1873, praised the police as heroes of the poor because of their provision of free food, saying “misery bred crime and soup helped to prevent it” (Lane 1971, 192). Lane argues that the poor tended to trust the police even more than they did the social welfare workers aligned with local charities, who would often shame the poor as a condition for receiving aid. Moving forward, however, it is important to note that the policing role in delivering social welfare functions was not simply about benevolence. Rather, it was also about social control, or keeping the “dangerous class” away from the “more favored classes” (Monkkonen 1981, 102, quoting McDye), The Movement Toward Professionalization “The Clubber” became one of the targets for the Lexow Committee, an investigative panel conducted through the New York State Senators, organized in 1894 to look into the practices of the New York Police Department. It found that the Department was engaged in a “systematic and pervasive pattern of corruption, brutality, election fraud, pay-­offs for appointments and promotions, political interference in transfers and assignments, police involvement with confidence frauds, and the police conception that they were above the law” (Richardson 1970, 240). The work of the Lexow Committee served as an impetus to reform the administrative structure of the New York City Police Department, symbolizing the beginnings of a new “professionalization” era in American policing (Walker 1977, 53). As indicated above, the move to professionalize the police had its roots in the Progressive Movement and its focus on a variety of social ills, including the problem of corruption in municipal governments nationwide. Theodore Roosevelt, in his capacity as President of the New York City Board of Police Commissioners (1895–1897), took on the political machine of Tammany Hall in an attempt to dislodge its influence over the city’s police department (Richardson 1970). Roosevelt bolstered paramilitaristic codes of conduct and discipline within the policing ranks, which was seen as a way of instilling political neutrality and a commitment to the rule of law (Klockars 1985). By the 1920s, “good government” reforms emphasizing a science of public administration had taken hold in local governments around the United States, emphasizing bureaucratic and meritocratic standards for hiring and promotion such as the use of civil service tests (Chudacoff and Smith 2005, 196). These changes could not entirely wipe away the legacy of patronage in policing, but they certainly made it more difficult for hiring and promotion decisions to be made on the basis of nepotism or one’s political connections. The first policing training academies also emerged during the 1920s and 1930s, as did the first college-­level courses for officers. August Vollmer, chief of the Berkeley Police Department from 1909–1931 and the “father” of criminal justice education introduced the first college-­level training courses at the University of California beginning in 1916

150   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control (Walker and Katz 2011, 34). Vollmer was also instrumental in organizing the first four-­year program in law enforcement at San Jose State University (1931) and would be instrumental in beginning the criminology program at the University of California. At the turn of the twentieth century the stereotypical view of the police officer was “a man with a thick neck” and “low mentality” but possessing “a remarkable degree of physical strength and animal courage.” By mid-­ century, policing was emerging as a profession with distinct types of certification and eligibility criteria (Walker 1977, 134). During its early period, the police professionalization movement was very much in line with broader Progressive Era notions of social repair. Policing reforms were viewed as inseparable from emerging criminological theories of “penal-­welfarism” and the need for offender rehabilitation and treatment to supplement a traditional model of crime control organized around prosecution and punishment (Garland 2001, 27). August Vollmer was at the forefront of these reforms. In 1918 he delivered an address entitled “The Policeman as a Social Worker” to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in which he argued that police officers should learn criminology as a means of better understanding the social and psychological roots of crime. With such knowledge, Vollmer argued, the police would be able to “intervene in individuals’ lives before they entered lives of crime” (Walker 1977, 81). Portending many of the goals of community policing reforms advocated today, he argued that the police could divert “pre-­delinquents” to social service agencies in the interests of crime prevention. The hiring of the first female police officers in some localities reflected attempts by some departments to work within a social work model, especially as a means of showing a greater understanding of the plights of victimized or abandoned children and female offenders. By the 1930s, however, the professionalization movement became increasingly legalistic in focus and geared toward goals of crime-­fighting. The result was that the officer as social worker model fell into “almost total eclipse” (Walker 1977, 135). Critics of service diversion argued that it amounted to the formalization of discretion without providing clear legal guidelines. The advent of National Prohibition in 1919 also meant a shift toward a more narrowly defined law enforcement model of policing, not only as a way to clamp down on alcohol “bootlegging” but as a response to the unprecedented levels of urban violence and murder associated with it. The Wickersham Commission, organized by President Herbert Hoover in 1929 to study growing problems of crime and violence in American society, also played a role in redirecting the professionalization movement in a legalistic direction. The Commission’s eleventh volume, Lawlessness in Law Enforcement (1931), shocked Americans when it was revealed that the police systematically beat suspects in custody to extract confessions or statements and deprived them of contact with defense attorneys or family. Policy-­makers and police administrators responded to the report by imposing stricter codes of conduct on officers and further centralizing the policing chain of command (Walker 1977). The onset of the Great Depression also encouraged the police to be more focused on crime-­fighting. The emergence of a

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   151 new breed of outlaw, among them John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde, both captivated and terrorized the nation through their staging of public and sometimes deadly bank and other types of armed robberies throughout the American mid-­west. The FBI wasted no time in exploiting the public’s growing fears of crime through the publication of “public enemy” and “most wanted fugitive” lists and placards featuring the faces of notorious bandits, asking citizens to report on their whereabouts. Local police were also enlisted in the battle against dangerous desperados (Kessler 2003). The FBI was key in reorienting the focus of local police departments around crime-­fighting. J. Edgar Hoover, appointed head of the Bureau of Investigation within the U.S. Department of Justice (the forerunner of the FBI) in 1924, distrusted local police and found them crude, incompetent, and corrupt. Federal agents would serve as exemplars of a new kind of law enforcement official in America—the “G-­Man” (Government Man)—who was well-­educated, often in law or accounting, and was free of the graft and corruption associated with local police officers. The G-­Man would exude an “all American” persona, defined as being free of an immigrant’s accent or any other way of speaking or acting that suggested they came from the streets of urban America (Kessler 2003, 22). In addition, the G-­Man relied on scientific techniques in crime detection and investigation to identify and apprehend offenders. By 1924, for example, the U.S. Department of Justice had created a fingerprint database and by 1932 a forensics lab to analyze crime scene evidence. After the FBI was established as a distinct agency in 1935 and Hoover was made the head, he moved to establish a National Police Academy for the purpose of training America’s local police in “scientific and practical law enforcement methods” (Theoharis 2000, 364–365). The FBI’s adoption and oversight of the Uniform Crime Reporting System (UCR) in 1935 also had an enormous impact on the priorities of local law enforcement agencies. The UCR’s “Part 1” major crime index10 became a barometer by which public officials and the public could measure levels of public safety both nationally and on the local level. The UCR would also provide a yearly accounting of the number of arrests for Part 1 crimes. The implications of this new tool for perceiving and tracking crime were clear: departments would have to prioritize their enforcement operations around major crimes or else this could reflect upon them negatively (Waegel 1982). The professionalization era would extend beyond World War  II and bring about important changes associated with communications, patrol technologies, and legal training. Foot patrols gave way to motorized patrols as a means of adapting to America’s growing suburban landscape and the growing cities of the west and southwest. Officers were rotated in and out of districts as an anti-­ corruption measure (Skogan 1990). Call boxes increasingly gave way to centralized dispatch systems where citizens could telephone in and have an officer sent to a particular location. Clearance rates became the primary measurement of policing effectiveness (Alpert et al. 2001; Bayley 1994). Important Supreme Court decisions during the reign of Chief Justice Earl Warren (1953–1969) also advanced professionalization by imposing more due process restrictions on

152   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control officers (Packer 1968, 153). Decisions in Mapp v. Ohio (1961) strengthened the “Exclusionary Rule” pertaining to the search and seizure of evidence, and Miranda v. Arizona (1966) required officers to make suspects aware of their 5th Amendment rights. Although these decisions were rejected by law enforcement as hindering their crime-­fighting abilities, Richard Leo (2008) argues that they actually had the effect of enhancing policing expertise, requiring that officers become more skilled in verbal and psychological techniques for discovering guilt.

The Foundations of Community Policing Professionalization could not guarantee legitimacy and the contradictions inherent in the approach became visible in the 1960s. First, rising crime rates during this period created policy debates over the efficiency and effectiveness of policing and criminal justice methods (President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice 1967, 22–23). Second, racial tensions between the police and persons of color, particularly African-­Americans, had reached the level of a full-­blown legitimacy crisis, symbolized by the hundreds of urban uprisings that occurred between 1964 and 1969 (Chudacoff and Smith 2005). The Kennedy and Johnson Administrations had initially advocated a social control agenda rooted in the logic that civil rights reforms and increased economic and educational opportunities would reduce crime (Cloward and Ohlin 1960). But these reforms did little to mitigate the institutionalized racism that existed within state agencies themselves. Ethnographies on policing practices illustrated deep-­seeded racial and ethnic prejudices within the policing subculture. William Westley’s (1970, 104) research in a northern mid-­western city during the 1950s found that police officers were distrustful of blacks as a group, viewing them as “just waiting to commit a crime.” Almost half of all officers interviewed by Westley (pp. 101–102) reported that they felt blacks to be “biologically inferior,” and one out of five felt that blacks were “still savages—just out of the jungle.” Skolnick’s (1966, 81) ethnographic study of policing in the city of “Westville” during the first quarter of the 1960s also found a “norm” of racial prejudice existing among officers. As the civil rights era evolved, police departments would find themselves the primary targets of racial anger. In 1964, Harlem and Bedford-­Stuyvesant, Brooklyn erupted in six nights of rioting after an African-­American boy was shot by a white police officer. In 1965, the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles erupted amid rumors that a white police officer had roughed up a young African-­American motorist stopped on suspicion of drinking and driving. The Watts riot was viewed as especially predictable given the long history of racial and ethnic conflict that had existed between the Los Angeles Police Department and the city’s persons of color (Davis, 1990). After Watts, a concerned Lyndon Johnson pushed for the passage of the Law Enforcement Assistance Act (1965) that would provide federal funds to local police departments for purposes of improving crime control efforts. Johnson argued that “long-­term” crime prevention objectives associated with anti-­poverty

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   153 and other programs promoting “inclusion” would have to take a back seat to “short-­term” enforcement measures (Beckett 1997, 37). Despite Johnson’s efforts, racial uprisings continued to occur. In 1967 violence erupted in both Newark and Detroit, killing 23 and 43 respectively and injuring hundreds. In response, President Johnson convened the National Commission on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Commission, to study the causes of racial uprisings and to suggest solutions for preventing them. In its 1968 report to President Johnson, the Commission concluded that racist policies and practices associated with the employment, housing, education, and criminal justice system were all at the root of the nation’s urban uprisings. The Kerner Commission also found that 40 percent of the riots occurring between 1964 and the publication of its report were the direct result of policing actions, and that some of the most intense disturbances occurred in cities where police departments were “highly professionalized” and “best trained” (Crank 1994, 328; Walker and Katz 2011, 43). The Kerner Report also documented biased hiring and promotional practices within urban police departments nationwide as well as the perception among African-­Americans that their neighborhoods received inadequate policing services overall compared with white communities. The Kerner Commission Report suggested that “the elimination of abrasive policing practices, the establishment of contacts with minority communities, increased hiring of minority members, effective grievance mechanisms, and the creation of the position of community service officer” provided the only solutions for restoring policing legitimacy among persons of color (Crank 1994, 328–329). President Johnson, however, distanced himself from the Kerner Report, fearing that his alliance with it would appear to condone racial violence.11 Instead Johnson turned to his Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, which he had convened in 1965 to study the nation’s growing crime rate. The Commission’s findings were summarized in The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, published in 1967, containing over 200 recommendations for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the American criminal justice system. Among these were a call to expand the use of community-­based corrections programs, the establishment of police diversion programs whereby public inebriates could be taken to detoxification facilities as an alternative to arrest (Goldstein 1977), the expanded use of youth outreach initiatives, the establishment of a universal police number (e.g., 911) to speed up response times and to pinpoint incident locations, and a greater reliance on academic research to study all facets of the criminal justice process, including policing methods. The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society also made recommendations that were consistent with the Kerner Commission Report such as increasing employment and educational opportunities as a primary crime prevention tool. It also called for “eliminating unfairness” within the criminal justice process, including “callous, corrupt or brutal” actions on the part of law enforcement or corrections officials as well as highlighting the need to hire more minority officers (President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice 1967, viii).

154   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control Ultimately the President’s Crime Commission Report would provide the blueprint for the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, which established the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), a precursor to the National Institute of Justice. The LEAA’s mission was to assist state and local police departments through funding for training and equipment, but it would also provide funds and grants that helped to spawn a “research revolution” in the study of policing (Walker and Katz 2011, 44). Much of it would be centered in newly-­created criminal justice and criminology programs in universities that were to serve as new training centers for America’s officers. Important studies would also be sponsored by new private institutions such as the Police Foundation, whose Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment disputed the notion that randomized patrols prevented crime (Kelling et al. 1974). The new research emphasis also produced studies questioning the assumed relationship between crime prevention and high police per population ratios, rapid response times and high clearance rates (Bayley 1994). The Kerner and President’s Crime Commission reports, coupled with a new era of research, prompted vigorous academic and policy discussions about policing effectiveness and the impact of law enforcement practices on social inequality. J.Q. Wilson (1975) would argue that the rising offense rates of the 1960s and 1970s were in large part a legacy of the police professionalization movement and the resulting de-­emphasis on order maintenance functions in favor of crime-­ fighting (also see Sykes 1986). Wilson took the position that America’s rising crime rates were ultimately caused by dynamics of social disorganization that were taking hold in the nation’s cities, precipitated by family breakdown, welfare dependency, and chronic unemployment. The police had helped to foster this disorganization, Wilson argued, by failing to adequately regulate its symptoms such as juvenile misbehavior, illegal drug activities and other forms of street deviance. Wilson’s critique was expanded in his article “Broken Windows” that he wrote with George Kelling (Wilson and Kelling 1982). Here the authors focused, for example, on the deficiencies of motorized patrol as a system of social control, arguing that it tended to isolate officers from the communities that they served. Driving around in a car, Wilson and Kelling argued, meant less potential for officers to interact with citizens and businesses on an everyday basis. This was problematic in that citizens lost their ability to communicate their safety and security concerns to officers informally, and officers lost an important conduit of information about goings-­on in the community, both positive and negative. Motorized officers were also less effective at suppressing crime and disorder problems. Barking their directives at offenders from a car window, officers in patrol cars maintained a barrier between themselves and the public whereas officers on foot could not as easily separate themselves from dynamics of social disorder. Officer rotation policies, too, implemented to limit the potential of corruption, also undermined police–community relations. Without familiarity with a particular “beat” officer, a citizen might be less willing to approach the police (Skogan 1990). However, the legitimacy crisis that the police faced in the 1960s went well beyond matters of crime control. The Kerner Commission Report, in particular,

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   155 focused on declining economic opportunities, racism, and unfair law enforcement practices as critical aspects of the urban crime problem. In this context, policing reforms needed to be focused on healing strained relationships with African-­Americans and other social groups alienated from the police, as well as addressing the social strains that gave rise to crime and deviance (Hinton 2016). Some communities attempted to increase civilian oversight of law enforcement activities. Some academics and policy-­makers recommended a greater emphasis on community corrections and offender reintegration, especially in the wake of the Attica prison riots of 1971 and a broader prison reform movement (Fagan 1990). Out of these debates came Walker’s (1977, 173–174) “social service agency” model of reform that advocated linking citizens to remedial services as a means of addressing broader social problems, reinvoking Vollmer’s view of the police officer as social worker voiced 60 years earlier. The establishment of police–social worker teams serves as one of the best examples of a social service thrust in policing during the 1970s. These were viewed as an effective means of managing citizen encounters involving mental illness, alcohol, and substance abuse or domestic disputes (Treger 1975). As an alternative to arrest, social workers were viewed as an especially useful tool in police work because they could facilitate immediate access to crisis intervention and other remedial services. Other experiments with policing outreach involved youth diversion programs, especially in the wake of recommendations made by the President’s Crime Commission. Although many such initiatives were administered by the courts, others placed the onus on officers to “attach” or “refer” juveniles to community-­based remedial programs as a way to avoid formal criminal justice processing (Klein 1976, 422). Additional experiments with police diversion in the 1960s and 1970s involved the diversion of chronic inebriates to detoxification facilities as the result of decriminalization measures (Aaronson et al. 1977; Nimmer 1971). These earlier approaches paved the way for community policing initiatives that featured linkages with social service agencies, arrest diversion and other forms of community outreach. I have argued thus far in this chapter that policing methods are not “set in stone” but rather conform to a dialectic that reflects broader social conflicts and changing ideas about how to assert social control and regulate social problems. The first municipal police departments were less concerned with crime-­fighting and instead pursued social control strategies that emphasized order maintenance and social service outreach, including provision of public welfare services in the form of shelter and food. At the same time, policing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a product of the patronage era. Department personnel were beholden to particular political interests, untrained, and often corrupt. Order maintenance strategies sometimes translated into violent street justice and violations of a citizen’s 4th and 5th Amendment protections. The “good government” reforms associated with the Progressive Movement at the turn of the twentieth century meant the beginnings of a professionalization era in policing that would supplant the earlier patronage model. Although reformers such as August Vollmer stressed public welfare outreach as part of the professionalization

156   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control movement early on, such a focus would soon be supplanted by objectives of crime-­fighting, especially with the growing influence of the FBI on local law enforcement operations. By the 1960s, the limitations of the crime-­fighting model became apparent as crime rates increased and many American cities exploded in racial violence. The Kerner and President’s Crime Commissions, convened to study these issues, concluded that while the professionalization era had transformed American policing largely for the better, more attention needed to be paid to addressing problems of social disorder and inequity. This prompted new research and policy debates over the effectiveness of policing strategies and their impacts on social inequality, serving as the foundation of the community policing movement. As part of this movement, the community service functions of the police were stressed, including “social service” employed as a method of crime prevention as a way of restoring policing legitimacy. The implementation of community policing initiatives would nevertheless be pre-­empted and reshaped by political events. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 meant an end to twentieth-­century experiments with penal-­welfarism and a commitment to rehabilitation as part of the criminal justice process (Garland 2001). America’s “war on drugs,” in particular, meant a punitive shift in criminal justice policy. Social service agency models of policing and community-­ based corrections models were dismissed as being “soft on crime” (Lawrence 1991). In the next section I will show how the war on drugs created a new legitimacy crisis for local police over issues of harsh and unequal enforcement measures that eventually led to the re-­emergence of community policing as an alternative drug policy in itself. First, I examine how drug control policy and local policing became intertwined, as this was not always the case. Next I turn to how the war on drugs “hijacked” community policing reform (Walker 1993), turning it into a policy emphasizing aggressive forms of order maintenance versus social service outreach.

Local Policing and Drug Control Before 1900, local police had little involvement with illicit drug control. Most psychoactive substances such as heroin and cocaine were legal and readily available to adults in a number of different medicines, drinks, and other concoctions. Addiction itself was perceived as more of a medical than a legal problem (Duster 1970). By 1912, however, growing concern over heroin use as a “moral disease” led many states to restrict the dispensing and sales of narcotics (Inciardi and McElrath 2011, 8). This paved the way for the passage of the Harrison Act in 1914 that essentially outlawed the use of heroin and cocaine except when prescribed by physicians as a short-­term medical therapy. Still, Harrison was primarily a revenue measure, and local policing agencies did little to enforce it, especially where acts of use and possession were concerned. The situation was different in some states such as California where the state stipulated a six-­ year penalty for marijuana possession in 1925 (Nicholas and Churchill 2012). Localities had also imposed their own anti-­drug legislation. San Francisco, for

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   157 example, passed a law in 1875 designed to outlaw the operation of opium dens in the city’s immigrant Chinese ghettos (Reinarmann 2006). In 1930 Congress created the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) as a specialty agency that would enforce the Harrison Act and other federal anti-­ narcotics measures. The first head of the FBN was Harry Anslinger, a veteran federal official dedicated to enforcing the Volstead Act, who would later head a campaign to criminalize marijuana. Promoting a nationwide “drug scare”12 over its use, Anslinger called marijuana the “assassin of youth” and argued that it caused sexual promiscuity, violence, and even murder (Becker 1963, 142). Law enforcement officials throughout the southwestern and southern United States had been pressuring Anslinger to pass federal legislation clamping down on cannabis, claiming that its use by a growing number of Mexican immigrants in their districts was leading to increasing crime rates (Musto 1999, 222). By 1937, Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act that outlawed cannabis much in the same way that the Harrison Act had outlawed narcotics and cocaine. To help enforce the law and other anti-­narcotics measures (marijuana was often referred to as a “narcotic” during that period), the FBN solicited the cooperation of local law enforcement entities. By the eve of World War II specialized narcotics enforcement units had been established in many of America’s larger cities (Nicholas and Churchill 2012). These units, however, were more concerned with anti-­ trafficking violations and not simple possession. As Skolnick (1966, 141) noted in his work on narcotic units, simple possession did not constitute a “good pinch” for a specialized unit interested in arresting felons. The onset of World War II provided an interlude to the prohibitionist agenda of the federal government. In 1951, however, Congress passed the Boggs Act that stipulated mandatory minimum prison sentences as a sanction for drug offenses. Boggs represented a rejection of earlier disease models for addressing addiction and instead emphasized punitive measures aimed at stopping the supply of drugs (Nicholas and Churchill 2012). The passage of Boggs corresponded to new drug scares over narcotic use in the poor and working class districts of American cities and the threats this posed for the wider society (Musto 1999). “Heroin had just about taken over Harlem,” said writer Claude Brown, author of Manchild in the Promised Land when commenting on New York’s drug scene in the late 1940s and 1950s. Heroin use was considered “hip” among a deviant subculture in Harlem including jazz musicians, gamblers, pimps, and hustlers. Far from being stereotypical junkies, these were “cool cats” who “affected a style that combined racial consciousness, a rejection of exploitation in the labor market, a taste for fashion and a defiance for decorum and order” (Schneider 2008, 43). It would not be long before the youth of Harlem looked to heroin, too, as a way to be “cool,” raising alarms among local officials who feared that heroin would seep out of Harlem and into the hands of middle-­class youth. In 1951, for example, the Narcotics Council of the Welfare Council of the City of New York produced an educational comic book called Trapped that portrayed straight-­laced and hard-­working young Americans getting caught up in the drug culture. It warned that marijuana was a gateway to “harder” drugs, and

158   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control called heroin a stimulant that created aggression in males and sexual promiscuity in females, including the risk of being drawn into prostitution (Schneider 2008, 51). The irony surrounding the concern over rising addiction in poor communities was that the state had helped create the problem. Anti-­vice statutes led to the concentration of prostitution, gambling, and illegal drug use activities in marginalized sections of cities and towns. “Tenderloin” or “red light” districts attracted a “sporting class” of “prostitutes, pimps, thieves, gamblers, gangsters, entertainers, ‘fairies’ and johns,” as well as “wealthy slummers” (Keire 1998, 809–810). These areas, among them sections of New York’s Times Square, spawned a criminal underworld immortalized in the writings of Damon Runyon, whose “Broadway Stories” became the foundation for the 1950 hit musical Guys and Dolls. In addition to Tenderloin districts, racial and ethnic segregation also had the effect of centralizing vice services and underground drug and alcohol markets, often as part of the local jazz scenes found in communities such as Harlem or South Central Los Angeles. Realizing that vice could not be eradicated, policing practices reinforced the segregation of vice activities through “containment” policies that sought to keep them from spilling over into middle-­ class areas (Schneider 2008). Containment also allowed the police to familiarize themselves with specific criminal elements, making it easy to direct crackdowns if the need arose and allowing them to exact illegal gratuities through bribes and shakedowns (Haller 1976). Key court decisions set the stage for the implementation of police diversion measures for illicit drug users. In Robinson v. California (1962), the U.S. Supreme Court determined that drug addiction was a disease and not a crime, and that to convict someone for addiction alone was “cruel and unusual punishment” (Nolan 2001, 35). The court compared addiction to a state of insanity, a sickness over which one had no rational control.13 The court also ruled, however, that having a sickness did not eliminate the need for confinement. This set the stage for the use of involuntary civil commitments to residential and outpatient treatment programs. The Robinson decision had its broadest impact, however, on the enforcement of statutes against public drunkenness. In two landmark rulings, Driver v. Hinnant (1966) and Easter v. District of Columbia (1966), federal court judges applied the logic used in Robinson to decide that chronic alcoholics could not be held legally liable for their actions since alcoholism was a form of drug addiction.14 The effect of these rulings was the decriminalization of public drunkenness in the United States and its being redefined as a public health problem. Before Driver and Easter, public drunkenness comprised as many as 40 percent of all yearly arrests for non-­traffic offenses in the United States. After Driver and Easter, many localities established detoxification facilities as medical intake centers that were available for police diversion (Aaronson et al. 1977, 409–410; Nimmer 1971).

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   159 The Foundations of the Drug War By the end of the 1960s, two new national drug scares meant a ramping up of punitive control measures. The first had to do with increasing levels of heroin use that were blamed for creating crime waves of “vast proportions” in the nation’s cities (Schneider 2008, 116). Although some saw the heroin problem as the result of structural inequities and disadvantages, others saw it as reflective of a cultural malaise unique to African-­Americans that included a breakdown in family structure and an over-­reliance on liberal social programs (Beckett 1997). The second drug scare began around 1966 and incorporated the growing number of white, middle-­class youth who were embracing the use of marijuana and psychedelic drugs as a symbol of social revolution. By 1971 a U.S. government survey showed that 40 percent of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 21 had used marijuana at least once, a finding reflected in a surge of marijuana arrests that went from only 18,000 in 1965 to 188,000 in 1970 (Musto 1999, 248). Reminiscent of Anslinger’s campaign to criminalize marijuana, many political leaders and social commentators blamed illicit drugs for eroding America’s moral fiber, leading to problems of sexual promiscuity, disrespect for  authority, and failures in school and work. They also argued that LSD and other psychedelic substances, in particular, led to chromosomal and genetic damage even though there was little reliable science to back up this claim (Reinarmann 2006). The election of Richard Nixon in 1968 on a platform of law and order was largely premised on an anti-­drug message. During his campaign Nixon had called recreational drug use a “modern curse” that promised to decimate America’s youth. He also told audiences that drug addicts were responsible for half the crime in New York City (Heumann and Cassak 2003, 25). During his first term in office Nixon signed into law the federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The law superseded all existing state and local laws, and prioritized criminal enforcement as the best way to reduce recreational drug use and abuse. It designated heroin, LSD, and marijuana as “Schedule 1” drugs, and stipulated imprisonment for anyone caught using or selling these substances. In 1971, Nixon announced a “war on drugs,” and set about shifting federal drug enforcement responsibilities from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics located in the Treasury Department to the Department of Justice. The war on drugs has since been a fact of American life, represented by its reliance on punitive criminal sanctions as the best way to deter recreational drug use and end the problem of drug addiction. Nixon’s hard line on drug use was puzzling given that his Administration oversaw the unprecedented expansion of treatment under the creation of the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP) in 1972. One of the primary goals of SAODAP was to respond to the problem of American soldiers returning from Vietnam as heroin addicts. The solution was to channel these soldiers into methadone maintenance programs. While veterans would be the main targets of these programs, all heroin addicts could also gain access to

160   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control them. In time, however, Nixon would distance himself from SAODAP, facing critics who argued that dependence on methadone was no different from dependence on heroin. Before resigning in 1973, Nixon moved to dismantle SAODAP amid evidence that methadone maintenance had indeed helped to reduce narcotics-­related deaths, especially in poor communities. In place of an agency focused on drug treatment and outreach, Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Administration that would be solely devoted to criminal justice approaches to drug control (Massing 1998). The drug war ebbed on the federal level during the Ford and Carter Administrations, the latter of which advocated decriminalization for some amounts of marijuana possession (Beckett 1997). In some states, however, the war on drugs was intensifying. This was especially the case in New York, where in 1973 Governor Nelson Rockefeller announced his proposal to impose life sentences for the trafficking of heroin, methadone, LSD and other psychoactive substances, as well as forbidding plea bargaining or parole for offenders charged with such crimes. Although the so-­called “Rockefeller drug laws” would seem to make a distinction between traffickers and users, users and addicts, too, would be subject to tougher criminal justice measures. When Ronald Reagan became president in 1980, his drug control policies would be greatly influenced by his wife’s involvement with anti-­marijuana activists such as the National Federation of Parents and Robert DuPont, former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who wanted to put an end to what he perceived as the social tolerance that had grown up around recreational drug use, which had been engendered by the 1960s and its culture of permissiveness (Massing 1998). As Reagan’s first term unfolded, drugs and drug users would be viewed not only as the primary cause of urban crime and disorder but also “as a serious threat to American life and values” (Musto 1999, 273). Policy “hawks” revived a somewhat dormant drug war, formulating a punitive national control agenda that began with the federal Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, which reintroduced the use of mandatory minimum sentences as sanctions for committing drug abuse violations (Reuter 1984, 15). Then the Anti-­Drug Abuse Act of 1986 was passed, which was specifically designed to address the emerging problem of “crack” (versus powder) cocaine, calling for mandatory minimums for any offender found with a stipulated amount in their possession. The Anti-­Drug Abuse Act of 1988 became a political tool for the election of George Herbert Walker Bush, calling for the death penalty for “major traffickers,” asset forfeiture, more allowance for drug interdiction and eradication efforts involving foreign governments, and more attention to alcohol-­related addiction problems. The legislation also created the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) within the White House and the creation of a national “drug czar” who was to monitor and advise on drug control efforts. The first “czar,” William Bennett, was a staunch prohibitionist who was a firm believer that drugs were the cause of most of America’s urban problems. He advocated zero tolerance of use under the threat of incarceration, and his outspokenness kept the drug issue on the front burner within the media (Musto 1999). By 1990 America’s drug control budget was $6.7 billion, more than three

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   161 times what it had been in 1980, and most of this money would be spent on enforcement, much of it going to aid state and local governments (Inciardi 2008, 277).

Drug Control and Law Enforcement Biases From 1925 to the mid-­1970s, America’s incarcerated population hovered at about 200,000. By the end of the 1990s, there were almost 1.4 million persons housed in the nation’s prisons and jails, and there would be 1.5 million by 2014.15 This population explosion was driven primarily by America’s drug war. In 1980 just 580,900 individuals had been arrested for drug abuse violations in the United States. By the year 2000, there were 1,570,600 arrests for drug abuse violations, a 271 percent increase in 20 years.16 The social impact felt by the drug war would create new legitimacy crises for local law enforcement. The first would emerge from charges that punitive enforcement policies were unfairly targeting African-­Americans and Latinos/as. Currie’s (1993) research showed that the national proportions of black or Latino/a jail inmates charged with a drug offense went from 55 percent in 1983 to 73 percent in 1989. The second would emerge from charges that the drug war was creating a surge in the arrest and imprisonment of non-­violent offenders while doing little to reduce the recreational use, abuse or trafficking associated with illegal drugs. Michael Tonry has provided some of the most compelling research on racial inequities associated with America’s drug control policy. In 1978, 80 percent of those arrested nationally for “drug offenses” (i.e., possession, trafficking, manufacture, and use) were white and roughly 20 percent were black (Tonry 2011, 57).17 By 1988, however, as the drug war revved up during the Reagan and Bush I presidential administrations, the proportion of blacks arrested for drug offenses doubled from just over 20 percent to just over 40 percent nationally. In 1978, the drug offense arrest rate for blacks in the U.S. was roughly 500 per 100,000 persons, roughly twice what it was for whites. By the end of the 1980s the drug offense arrest rate for blacks in the U.S. was nearly six times what it was for whites, approaching an astounding 1,500 arrests per 100,000 persons (Tonry 2011, 58; Tonry 1995, 111). Indeed, the U.S. drug offense arrest rate for whites changed little between 1978 and the late 1980s, averaging between 200 and 250 per 100,000 persons. What was especially striking about the widening racial disparities in drug enforcement practices during the 1980s, Tonry argues, is that they did not correspond to patterns of offending or increased use. Using national data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Tonry (1995) showed that there was little distinction between whites and blacks in terms of whether they used illicit substances. Moreover, Tonry (2011, 61) found no evidence to support the contention that blacks were more involved in drug trafficking than whites, an argument used by some to explain racial disparities in arrest rates. Another dimension of enforcement bias associated with the drug war has been the repression of minor and non-­violent offenders. Before the drug war, possession offenses were often charged as misdemeanors with little risk of long-­term

162   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control imprisonment (Keire 1998). After the drug war commenced, however, imprisonment for possession offenses became the norm (Mauer and King 2007). Despite the drug war being sold to the American people as an effective means to deter illegal trafficking and therefore make illicit substances less available, most drug arrests have been for possession alone. In 1982 there were 676,000 arrests for drug abuse violations, 538,100 of which (80 percent) were for possession. Drug arrests more than doubled over the next 18 years, reaching almost 1.6 million by the year 2000, with the proportion of possession arrests remaining virtually unchanged at 81 percent of the total.18 The U.S. Sentencing Project found that arrests for marijuana possession alone accounted for 79 percent of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990s (Mauer and King 2007, 2). Beyond the numbers, the sentences for possession were exceedingly punitive and in many cases more severe than those for violent or major property crimes, the effect of “three strikes” laws and “mandatory minimums.”19 For their part, the police viewed possession arrests as effective at stopping traffickers, arguing that many arrested for possession are suspected of being engaged in trafficking themselves or can at least provide the names of their suppliers (Gardiner 2012; Suratt et al. 2004; also see Skolnick 1966). Nevertheless, many of those swept up in drug enforcement actions have come from the ranks of the socially marginal, such as runaway teens, the mentally ill, sex workers, ex-­offenders, and addicts. Most importantly for this analysis, the crackdown on these sub-­populations as part of the war on drugs has been facilitated, in part, by the use of quality of life and other “broken windows” models of community policing that have attempted to stamp out all signs and symbols of urban disorder regardless of the social disparities caused by such actions (Alexander 2010; Harcourt 2001). Furthermore, supply reduction efforts—criminal justice responses to reducing drug demand with little emphasis on treatment—have done little to address the problems of drug addiction and dependency that underlie crime and other social problems (Currie 1993). The Structural Dimensions of Law Enforcement Bias In this book I have argued that dimensions of bias within government agencies are more likely to be associated with ostensibly neutral organizational practices than with clearly observable forms of discrimination. This is no less true of the drug war, where the structural dynamics of policing served as antecedents to enforcement biases associated with it. Herbert (1997, 45) has argued that police officers must negotiate “zones of permissible action” for purposes of law enforcement. Police-­initiated enforcement actions (i.e., those that are not in response to a citizen call for service) are more likely in public spaces where officers can lawfully observe violations of law or acts of public disorder. Private spaces, on the other hand, are constitutionally protected from the probing eyes of the state. Such spatial restrictions have helped to perpetuate the unequal outcomes associated with the drug war. Drug enforcement has proven more difficult in suburban, and often white, middle-­class areas where

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   163 social life usually occurs indoors or in backyards. This includes illegal drug use and trafficking, which is less discoverable to law enforcement. Conversely, drug enforcement has been easier in urban, lower-­income, and African-­American or Latino/a neighborhoods where street life is more vibrant (Anderson 1999). Traffickers hang on street corners trying to make themselves visible to motorists and other passers-­by, and addicts often congregate in parks and vacant lots. The police are keen observers of these activities and stage frequent crackdowns on drug offenders using “buy and bust” and other types of enforcement actions (Goetz and Mitchell 2006; Cooper et al. 2005; Schneider 1998). Spatial restrictions on law enforcement have also led to the use of “creative” strategies for discovering probable cause, the lawful standard under which the police may conduct searches, seize evidence, and make arrests. For example, the police may stop a motorist for a minor traffic violation, such as failing to use a turn signal, as a “pretext”20 for discovering a more serious offense. Goffman (2014) documents how police officers post themselves at hospitals and other public buildings looking for individuals with outstanding warrants, a practice that ends up targeting young black men. Herbert (1997, 50–53) has called this practice “pooping and snooping,” defined as the “art of finding and legally detaining people who may be involved in criminal activity.” One of the most invasive pooping and snooping tools used by law enforcement has its roots in the landmark Supreme Court case Terry v. Ohio (1968). Here the justices determined that it is lawful for the police to stop, question, and frisk citizens who they believe are, have been, or are about to be involved in criminal activity or who they believe are armed and dangerous. The court determined that a “frisk is not a search” but rather a tool for confiscating weapons (Dorf 2010). The lasting legacy of the Terry decision is that it created a new category of “reasonable suspicion,” short of probable cause, that made it lawful for the police to detain citizens (Heumann and Cassak 2003, 21). The ability of the police to stop, frisk, and interview a citizen on the basis of suspicion—what became known as a “Terry Frisk” or “Terry Search”—has served as the legal basis for much of the aggressive order maintenance that defines quality of life policing (Kraska 2007; Harcourt 2001). Detained individuals can be questioned about their comings and goings and officers can seek consent to do a full search as a way to discover serious offenses. The reasonable suspicion standard has also allowed for a marriage between aggressive order maintenance tactics and aggressive drug enforcement, especially in the geographic context. Moskos (2008, 114) has argued that “the act of simply being” in one of Baltimore’s “drug-­free” zones was enough to draw the suspicion of officers who would often make arrests for minor infractions such as loitering or riding a bicycle without a light at night as a pretext for finding drugs (i.e., an arrest allowed police to conduct a full search).21 Drug-­free zones are often designated in low-­income African-­American neighborhoods, and it is young black men who are often targeted by the police (Alexander 2010; Bass 2001; Greene 1999). Another twist on the spatial dimensions of quality of life policing involves cooperating with property owners to crack down on trespassing

164   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control offenses, as well as the enforcement of “off-­limits” orders charged against specific individuals to keep them from sleeping or hanging out in certain public spaces, such as parks or city streets (see Beckett and Herbert 2008, 10–11). Before the 1950s, non-­alcohol related drug enforcement was largely a federal matter. Some big city departments had formed narcotics units, but their activities had more to do with trafficking than possession and use. This situation began to change in the 1950s as the federal government intensified the criminal punishments for drug use and possession, prompting a more punitive response from local law enforcement agencies. This more punitive trend in drug control policy also had an impact on social inequality. Although drug enforcement activities in the United States have always generated unequal outcomes in terms of where enforcement activities were concentrated, it was the war on drugs that institutionalized racial and ethnic biases and made the unequal outcomes associated with the drug war impossible to ignore.

Alternative Drug Control Policies and Community Policing During the 1990s a backlash to the war on drugs emerged, emanating from multiple sectors of American life. In February of 1996 The National Review published a series of articles entitled “The War is Lost.” Contributors included William F. Buckley, Jr., a prominent political conservative and founder of the magazine who argued that America’s war on drugs had become too costly and was ineffective. Ethan Nadelmann, a former Princeton professor turned drug policy reformer, argued for the adoption of European-­style drug control models that tolerated some levels of use. Kurt Schmoke, the mayor of Baltimore, advocated for the decriminalization of marijuana to reduce the punitive impact of the drug war on African-­Americans and the poor. Joseph McNamara, formerly the chief of police in San Jose, CA and Kansas City, MO, argued that criminal justice approaches to drug control failed to suppress both illegal use and trafficking. The National Review piece revealed a growing consensus among politicians, academics, and law enforcement officials about the failure of criminal justice solutions for regulating drug use and abuse. Legalization alone, however, would not address the broader health and social implications associated with drug use. Prominent criminal court judges William Schma of Michigan and Peggy Hora of California argued for the recognition of drug possession and use as “not simply a law enforcement/criminal justice problem but a public health problem,” requiring commensurate responses (Hora et al. 1999, 453). A 1996 survey of urban police chiefs similarly found that they viewed drug use as a “public health problem better handled by prevention and treatment programs than as a crime problem better handled by the criminal justice system” (Drug Strategies 1996, 5). The recognition among many public officials that treatment and prevention measures were a necessary part of an overall drug control strategy, however, did not mean that they favored legalization or even decriminalization. Instead, there was increasing support for hybrid strategies that would span criminal justice, social service, and health sectors.

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   165 Demand reduction policies were viewed as one popular alternative to the supply reduction and interdiction efforts associated with the drug war (MacCoun and Reuter 2001, 32). Reminiscent of earlier medical models of control, demand reduction policies favored the expansion of treatment services, community-­based prevention initiatives and other remedial programs (i.e., expanded education and jobs programs) that would shift the regulatory balance away from supply reduction and focus instead on the behavior and well-­being of the individual user. Demand reduction advocates were of two camps. One emphasized abstinence-­ based and coercive treatment measures such as drug courts (Satel 1999). Unlike prison-­based treatment programs, drug courts reflected a philosophy of “therapeutic jurisprudence” that allowed some offenders to avert prosecution if they agreed to enter and successfully complete a treatment regimen (Hora et al. 1999, 439; Nolan 2001). At the same time, because they were still part of the criminal justice process, drug court critics argued that such programs continued to reinforce the criminal label for non-­violent drug offenders arrested on charges of use or possession (Drug Policy Alliance 2015). There were also questions about whether coercive treatment measures were effective in the long term. Drug courts offered only a finite number of treatment sessions that might prove insufficient for treating addiction. They also tended to be organized around the use of outpatient and group therapies that were considered by some to be of limited use. Drug courts also tended to dismiss the use of drug maintenance therapies (e.g., methadone or buprenorphine) as enabling addiction. Drug courts were also criticized for tying up limited numbers of public-­funded treatment spots for those that may not truly need them, i.e., those arrested for a marijuana offense (Drug Policy Alliance 2015).22 Another demand reduction camp represented the so-­called “public health” movement for drug policy reform (Des Jarlais 1995; Cotton 1994). Advocates of a public health approach advocated for “treatment on demand” or “treatment on request” policies that would provide for immediate access to all types of treatment services—from detoxification to drug maintenance—as a “voluntary” matter and outside of the context of coercion (Guydish et al. 2000, 363; Beilenson 1999). A second and more controversial pillar of the public health approach advocated a “harm reduction” philosophy of regulating drug use, defined as a way to “minimize the hazards associated with drug use rather than use itself ” (Duncan et al. 1994, 281). Harm reduction also had libertarian undertones, recognizing the right of free citizens to engage in recreational drug use without having to face criminal sanctions (Kubler and Walti 2001; O’Malley and Mugford 1991). As Caulkins and Reuter (1997, 1148) have argued, harm reduction goals are “less judgmental and, hence, more conducive to reintegrating offenders into mainstream society” whereas compulsory models tend to be “divisive,” and make it easy to think about drug offenders as the “ ‘enemy’ in a ‘war on drugs.’ ” Harm reduction policies therefore presupposed some level of legalization or decriminalization but not without the commensurate availability of public services designed to minimize the personal and social damages of using drugs (Bok 1998; Nadelmann et al. 1994). These included needle

166   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control (syringe) exchange programs designed to fight the diseases associated with intravenous drug use such as HIV/AIDS, methadone, heroin and other drug maintenance programs, overdose prevention services, and policies that would encourage the use of safer substance alternatives, i.e., coca leaves and opium versus their refined derivatives (Bluthenthal et al. 1997). The creation of “tolerance areas” for psychoactive drug use, often in the form of specialized injection sites or “contact centres” with medical practitioners and outreach workers nearby, was also considered part of a harm reduction program (Riley and O’Hare 1998, 10). A “Third Way” in Drug Control? Amid the debates over drug policy reform, community policing emerged as a “third way” between legalization and compulsory treatment.23 In 1993 Lee Brown, the former police commissioner from New York with a Ph.D. in Criminology became the new head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under then President Clinton. Brown concurred with his predecessors’ view that drug use was behind much of the nation’s crime problem, but also denounced the nation’s drug war as overly repressive and ineffective (Massing 1998). He called for a new strategy that would stress treatment over enforcement, and said that drug control strategies would be aimed at hard-­core users and offenders who were most affected by the effects of illicit drugs and the violence associated with trafficking. As part of his strategy Brown was an advocate of employing those elements of community policing reform that emphasized enhanced community service and outreach as a means to achieve broader social control objectives. Brown had been a key architect of the “Safe Streets/Safe Cities” initiative under Mayor David Dinkins in New York. The program involved policing crackdowns, especially aimed at reducing gun violence, but also expanded social service outreach to teens and other at-­risk groups as a way to mitigate the social strains underlying crime (Conklin 2003). Much of the inspiration for involving the police in service outreach to illicit drug users as a particular target population came from abroad where governments were experimenting with “pluralized” drug control models (Goetz and Mitchell 2006, 474; Bunton 2001). The publication of Tackling Drugs Together by the British Home Office in 1995 called for the creation of “drug actions teams” that would pair law enforcement with public health officials to promote treatment and social service outreach objectives (Hellawell 1995, 319). Reflecting such policy statements, local police jurisdictions in England and Wales had been developing “arrest referral schemes” for drug offenders or offenders who were drug-­dependent since the late 1980s. This involved assigning outreach counselors to police stations where they would work alongside police officials in offering eligible arrestees community-­based treatment services and other social supports (Hunter et al. 2005, 343; Sondhi and Huggins 2005).24 In Australia treatment diversion was offered on a “pre-­arrest” basis. This involved the issuance of warnings or “cautions” that allowed officers to refer individuals

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   167 to remedial services as an alternative to filing formal charges (Spooner et al. 2001, 283).25 Police departments abroad and in Canada were also engaged in helping to implement harm reduction policies as part of a public health alternative for regulating problems of drug use and misuse. In a 1994 report to Britain’s Home Office, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, comprising academics, probation, and health professionals, stated that the “enforcement of laws against drug misuse cannot wholly eliminate misuse but a variety of policing approaches can have a limiting effect on the level of harm caused to individuals and society.” The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (1994, 2) argued that “harm reduction principles are not incompatible with vigorous street policing.” Word began to spread about innovative programs such as the “Merseyside Harm Reduction Model.” Centered in working class and de-­industrialized Liverpool, England, harm reduction interventions had been used in Merseyside since the 1980s in response to concerns about intravenous drug use, heroin addiction and the spread of HIV-­AIDS. The Merseyside Police had agreed to support harm reduction initiatives in cooperation with the National Health Service in hopes that it would help reduce acquisitive (property) crime. This meant refraining from arresting drug offenders who tended to congregate near treatment sites, or using cautioning policies that involved detaining offenders (formally or informally) as a method of informing them about harm reduction programs and referring them to treatment services (Riley and O’Hare 1998; Parker and Kirby 1996; Parry 1990). Just south of Merseyside in Cheshire, England, the police supported the operation of heroin maintenance programs in the interest of reducing crime.26 In Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Germany, and nine Swiss cities, police officers worked with social workers in the interest of supporting treatment and harm reduction services, especially within specially-­designated areas where drug use would be tolerated (Kubler and Walti 2001). Australia also committed to “harm minimization” (i.e., harm reduction) as a foundation of its national drug strategy (Maher and Dixon 1999, 506). Vancouver, B.C. was also engaged in developing policing policies in support of harm reduction services and drug treatment outreach (Huey 2007). There were also some U.S. cities that were experimenting with the social service aspects of community policing to support harm reduction and drug treatment diversion initiatives. New Haven was one of the first cities to get its police officers to “de-­emphasize” arresting drug offenders for possession and use offenses while supporting community-­based harm reduction initiatives, especially needle-­exchange (Pastore 2000–2001). Much more common in the United States were programs that attempted to involve the police in some level of social service outreach to help deal with a wide range of social problems, among them illicit drug use and misuse. The next chapter will be devoted to examining the cases of Norfolk, Baltimore, and San Francisco and their attempts to combine community policing efforts with drug policy reforms during the 1990s, including the support of harm reduction and treatment outreach for drug users and street addicts. I will argue, however, that reform efforts were made difficult by the

168   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control legacy of punitive drug enforcement practices and the popularity of broken windows versus what I will call “reintegrative” community policing methods, with important implications for the use of police officers in social service outreach efforts.

Notes   1 For the official definition of clearance rates see any edition of Crime in the United States published annually by the FBI, e.g., the 2014 edition, accessed from www.fbi. gov/about-­us/cjis/ucr/crime-­in-the-­u.s/2014/crime-­in-the-­u.s.-2014/offenses-­knownto-­law-enforcement/clearances/main   2 “Problem-­oriented policing” is often considered a distinct reform unto itself (Goldstein 1990), but also a “fundamental element” of any community policing program (Eck 2004, 185). Problem-­oriented models also do not necessarily involve cooperation with other agencies or community groups, as is the case with COMPSTAT (COMPuter STATistics) initiatives. Although important to community policing reform, COMPSTAT and other problem-­oriented approaches are beyond the scope of my focus on policing and social service outreach, although it should be noted that COMPSTAT has been blamed for encouraging aggressive enforcement (see Moskos 2008).   3 Goldstein’s (2013) reporting in the New York Times on a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of stop and frisk practices found that African-­Americans and Latinos/as accounted for 83 percent of those stopped and frisked by New York City’s police between 2004 and 2012 even though these groups comprised only 50 percent of the population.   4 See Chapter 1, this volume, and Esping-­Andersen (1990, 37) for a broader discussion of the term “decommodification.”   5 Bentham, along with British police reformer and magistrate Patrick Colquhoun, co-­ authored a treatise on the need for police reform in the 1790s which influenced Sir Robert Peel. See Richardson (1970) and Manning (1997).   6 See the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports (2013). Available at www.fbi.gov/about-­us/cjis/ucr/crime-­in-the-­u.s/2013/crime-­in-the-­u.s.-2013/cius-­ home   7 According to Uniform Crime Reports published by the FBI, drug abuse violations are defined as the unlawful possession, sale, use, growing, manufacturing, and making of narcotic drugs including opium or cocaine and their derivatives, marijuana, synthetic narcotics, and dangerous non-­narcotic drugs such as barbiturates. Accessed June 5, 2016 from www.bjs.gov/content/dcf/enforce.cfm   8 Greene and Klockars (1991, 283) distinguish between activities defined as “fighting crime” versus those that are “crime-­related,” including false alarms. If crime-­related activities are used as the measure of policing workload, for example, determining whether a citizen’s reporting of crime was justified, then officers spend more time on crime control than many studies indicate.   9 Mastrofski (1983, 40) has defined “non-­crime” matters as public nuisances (i.e., noise complaints), traffic enforcement, handling dependent persons (i.e., public inebriates), nuisances (fights and other conflicts) and various other types of community assistance (e.g., medical emergencies). Officers may or may not choose to respond to these matters formally, i.e., arrest and prosecution. 10 The Part 1 index includes murder and non-­negligent manslaughter, armed robbery, forcible rape, aggravated assault, grand larceny, auto theft and burglary. Arson was added in 1978 (Chapter 3, this volume).  11 Interview with Roger Wilkins in the “Two Societies” episode of the PBS series Eyes on the Prize.

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   169 12 Reinarmann (2006, 140) defined drug scares as a “form of moral panic ideologically constructed so as to construe one or another chemical bogeyman” which are blamed for causing a “wide array of preexisting public problems.” 13 Robinson left sanctions against possession, sales, manufacture, and recreational use intact. 14 “Criminal Law Comments and Case Notes.” Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science 59: 2, Article 8 (1968). Accessed October 15, 2015 from http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5518&context=jclc 15 “Fact Sheet: Trends in U.S. Corrections.” U.S. Sentencing Project, Washington, DC. Accessed March 4, 2016 from http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_ Trends_in_Corrections_Fact_sheet.pdf 16 “Drug and Crime Facts,” Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs. Accessed March 4, 2016 from www.bjs.gov/content/dcf/tables/arrtot.cfm. Drug abuse violation arrests would continue to increase to over 1.8 million by 2007. See endnote 12 for a definition of drug abuse violation. 17 Tonry does not make any differentiation for ethnicity (i.e., Latino/a) or nationality in his use of the terms “black” versus “white.” 18 “Drug and Crime Facts, 1980–2007.” Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs. Accessed March 4, 2016 from www.bjs.gov/content/dcf/enforce.cfm 19 See “Mandatory Minimums and Federal Sentencing Guidelines.” Accessed March 4, 2016 from www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Mandatory_Minimum_Sentencing#sthash. XJxnNrFa.dpbs 20 “Pretext” stops were upheld by the Supreme Court under Whren v. the United States (1996), in which it was decided that if the police could stop someone for an offense this was justifiable even if it was not the offense that the police suspected that individual had committed. 21 Geographic considerations were important in the arrest and eventual death of Freddie Gray at the hands of the Baltimore Police in 2014. Gray did nothing wrong except run from the police in a “high-­crime” area, which justified officers pursuing him. See Sterbenz (2015). 22 Peter Beilenson, Baltimore’s public health director under former mayor Kurt Schmoke, told this author that drug court officials monopolized publically-­funded treatment slots making them less available to those needing them outside the criminal justice context. 23 This term is borrowed from Currie (1993, 149) in his reference to combining a criminal justice approach to drug control with one that also emphasizes treatment outreach and harm reduction. Also see Cotton (1994) which describes harm reduction as a “middle ground” between health-­based and criminal justice approaches to drug control. 24 Studies on arrest referral in the UK emphasize that they are not considered an alternative to prosecution, especially since many of those offered treatment diversion were arrested on other charges (i.e., not drug crimes per se). Still, because the treatment option is community-­based, arrest diversion does offer the potential for avoiding imprisonment or having one’s sentence reduced for agreeing to seek remedial services. 25 The legal technique of “cautioning” is peculiar to the UK and Australia. Cautions are considered to be more formal than simple warnings in that a record is supposed to be made of the interaction. Cautioning also implies some form of action, such as taking an individual into custody and having them consult with legal officials about their offense and potentially linking them to services. “Cautioning plus” programs may actually involve some punitive conditions for an individual failing to comply with the terms of a caution (Spooner et al. 2001, 283). See Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (1994) for more on the cautioning policy in the UK.

170   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control 26 Mike Lofts, Cheshire Drug Squad, “Policing the Cheshire Drug Treatment Program: The Cheshire Experience.” Presentation given at the Conference on the Swiss Project on the Medical Prescription of Narcotics, Swiss Public Health Service, Thun, Switzerland, N.D. The author also personally interviewed Inspector Lofts during a visit to Cheshire and spent two days on ride-­alongs with him in 1996.

References Aaronson, David E., Thomas C. Dienes and Michael Musheno. 1977. “Changing the Public Drunkenness Laws: The Impact of Decriminalization.” Law and Society Review 12: 405–436. Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. 1994. Drug Misusers and the Criminal Justice System, Part II: Police, Drug Misusers and the Community. London: British Home Office. Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow. New York: The New Press. Alpert, G., Flynn D., and A. Piquero, 2001. “Effective Community Policing Performance Measures.” Justice Research and Policy 3: 79–94. Anderson, Elijah. 1999. Code of the Street: Decency, Violence and the Moral Life of the Inner City. New York: W.W. Norton. Badie, Birtrand, and Pierre Birnbaum. 1983. The Sociology of the State. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Baker, Al, J. David Goodman, and Benjamin Mueller. 2015. “Beyond the Chokehold: The Unexplored Path to Eric Garner’s Death.” New York Times Sunday, June 14: 1, 26, 27. Bass, S. 2001. “Policing Space, Policing Race: Social Control Imperatives and Discretionary Decisions.” Social Justice 28: 156–176. Bayley, David. 1994. Police for the Future. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Becker, Howard. 1963. Outsiders. New York: The Free Press. Beckett, Katherine. 1997. Making Crime Pay: Law and Order in Contemporary Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. Beckett, Katherine, and Steve Herbert. 2008. “Dealing with Disorder: Social Control in the Post-­Industrial City.” Theoretical Criminology 12: 5–30. Beilenson, Peter. 1999. “City Successes on Drug Treatment are Overlooked.” Editorial, Baltimore Sun, July 5. Accessed December 3, 2015 from http://articles.baltimoresun. com/1999–07–05/news/9907030339_1_drug-­treatment-substance-­abuse-treatment-­slots Bittner, Egon. 1967. “The Police on Skid Row: A Study of Peacekeeping.” American Sociological Review 32: 699–715. Bluthenthal, Ricky, Alex Kral, Jennifer Lorvick, and John Waters. 1997. “Impact of Law Enforcement on Syringe Exchange Programs: A Look at Oakland and San Francisco.” Medical Anthropology 18: 61–83. Bok, Marcia. 1998. “Harm Reduction: Dealing Differently with Drugs.” Journal of Progressive Human Services 9: 3–21. Bonfine, Natalie, Christian Ritter, and Mark Munetz. 2014. “Police Officer Perceptions of the Impact of Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Programs.” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 37: 341–350. Bratton, William J. 1996. “Cutting Crime and Restoring Order: What America Can Learn from New York’s Finest.” The Heritage Foundation. Accessed January 15, 2016 from www.heritage.org/research/lecture/hl573nbsp-cutting-­crime-and-­restoring-order

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   171 Bunton, Robin. 2001. “Knowledge, Embodiment and Neo-­Liberal Drug Policy.” Contemporary Drug Problems 28: 221–245. Caulkins, Jonathan, and Peter Reuter. 1997. “Setting Goals for Drug Policy: Harm Reduction Use Reduction,” Addiction 92: 1143–1150. Chudacoff, Howard, and Judith E. Smith. 2005. The Evolution of American Urban Society, 6th Edition. New York: Pearson Prentice-­Hall. Cloward, Richard, and Lloyd Ohlin. 1960. Delinquency and Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs. New York: Free Press. Conklin, John. 2003. Why Crime Rates Fell. New York: Allyn and Bacon. Cooper, Hannah, L. Moore, S. Gruskin, and N. Krieger. 2005. “The Impact of a Police Crackdown on Drug Injectors’ Ability to Practice Harm Reduction: A Qualitative Study.” Social Science and Medicine 61: 673–684. Cotton, Paul. 1994. “ ‘Harm Reduction’ May Be Middle Ground.” JAMA 271: 1641–1645. Crank, John. 1994. “Watchman and Community: Myth and Institutionalization in Policing.” Law and Society Review 28: 325–352. Currie, Elliott. 1993. Reckoning: Drugs, the Cities and the American Future. New York: Hill and Wang. Davis, Mike. 1990. City of Quartz. London: Verso. Des Jarlais, D. 1995. Editorial: “Harm Reduction—A Framework for Incorporating Science Into Drug Policy.” American Journal of Public Health 85: 10–11. Dorf, Michael. 2010. “The New Arizona Immigration Law Raises an Old Question: What is “Reasonable Suspicion?” Accessed April 18, 2016 from FindLaw http://writ.news. findlaw.com/dorf/20100503.html Drug Policy Alliance. 2015. “Drug Courts Are Not the Answer: Towards a Health-­ Centered Approach to Drug Use.” In The American Drug Scene, edited by James Inciardi, and Karen McElrath. New York: Oxford University Press. Drug Strategies. 1996. Drugs and Crime Across America: Police Chiefs Speak Out. Washington, DC: Police Foundation and Drug Strategies. Duncan, David, Thomas Nicholson, Patrick Clifford, Wesley Hawkins, and Rick Petosa. 1994. “Harm Reduction: An Emerging New Paradigm for Drug Education.” Journal of Drug Education 24: 281–290. Durkheim, Emile. 1997[1893]. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: The Free Press. Duster, Troy. 1970. The Legislation of Morality. New York: The Free Press. Eck, John. 2004. “Why Don’t Problems Get Solved?” In Community Policing: (Can it Work?), 185–206, edited by W. Skogan. Belmont, CA: Thomson-­Wadsworth. Eck, John, and Dennis Rosenbaum. 1994. “The New Police Order: Effectiveness, Equity and Efficiency in Community Policing.” In The Challenges of Community Policing: Testing the Promises, 3–21, edited by Dennis Rosenbaum. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Eck, John, and William Spelman. 1987. “Who Ya Gonna Call? The Police as Problem-­ Busters.” Crime and Delinquency 33: 31–52. Esping-­Andersen, Gosta. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Fagan, Jeffrey A. 1990. “Treatment and Reintegration of Violent Juvenile Offenders: Experimental Results.” Justice Quarterly 7: 233–263. Ferdinand, Theodore. 1980. “Criminality, the Courts, and the Constabulary in Boston: 1702–1967.” Journal on Research on Crime and Delinquency 17: 190–208. Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish. New York: Random House/Vintage.

172   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control Gardiner, Christine. 2012. “ ‘An Absolute Revolving Door’: An Evaluation of Police Perception and Response to Proposition 36.” Criminal Justice Policy Review 23: 275–303. Garland, David. 2001. The Culture of Control. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Goetz, Barry, and Roger Mitchell. 2006. “Pre-­Arrest/Booking Drug Control Strategies: Diversion to Treatment, Harm Reduction and Police Involvement.” Contemporary Drug Problems 33: 473–520. Goetz, Barry, and Roger Mitchell. 2003. “Community-­Building and Reintegrative Approaches to Community Policing: The Case of Drug Control.” Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict and World Order 30: 222–247. Goffman, Alice. 2014. On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Goldstein, Herman. 1990. Problem-­Oriented Policing. New York: McGraw-­Hill. Goldstein, Herman. 1977. Policing a Free Society. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. Goldstein, Joseph. 2013. “Judge Rejects New York’s ‘Stop and Frisk’ Policy.” New York Times, August 12. Accessed January 7, 2016 from www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/ nyregion/stop-­and-frisk-­practice-violated-­rights-judge-­rules.html?_r0 Green, Lorraine A. 1995. Policing Places with Drug Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Greene, Jack, and Carl Klockars. 1991. “What Police Do.” In Thinking About Police: Contemporary Readings, 273–284, edited by Carl Klockars, and Stephen Mastrofski. New York: McGraw-­Hill. Greene, Judith. 1999. “Zero-­Tolerance: A Case Study of Policing Policies and Practices in New York City.” Crime and Delinquency 45: 171–187. Guarino-­Ghezzi, Susan. 1994. “Reintegrative Police Surveillance of Juvenile Offenders: Forging an Urban Model.” Crime and Delinquency 40: 131–153. Guydish, Joseph, L. Moore, A. Gleghorn, T. Davis, C. Sears, and J. Harcourt. 2000. “Drug Abuse Treatment on Demand in San Francisco: Preliminary Findings.” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 32: 363–370. Haller, Mark. 1976. “Historical Roots of Police Behavior: Chicago, 1890–1925.” Law and Society Review 10: 303–323. Harcourt, Bernard E. 2001. Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harring, Sidney L., and Lorraine M. McMullin. 1975. “The Buffalo Police: 1872–1900, Political Power and the Creation of the Police Institution.” Social Justice 4: 5–14. Hellawell, Keith. 1995. “The Role of Law Enforcement in Minimizing the Harm Resulting From Illicit Drugs.” Drug and Alcohol Review 14: 317–322. Herbert, Steven. 1997. Policing Space: Territoriality and the Los Angeles Police Department. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Heumann, Milton, and Lance Cassak. 2003. Good Cop, Bad Cop: Racial Profiling and Competing Views of Justice. New York: Peter Lang. Hewitt, Martin. 1991. “Bio-­Politics and Social Policy: Foucault’s Account of Welfare.” In The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, 225–255, edited by Mike Featherstone, Mike Hepworth, and Bryan Turner. London: Sage. Hinton, Elizabeth. 2016. From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hora, Peggy, William Schma, and John T. Rosenthal. 1999. “Therapeutic Jurisprudence and the Drug Treatment Court Movement: Revolutionizing the Criminal Justice System’s Response to Drug Abuse and Crime in America.” Notre Dame Law Review 74: 439.

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   173 Huey, Laura. 2007. Negotiating Demands: The Politics of Skid-­Row Policing in Edinburgh, San Francisco and Vancouver. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Hunter, Gillian, Tim McSweeney, and Paul Turnbull. 2005. “The Introduction of Drug Arrest Referral Schemes in London: A Partnership Between Drug Services and the Police.” International Journal of Drug Policy 16: 342–352. Inciardi, James. 2008. The War on Drugs IV, Fourth Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson. Inciardi, James, and Karen McElrath. 2011. “The Evolution of Drug Taking and Drug Seeking in America.” In The American Drug Scene, 4–27, edited by J.A. Inciardi, and K. McElrath. New York: Oxford University Press. Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department, Report of. 1991. Los Angeles: Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department. Keire, Mara L. 1998. “Dope Fiends and Degenerates: The Gendering of Addiction in the Early 20th Century.” Journal of Social History 31: 809–822. Keller, Bill. 2015. “David Simon on Baltimore’s Anguish: Freddie Gray, the Drug War, and the Decline of ‘Real Policing.’ ” The Marshall Project, April 29. Accessed December 13, 2015 from www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/29/david-­simon-on-­baltimores-­anguish#.2trxqtxf0 Kelling, George. 1982. “Toward New Images of Policing: Herman Goldstein’s Problem-­ Oriented Policing.” Law and Social Inquiry 17: 539–559. Kelling, George, and Katherine Coles. 1996. Fixing Broken Windows. New York: Touchstone. Kelling, George, Tony Pate, Duane Dieckman, and Charles Brown. 1974. “The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment.” Washington, DC: The Police Foundation. Kessler, Ronald. 2003. The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Klein, Malcolm. 1976. “Issues and Realities in Police Diversion Programs.” Crime and Delinquency 22: 421–427. Klinenberg, Eric. 2015. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, Second Edition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Klockars, Carl. 1985. The Idea of the Police. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kraska, Peter B. 2007. “Militarization and Policing: Its Relevance to 21st Century Police.” Policing 1: 501–513. Kubler, Daniel, and S. Walti. 2001. “Drug-­Policy Making in Metropolitan Area Urban Conflicts and Governance.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 25: 35–54. Lane, Roger. 1971. Policing the City: Boston 1822–1885. New York: Atheneum. Lawrence, Richard. 1991. “Re-­examining Community Corrections Models.” Crime and Delinquency 37: 449–464. Leo, Richard. 2008. Police Interrogation and American Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Loader, Ian, and Neil Walker. 2001. “Policing as a Public Good.” Theoretical Criminology 5: 9–35. Lyons, William. 1999. The Politics of Community Policing. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. MacCoun, Robert J., and Peter Reuter. 2001. Drug War Heresies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. McDonald, P.R. 2012. “Then and Now: Images from the Same Spot of the L.A Riots, 20 Years Later.” L.A. Weekly (April 26). Accessed January 13, 2016 from www.laweekly. com/microsites/la-­riots/

174   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control Maher, Lisa, and David Dixon. 1999. “Policing and Public Health.” British Journal of Criminology 39: 488–512. Manning, Peter. 1997. Police Work: The Social Organization of Policing. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland. Massing, Michael. 1998. The Fix. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Mastrofski, Stephen. 1988. “Community Policing as Reform: A Cautionary Tale.” In Community Policing: Rhetoric or Reality, 47–66, edited by J. Greene, and S. Mastrofski. New York: Praeger. Mastrofski, Stephen. 1983. “The Police and Non-­Crime Services.” In Evaluating the Performance of Criminal Justice Agencies, edited by G. Whitaker, and C. Phillips, 33–61. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Mauer, Marc, and Stephen S. King. 2007. A 25-Year Quagmire: The War on Drugs and Its Impact on American Society. Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project.  Monkkonen, Eric H. 1992. “History of Urban Police.” Crime and Justice 15: 547–580. Monkkonen, Eric H. 1981. Police in Urban America: 1860–1920. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Morash, Merry, and A. Robinson. 2002. “The Nexus of Community Policing and Domestic Violence.” In The Move to Community Policing: Making Change Happen, 180–203, edited by M. Morash, and J.K. Ford. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Moskos, Peter. 2008. Cop in the Hood. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Musto, David. 1999, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotics Control, Third Edition. New York: Oxford University Press. Nadelmann, Ethan, P. Cohen, E. Drucker, U. Locher, G. Stimson, and A. Wodak. 1994. The Harm Reduction Approach to Drug Control: International Progress. Princeton, NJ: Woodrow Wilson School for Public Policy, Princeton University. Nicholas, Phil, and Andrew Churchill. 2012. “The Federal Bureau of Narcotics, The States and the Origins of Modern Drug Enforcement in the United States, 1950–1962.” Contemporary Drug Problems 39: 295. Nimmer, Raymond. 1971. Two Million Unnecessary Arrests: Removing a Social Service Concern from the Criminal Justice System. Chicago, IL: American Bar Foundation. Nolan, James L. 2001. Reinventing Justice: The American Drug Court Movement. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. O’Malley, Pat, and Stephen Mugford. 1991. “The Demand for Intoxicating Commodities: Implications for the ‘War on Drugs.’” Social Justice 18: 49–75. Packer, Herbert. 1968. The Limits of the Critical Sanction. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Parker, Howard, and Perpetua Kirby. 1996. Methadone Maintenance and Crime Reduction in Merseyside. Crime Detection and Prevention Series, Paper 72. London: Home Office Police Research Group. Parry, Allan. 1990. “Taking Drugs Seriously: The Liverpool Experience.” In The Great Issues of Drug Policy, 173–179, edited by Arnold Trebach, and Kevin Zeese. Washington, DC: The Drug Policy Foundation. Pastore, Nick. 2000–2001. “Police Others as You Would Have Them Police You.” The Reconsider Quarterly 1: 10–14. Pino, Nathan W. 2001. “Community Policing and Social Capital.” Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management 24: 200–215. Plotkin, Martha R., and Tony Narr. 1997. “Police: The Forgotten Service Provider.” In The Police and the Homeless, 58–86, edited by Martin L. Forst. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control   175 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. 1967. The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Reinarmann, Craig. 2006. “The Social Construction of Drug Scares.” In Constructions of Deviance: Social Power, Context and Interaction, 5th Ed, 139–150, edited by P. and P. Adler. Belmont, MA: Wadsworth. Reuter, Peter. 1984. “Hawks Ascendant: The Punitive Trend of American Drug Policy.” Daedalus 12:15–52. Richardson, James F. 1970. The New York Police: Colonial Times to 1901. New York: Oxford University Press. Riley, Dianne, and Pat O’Hare. 1998. “Harm Reduction: Policy and Practice.” Policy Options (October): 7–10. Satel, Sally. 1999. “Drug Treatment: The Case for Coercion.” National Drug Court Institute Review 3: 1–56. Schneider, Cathy. 1998. “Racism, Drug Policy and AIDS.” Political Science Quarterly 113: 427–446. Schneider, Eric C. 2008. Smack: Heroin and the American City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Silver, Alan. 1966. “The Demand for Order in Civil Society.” In The Police: Six Sociological Essays, 1–24, edited by David Bordua. New York: John Wiley. Skogan, Wesley. 1990. Disorder and Decline: Crime and the Spiral of Decay in American Neighborhoods. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Skogan, Wesley, and Jeffrey Roth. 2004. “Introduction.” In Community Policing: (Can it Work?), xvii–xxxiv, edited by Wesley G. Skogan. Belmont, CA: Thomson-­Wadsworth. Skolnick, Jerome. 1966. Justice Without Trial: Law Enforcement in Democratic Society. New York: John Wiley. Sondhi, Arun, and Richard Huggins. 2005. “Towards an Effective Social Care Model for Arrest Referral: Implications for Criminal Justice Intervention for Problem Drug Users.” Drugs, Education, Prevention and Policy 12: 189–195. Spooner, Catherine, Wayne Hall, and Richard Mattick. 2001. “An Overview of Diversion Strategies for Australian Drug-­Related Offenders.” Drug and Alcohol Review 20: 281–294. Sterbenz, Christina. 2015. “A ‘big question’ surrounds the arrest of Freddie Gray, which sparked riots across Baltimore.” Accessed December 3, 2015 from http://uk.businessinsider.com/did-­police-have-­a-right-­to-stop-­freddie-gray-­2015-4?r=US&IR=T Suratt, Austin, James Inciardi, Steven Kurtz, and Marion Kiley, 2004. “Sex Work and Drug Use in a Subculture of Violence.” Crime and Delinquency 50: 43–59. Sykes, Gary 1986. “Street Justice: A Moral Defense of Order Maintenance Policing.” Justice Quarterly 3: 497–512. Taylor. Ralph. 2001. Breaking Away from Broken Windows. Boulder, CO: Westview. Terrill, William, and Stephen Mastrofski. 2004 “Working the Street: Does Community Policing Matter?” In Community Policing: (Can it Work?) 109–135, by Wesley Skogan, and Jeffrey Roth. Belmont, CA: Thomson-­Wadsworth. Theoharis, Anthony. 2000. “A Brief History of the FBI’s Role and Powers.” In The FBI: A Comprehensive Reference Guide, 1–44, edited by Anthony Theoharis, Tony Poveda, Susan Rosenfeld, and Richard Gid Powers. New York: Checkmark Books. Thracher, David. 2001. “Conflicting Values in Community Policing.” Law and Society Review 35: 765–798. Tonry, Michael. 2011. Punishing Race: A Continuing American Dilemma. New York: Oxford University Press.

176   Local Policing, Welfare State, Drug Control Tonry, Michael. 1995. Malign Neglect: Race, Crime and Punishment in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Treger, Henry. 1975. The Police-­Social Work Team: A New Model for Inter-­professional Cooperation. Springfield, IL: Thomas. Trojanowicz, Robert, and Bonnie Bucqueroux. 1990. Community Policing: A Contemporary Perspective. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson. Uchida, Craig. 2001. “The Development of the American Police: An Historical Overview.” In Critical Issues in Policing, 4th Edition, 18–35, edited R. Dunham and G. Alpert. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland. U.S. Department of Justice. 1994. Understanding Community Policing. Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance, Document # 148457. Waegel, W. 1982. “Patterns of Police Investigation of Urban Crimes.” Journal of Police Science and Administration 10: 452–465. Walker, Samuel. 1993. “Hijacked: How the War on Drugs Stole Community Policing.” In The Faces of Change: Policy Track Manual on the 7th International Conference on Drug Policy Reform. Washington, DC: The Drug Policy Foundation. Walker, Samuel. 1977. A Critical History of Police Reform. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath. Walker, Samuel Walker, and Charles Katz. 2011. The Police in America: An Introduction. 7th Edition. New York: McGraw-­Hill. Watson, Amy C., and Anjali Fulambarker. 2012. “The Crisis Intervention Team Model as a Police Response to Mental Health Crises: A Primer for Mental Health Practitioners.” Best Practices in Mental Health 8: 71–81. Westley, William. 1970. Violence and the Police: A Sociological Study of Law, Custom, and Morality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wilson, J.Q. 1975. Thinking About Crime. New York: Vintage. Wilson, J.Q. 1968. Varieties of Police Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wilson, J.Q., and George Kelling. 1982. “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety.” The Atlantic Monthly 249: 29–38.

6 Community Policing and Institutional Selectivity

Community policing was elevated to the status of official policy with the passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The legislation, better known as the “Clinton Crime Bill,” promised to put 100,000 more police officers on the streets of American cities. With the passage of the Bill came the creation of a new federal office for Community Oriented Policing Services or “COPS” that would administer grants to local law enforcement agencies to advance community policing efforts (Roth et al. 2004). For purposes of the legislation, the concept of community policing was defined as building partnerships with citizens and community-­based institutions, developing problem-­ solving strategies aimed at addressing the underlying causes of crime and disorder, and promoting school or neighborhood-­based crime prevention programs. These strategies were defined as politically neutral constructs that could be applied in any community without controversy. However, as I argued in Chapter 5, both “conservative” and “liberal” models of crime control underlie community policing reform (Crank 1994, 342). “Broken windows” or “quality of life” policing represent the conservative model, emphasizing the use of “aggressive order maintenance” tactics and coercive measures to suppress a host of minor offenses such as turnstile jumping, aggressive panhandling, truancy, scrawling graffiti, noise violations, and “squeegeeing” vehicle windshields in expectation of a tip (Terrill and Mastrofski 2004, 112; Kelling and Coles 1996, 158–164). Supporters of broken windows policing models have credited them with bringing down major crime in urban areas throughout the United States by aiming at “disreputable” populations (or behaviors) that threaten the stability of community life (Bratton 1996; Kelling and Coles 1996; Wilson and Kelling 1982). At the same time, broken windows policing has been criticized for leading to “zero-­tolerance” law enforcement tactics that have primarily targeted persons of color and socially marginalized populations (Greene 1999, 171; Alexander 2010; Harcourt 2001; Bass 2001). Broken windows policing has also been linked to “martial” approaches to maintaining public order through militaristic policing methods, e.g., the use of special weapons and tactical teams (i.e., “SWAT” units) to assist with quality of life policing (Kraska 2007, 511). “Liberal” philosophies of social control underlying the community policing movement also assume a need for order maintenance but not at the cost of

178   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity alienating citizens and sacrificing goals of equity. Instead, community policing offers should focus on increasing policing legitimacy by offering “crime prevention through community service” (Crank 1994, 343). Nevertheless, “service” has never been well-­defined in the community policing literature. Some have defined it as officers working with local communities to help them defend against crime and disorder through nuisance abatement or reclaiming public spaces through environmental design (Taylor 2001; Roth and Kelling 1998; Green 1995; Eck and Spelman 1987). Mastrofski (1988, 56) has described it as the “velvet glove” aspects of police work such as enhanced citizen communication, foot patrols or victim follow-­up. Service may also encompass the promotion of remedial programs or services designed to mitigate the social strains underlying crime and disorder. In this chapter, I will be concerned with community policing as a mechanism of social outreach, especially as this pertains to alternative drug control strategies. My focus will be on the cities of Norfolk, Baltimore, and San Francisco during the 1990s when government officials sought to soften the social impact of the “war on drugs” through the implementation of what I call “reintegrative” community policing models that attempt to facilitate citizen access to substance abuse treatment resources (including detoxification facilities), harm reduction programs and related social services. I define reintegrative community policing as a model of social control that is designed to facilitate citizen access to community-­based remedial services outside of a formal criminal justice context (see Braithwaite 1989, 54).1 I will show, however, that in all three cities examined here that dynamics of “institutional selectivity” shaped community policing reforms, “organizing out” reintegrative approaches in favor of broken windows or environmental crime control strategies, or subsuming reintegrative approaches within a broken windows framework. The analytical frame of institutional selectivity helps to illuminate the ways in which distinct community policing reforms reflect distinct political “technologies of power” for managing perceived social risk, especially as this pertains to illicit drug users, street addicts and other socially marginal populations (O’Malley 1992, 255). These technologies of power, in turn, play a key role in the shaping of social problems and unequal community outcomes.

“Reintegrative” Community Policing As I have argued elsewhere in this book, the police have served a prominent social welfare function in the community since their beginnings as a public service. August Vollmer, chief of the Berkeley Police Department from 1909–1931, and the “father” of criminal justice education, delivered an address to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 1918 entitled “The Policeman as a Social Worker” in which he argued police could best prevent crime by intervening in an individual’s life before they entered a life of crime (Walker 1977, 81). The movement to professionalize during the mid-­decades of the twentieth century would nevertheless narrow the social welfare aspects of policing.

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   179 Reformers—including Vollmer—sought to replace police organizations built on political patronage with those that emphasized meritocratic systems of recruitment and promotion, specialized training, and technical skill (Monkkonen 1981). One effect of this change was that police work became more and more organized around goals of crime-­fighting and law enforcement versus order maintenance (peacekeeping) and community service (Chapter 5, this volume). After the urban uprisings of the 1960s, reformers began to reassess the impact of the professional model both in terms of effectiveness and political legitimacy. Some called for a re-­emphasis on the order maintenance functions of policing as a way to stem problems of social disorganization (Wilson and Kelling 1982). Others argued for a “social service agency” approach that could aid in mending strained community relations with African-­Americans and other marginalized groups by helping to broker remedial services to citizens-­in-need. Echoing Vollmer, police officers were viewed as uniquely situated to “deal with a wide range of social problems,” assuming that they had the adequate training and outlook necessary to do social outreach (Walker 1977, 173–174). Programs introduced during the 1970s resonated with the social service agency approach to policing, teaming officers with social workers or employing arrest diversion programs that linked minor offenders to remedial services as an alternative to prosecution (Binder and Geis 1984; Treger 1975; Klein 1976). Social service agency approaches emerged once again during the 1990s in the context of public debates over the punitive nature of America’s drug war. Community policing emerged as an alternative control model that could help link individuals to social and health services. Politicians also seized on the concept of community policing to help broker urban services in light of extensive cut-­backs in other areas of the welfare state (Klinenberg 2015). Such a vision of reform was evident in federal policy. In Understanding Community Policing the police were cast as agents of social outreach who could help provide “emergency social services and referrals to those at risk” including runaways, homeless persons, the intoxicated, and the mentally ill (U.S. Department of Justice 1994, 15). The Comprehensive Communities Program, a federally-­funded community policing initiative introduced in select major cities during the mid-­1990s, called for the integration of “law enforcement with social programs—and public agencies with nongovernmental organizations and individuals” as a way to prevent crime and assure a better quality of urban life (Kelling et al. 1998, 2). Community policing initiatives developed at the state and local levels also favored social outreach strategies. The “Safe Streets/Safe Cities” initiative implemented under Mayor David Dinkins in New York City was credited with bringing down crime through a mixture of enforcement and youth outreach efforts (Conklin 2003). In Lansing, MI, the “Neighborhood Network Center” concept was created as a way to bring police officers, social workers, and other outreach workers together under one roof to respond to citizen concerns and needs (Trojanowicz et al. 1992, 1; Cronin 1994). Directly invoking August Vollmer, North Carolina’s Social Work and Police Partnership (SWAPP) initiative was based on the logic of using community policing to encourage collaborative strategies between

180   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity social workers and law enforcement officers to better address individual and family problems associated with substance abuse, mental illness, and domestic abuse (Dean et al. 2000). However, the success of community policing as a program of social outreach has never been well-­documented. In their work on SWAPP Dean and colleagues (2000: 16) noted that “after searching through numerous community policing training manuals and reviewing dozens of books and articles by leaders of the community policing movement,” there was “scant attention to partnerships with human service agencies.” Moreover, we lack the theoretical language to explain how social service models of community policing are distinguished from other approaches, particularly those rooted in a broken windows philosophy or more conventional problem-­solving strategies. For example, some problem-­oriented policing programs have posited a role for the officer in helping to facilitate citizen access to drug treatment and other remedial services as a crime prevention tool (Kennedy and Wong 2009; Eck 1990). The most successful and documented uses of problem-­oriented policing, nevertheless, have focused on the use of nuisance abatement and “grime-­fighting” strategies to reduce “physical incivilities,” e.g., abandoned buildings and trash-­laden lots, which are blamed for exacerbating a community’s crime and drug problems (see, e.g., Taylor 2001, 5). Reintegrative social control strategies have primarily been associated with corrections models such as drug treatment courts that allow criminal defendants to enter community-­based treatment as an alternative to incarceration or prosecution (Miethe et al. 2000). But reintegrative strategies are also the domain of the police. Braithwaite (1989, 182) has invoked community policing as an aspect of the reintegrative process, stating that: The police officer on the beat should solve fewer problems by processing offenders through the criminal justice system and more by handing the matter over to the offender’s family, school, workmates, football club. Guarino-­Ghezzi’s (1994, 142) work on “reintegrative surveillance” draws on Braithwaite’s work to illustrate the ways in which officers can use a mixture of order maintenance and social service interventions to keep juvenile offenders from recidivating. Reintegrative Community Policing and Drug Control In an opinion piece written for the American Journal of Public Health in 1995, author Don Des Jarlais uses the language of reintegrative shaming to argue for an alternative approach to regulating “nonmedical” drug use and abuse. Des Jarlais (p. 11) argued that criminal justice approaches for managing problems of addiction and dependence unnecessarily stigmatized drug users and led to “adverse health and social consequences” beyond drug use itself. He went on to argue that because “drug users are an integral part of the community,” “protecting the health of drug users,” as well as assuring public safety, requires finding

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   181 methods of “integrating the drug users within the community rather than attempting to isolate them from it.” This meant assuring expanded treatment options in a community-­based, voluntary setting (i.e., distinguished from a coercive, criminal justice based context), and employing a harm reduction philosophy of drug control that sought to “minimize the hazards associated with drug use rather than use itself ” (Duncan et al. 1994, 281). Caulkins and Reuter (1997, 1148) have argued that harm reduction policies provide opportunities for “reintegrating offenders into community life” because they are less stigmatizing and avoid labeling the user as the “ ‘enemy’ in a ‘war on drugs.’ ” Sometimes referred to as the public health model for regulating drug use and abuse, harm reduction regimes presupposed the availability of services such as needle (syringe) exchange programs to inhibit the spread of HIV/AIDS and other diseases as well as drug maintenance programs using methadone, buprenorphine or even low doses of heroin. Landmark Supreme Court rulings such as Robinson v. California (1962) and Easter v. District of Columbia (1965) served as the legal foundations for using reintegrative measures to handle a community’s drug problem. In Robinson, the Court decided that drug addiction was a disease and not a crime, and that imprisoning individuals for use alone was “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the U.S. Bill of Rights. In Easter, using logic similar to Robinson, the justice found that alcoholism was a disease not subject to punishment using penal sanctions. Before Easter as many as 40 percent of all arrests in the United States made by local police in a given year were for public drunkenness (Nimmer 1971, 1). After Easter, however, many state legislatures moved to decriminalize public drunkenness. From the standpoint of the police this meant a new challenge for regulating public inebriation and the offenses associated with it. One way for dealing with this came through the creation of community-­based detoxification centers, which provided a mechanism by which officers could divert public inebriates to treatment services as an alternative to arrest (Aaronson et al. 1977; Goldstein 1977). The use of reintegrative strategies to help reduce the demand for illicit substances has been a key component of the community policing movement. In Understanding Community Policing, the U.S. Department of Justice (1994, 20) argued that police departments should help communities “set up drug counseling and rehabilitation centers” as a crime prevention program. Such ideas were articulated through federally-­sponsored grant programs such as the Innovative Neighborhood Oriented Policing (INOP) initiative, initiated in 1990, where police were encouraged to supplement enforcement approaches to reducing drug demand with methods that supported treatment outreach and prevention (Sadd and Grinc 1996; Sadd and Grinc 1994). Similarly, the popular “Highpoint” model (first begun in North Carolina) also emphasized the use of social services to reduce drug use and trafficking through linkages with prevention and treatment programs (Kennedy and Wong 2009). Pre-­arrest or pre-­booking programs for persons with mental illness represent some of the most pervasive and accepted examples of using reintegrative

182   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity policing methods to address problems of substance abuse. The best known of such approaches is the Crisis Intervention Team model (CIT), first developed in Memphis, TN in 1988 following an incident where the local police shot and killed a man with a history of mental illness and substance abuse. In the wake of this tragedy, advocacy groups such as the National Association for the Mentally Ill, who had for some time expressed their frustrations with how the police responded to crisis situations involving persons with mental impairments, worked with public officials to develop policies for avoiding deadly police–­ citizen encounters (Dupont and Cochran 2002). The Memphis CIT was made up of officers who were specially trained in how to recognize and effectively communicate with mentally ill citizens and those with substance abuse issues, with an emphasis on how to de-­escalate hostile interactions that might prompt the police to use physical force. Where appropriate, CITs were also intended as a mechanism for diverting individuals to mental health treatment services as an alternative to arrest. CIT interventions are now considered to be a “best practice,” used in many police departments throughout the United States, necessitated by the fact that roughly 10 percent of all police–citizen encounters nationally involve persons with mental illnesses and that many of the nation’s mentally ill find themselves languishing in jail, often picked up for petty offenses (Watson and Fulambarker 2012, 71–72; Kristoff 2014). Moreover, variations on the CIT concept include models where officers work in collaboration with mental health and other human service workers in the field (Hartford et al. 2006). Many CIT and related pre-­arrest/booking initiatives, including North Carolina’s SWAPP initiative noted earlier, are also designed to deal not only with matters of mental illness but also “co-­occurring substance abuse disorders.” This is no small matter given that roughly three-­quarters of the mentally ill in the nation’s jails have drug and/or alcohol dependency problems (Lattimore et al. 2003, 31). In essence, then, diversion to mental health services under a pre-­arrest/booking model may also involve diversion to drug and alcohol treatment services. As bureaucratic and legal terms, “pre-­arrest” and “pre-­booking” diversion strategies require some discussion, especially as they apply to regulating illicit drug use. Pre-­arrest strategies generally involve informal and discretionary policing actions, such as referring or directly transporting a citizen to detoxification or other treatment services (Goetz and Mitchell 2006, 473; Belenko 2000). Pre-­ booking diversion strategies (sometimes called “arrest diversion”) are more coercive in that they involve taking an individual into police custody, often on the basis of some minor offense (e.g., illegal drug use) or public order violation (e.g., loitering). However, the arrestee is not “booked” into jail but instead diverted “into a system of care without further criminal justice involvement” (Lattimore et al., 2003: 32). Nevertheless, the legal and policy parameters of pre­booking models are often murky. It is not always clear what the legal consequences are for rejecting diversion. Depending on the jurisdiction, arrestees accepting diversion may still face some consequences for illegal behavior (Goetz and Mitchell 2006). For example, they may be “cited and released” with something akin to a traffic ticket but then have to rectify that matter in court at a later

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   183 date (see Subramanian et al. 2015, 23). What is most important for this analysis, however, is that pre-­arrest/booking interventions feature the police officer as a central player in linking citizens to community services. They therefore stand in contrast to “post-­booking” or “pre-­trial” diversion programs that are overseen by the courts and where individuals are given the option of treatment as a way to avoid formal prosecution or in lieu of a jail sentence. CITs and related models are important examples of reintegrative policing. However, they are primarily concerned with addressing matters of mental health and not substance abuse per se (Watson and Fulambarker 2012; Franz and Borum 2010). Most importantly, there is evidence that the police are less willing to support pre-­arrest/booking diversion for mentally ill individuals when they are “substance-­involved” (Lattimore et al. 2003, 50). One reason for this may be that the police consider citizens under the influence of alcohol or drugs to be more dangerous than those that are not (Watson et al. 2014; Wood et al. 2013). This suggests that the police are more willing to charge intoxicated individuals with a criminal offense even if there is evidence of mental impairment. Broner et al. (2002, 88) have also found that “the police are unlikely to use a mental health disposition if it is difficult or time-­consuming.” The use of pre-­arrest/booking strategies explicitly designed for drug using populations and street addicts have been more common outside of the United States. Consistent with a demand reduction philosophy of drug control that stresses abstinence as the ultimate goal, English and Australian authorities have implemented “arrest diversion” strategies whereby the police play a key role in linking certain drug offenders or minor offenders suspected of using drugs to treatment services (Spooner et al. 2001, 283; Sondhi and Huggins 2005; Hunter et al. 2005; Oerton et al. 2003). Police departments abroad have also supported harm reduction as part of an overall drug control policy, including needle-­ exchange, heroin maintenance programs,2 the use of specialized injection sites where health workers are accessible, or specially-­designated use areas free from police enforcement actions (Riley and O’Hare 1998; Parker and Kirby 1996). Whereas Americans have traditionally viewed treatment diversion and harm reduction as the opposite of enforcement, Europeans and others have incorporated such measures into “pluralized” technologies of control that attempt to impose social control through the “regulation of habits” (Bunton 2001, 222, 235). British “drug action teams,” introduced during the 1990s, argued that “harm reduction principles are not incompatible with vigorous street policing” and “may actually require it” (Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs 1994, 2). Keith Hellawell (1995), a Yorkshire (England) police officer writing on drug control policy, framed harm reduction goals within the broader objectives of abstention and regulating the activities of drug using populations, especially in the interest of preventing criminal activity. Kubler and Walti’s (2001, 46–47) work on Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and nine Swiss cities found that police officers supported harm reduction outreach measures to the extent that they adhered to a “social public-­order code of practice,” defined as a “mix” between public health and order maintenance objectives. Police officers worked in concert with social

184   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity workers to delimit drug using activities to tolerance areas where treatment and harm reduction programs were located, and both social workers and officers agreed on the need for enforcement measures when “open drug scenes” got out of hand or when illicit drug use spilled over into middle-­class, upper-­income districts or gentrifying districts. Huey’s (2007, 142) work on Vancouver’s “skid-­ row” has also focused on a “middle way” of policing drugs that emphasizes a mix between enforcement efforts, treatment outreach, prevention, and the promotion of harm reduction services. Maher and Dixon (1999, 506) found that police in Australia supported harm reduction goals but within “the context of prohibition.” There are also some U.S. examples of police departments adopting reintegrative outreach models for drug using populations and street addicts, specifically as an antidote to the punitive nature of America’s drug war. New Haven’s police department was one of the first to support needle-­exchange as a harm reduction measure aimed at intravenous drug users during the 1990s (Pastore 2000–2001). La Bodega de la Familia, a demonstration project in New York City begun in 1996, attempted to “enlist local officers” in reaching out to families suffering from the effects of drug abuse for purposes of getting treatment and other services, especially as this concerned former prisoners (Young et al. 2005, 15). Initiated in 2011, Seattle’s “Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion” or “LEAD” program, grew out of debates over the racial disparities associated with the drug enforcement process and a commensurate search for alternatives that would keep low-­level drug offenders (primarily those arrested for small amounts of possession or use) out of the criminal justice system. The result was a pre-­booking diversion program where, upon arrest, police officers would divert eligible drug offenders and sex workers to a social service case manager who would facilitate their access to addiction treatment services and other social supports (e.g., housing and employment assistance). LEAD also incorporated a harm reduction philosophy, defined as “a focus on individual and community wellness” rather than requiring abstinence (Beckett 2014, 1, 12). LEAD has claimed a 58 percent drop in arrests for those participating in the program as of 2015.3 In response to growing concerns over opioid addiction, some police officials have called for pre-­arrest interventions that immediately divert drug users to detoxification services (Seelye 2016). In some jurisdictions police carry with them the medication naloxone to administer in the event of a drug overdose, thereby preventing a fatality (Goodman and Hartocollis 2014). The history of American law enforcement agencies adopting reintegrative policing methods has been characterized by fits and starts. La Bodega de la Familia was discontinued in 2008 because of a lack of support from the police and other government officials (Dwyer 2008). Anticipating its demise, Young and colleagues (2005, 1) stated that “despite two decades of progress in community-­oriented policing, efforts to link police and citizens to anti-­drug initiatives have remained focused on enforcement.” The LEAD concept has been criticized by some police officials for putting additional work burdens on patrol officers (Emshwiller and Fields 2015). Critics of pre-­arrest diversion for illicit

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   185 drug users have argued that it is the prosecutor’s job, and not that of the police, to decide whether an offender faces criminal charges or is sent to treatment.4 The rest of this chapter is devoted to examining the opportunities and limitations of using reintegrative policing strategies, especially in the interest of drug policy reform. Returning to the analytical framework of institutional selectivity, I focus on the ways in which the normative order of state structures and practices mediates policy outcomes and shapes social problems.5 Furthermore, my definition of reintegrative community policing is broad, including linkages between the police and other agencies (government or community-­based) that are engaged in providing remedial services to illicit drug users and addicts, police support of harm reduction and other public health measures directed at drug users, or direct policing involvement with pre-­arrest/booking diversion strategies.

Community Policing and Human Services in Norfolk Home to the nation’s largest naval base and other military installations, the City of Norfolk had a population of 261,229 persons in 1990, the second largest in Virginia. Norfolk was also one of the poorest cities in Virginia in 1990, with 13.2 percent living under the poverty level.6 The city saw a record number of homicides during the 1980s, many of them attributed to “crack” cocaine use and trafficking (Hixenbaugh 2011). In response, the Norfolk City Council established the Mayor’s Task Force on Drugs to search for a comprehensive solution to the city’s crime and drug problems. This task force, in turn, convened a community-­wide forum of over 300 public officials, civic and religious leaders, members of the military, and voluntary associations to forge a substance abuse reduction plan. Out of this effort came Norfolk’s Community Drug Control Master Plan (1991), which called for the development of an “effective, accessible, and adequate treatment system” to augment the city’s traditional drug enforcement efforts that emphasized arrest and prosecution.7 Concurrent with the development of the Drug Control Master Plan, Norfolk had been developing a new initiative called Police-­Assisted Community Enforcement or “PACE.” First implemented in 1990, PACE was funded through a 1.8 million dollar tax hike that called for the hiring of 38 additional police officers and 22 civilians to help implement policy goals. PACE was based on a community policing philosophy that emphasized partnerships with governmental agencies, schools, local businesses, and community-­based organizations as the best way to deter crime and disorder problems. One of its key designers, Assistant City Manager for Public Safety and Services George Crawley, saw PACE as the culmination of “community-­oriented government” whereby city services would be made more accessible to citizens and where citizens would have more input into how services would be organized and delivered. An adherent of Robert Trojanowicz and Lansing’s Neighborhood Network Center concept, Crawley’s vision of PACE was based on the assumption that community policing could be used as a mechanism for extending urban services amid other cut-­ backs in government service. PACE was also viewed as a way to help carry out

186   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity the recommendations of the Drug Control Master Plan as these pertained to merging goals of enforcement with expanded treatment services. The comprehensive nature of the PACE initiative helped it gain national attention and funding under the federal INOP program (Sadd and Grinc 1996; Sadd and Grinc 1994). PACE was also featured in a 1994 publication by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention that focused on communities that were attempting to combine “community policing and human service initiatives” as a way to alleviate illicit drug use, addiction, and related social problems (Cronin 1994, 1). Program Organization PACE was a pervasive symbol of local governance throughout the 1990s. The PACE logo appeared on police cruisers and the letterhead of all city departments. The program was overseen by the Assistant City Manager for Public Safety and Services (and specifically George Crawley until 1996) in concert with a PACE Outreach Coordinating Committee, whose membership included virtually every Norfolk government agency, including the Norfolk Police Department (NPD), Social Services (responsible for child and family protective services and benefits—now the “Department of Human Services”), the Community Services Board (responsible for substance abuse and mental health services), the Department of City Planning and Codes Administration, the Redevelopment and Housing Authority, the Health Department, the Fire Department, the Juvenile Court, and the Norfolk Public Schools. Many of these same agencies were represented—albeit with lower ranking officials—on decentralized “CORE Sector Teams” that corresponded with the six geographic policing districts in Norfolk. Keeping with the PACE objective of community-­oriented governance, CORE Sector Teams also included community representatives, especially from the city’s civic leagues—of which there were 70 active during the time of my research. Civic leagues were geographically defined resident associations that played a major role in the political life of Norfolk. Their support was viewed as necessary for legitimizing public policies and they might be called upon to help implement government initiatives like PACE. Furthermore, PACE was promoted as the way to advance a range of community-­based initiatives. Among these were the Norfolk Interagency Consortium, a program using multi-­agency assessments to target high-­risk youths with social services, “PACE-­Alert,” a training program for community leadership and “PACE-­SAFE,” a coalition of religious organizations that partnered with the city to sponsor block parties and other activities (Cronin 1994, 25). As operational constructs, each PACE sector also had its own “FAST’ (Family Assessment Service) Team and “NEAT” (Nuisance and Environmental Abatement) Team. The FAST concept was the reintegrative aspect of PACE, designed as a comprehensive mechanism for linking the residents of PACE districts to human services in the interest of deterring illicit drug use, addiction, and crime. The primary members of the FAST Teams were Social Services, the NPD, the Community Services Board, and the Redevelopment and Housing

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   187 Authority. Other city agencies might also be represented on the Teams along with representatives from community-­based non-­profits, religious organizations, and civic leagues. NEAT Teams were designed to address public nuisances and other problems of environmental blight such as dilapidated houses, tall grass, abandoned vehicles, junk and debris, and the improper storage and dumping of trash. Chaired by a representative from the City Planning and Codes Administration, the NEAT Teams also included NPD officers and representatives from other city agencies including Public Health, Public Works, Fire, and the Redevelopment and Housing Authority, as well as community representatives usually coming from the civic leagues. Despite its being conceived as a new way to organize city governance, PACE functioned much like a specialized program. Only ten specially-­designated “PACE target neighborhoods”—those “plagued by drug trafficking and high crimes”—were targeted with the PACE intervention. Six of these neighborhoods were public housing facilities that had populations ranging from 800 to 1,900 persons and the others were mixed residential and commercial districts with populations ranging from 3,200 to 7,500 (Cronin 1994, 20). Furthermore, although all city agencies were mandated to help implement PACE, their involvement was restricted to special initiatives. No city agency was reorganized in terms of its structure or operations under the policy mandate. This included the NPD. Although PACE was intended as a “philosophy” that would permeate the whole of the police department, there were specially-­designated “PACE officers” assigned to work on the FAST Teams, NEAT Teams and on other special initiatives. PACE did not significantly alter the activities of Norfolk’s “beat” officers insofar as these involved calls for service and other patrol functions. Indeed, five years into the policy initiative, The Virginian-­Pilot reported that many in the NPD did “not understand the PACE program” (Brown 1995). Prioritizing Nuisance Abatement and Order Maintenance PACE was promoted as a comprehensive approach to community policing featuring a range of problem-­solving efforts including human service outreach. As the program evolved, however, it became increasingly oriented around NEAT-­ related and order maintenance concerns. PACE officers spent much of their day, as one officer put it, “linking up with codes people.” This meant working with code enforcement officials to seek civil actions against properties thought to harbor drug activities—similar to efforts in other cities (Taylor 2001; Green 1995; Eck and Spelman 1987). For example, NEAT Teams targeted particular properties with demolitions, shut-­down orders (i.e., the building cannot be used for residential or business purposes) or code compliance orders. If property owners did not comply with civil court orders then these could turn into criminal violations. PACE officers also conducted “NEAT sweeps” with code enforcement officials, the result of which might be the immediate shuttering of a property if it was found to harbor illegal behaviors. PACE officers also spent a good deal of time monitoring suspicious activities and security at targeted sites, in

188   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity particular, keeping trespassers out of boarded-­up locations. NEAT-­related activities also involved getting rid of abandoned vehicles and cleaning up or securing vacant lots as ways to assure greater public safety and security. PACE officers also vigorously enforced no trespassing ordinances as a drug control strategy. In particular, landowners would sign consent orders “before-­ the-fact” allowing officers to enter the public access areas of residences to detain and question individuals thought to be suspicious. In the case of public housing, officers worked with facility managers and residents to evict individuals who violated noise or drinking ordinances or who were suspected of illegal drug activities. Norfolk’s efforts were similar to those used in other cities to regulate the movements of those citizens considered to be suspicious or acting in a disorderly fashion (Beckett and Herbert 2008). The Norfolk Police also staged special surveillance patrols in crime and drug “hotspots” as part of the PACE initiative. Officers would look to quell minor crimes (e.g., sex work) and acts of disorder (e.g., rowdy teens). They would also attempt to identify would-­be drug offenders and detain them on the grounds of reasonable suspicion. Such stops provided the openings for doing searches and finding illegal contraband. Much of PACE’s emphasis on signs of physical and social disorder was driven by community organizations. PACE officers regularly attended community meetings where the typical complaints voiced by attendees had to do with abandoned or run-­down buildings, untended lots, rowdy behaviors, public inebriation or illicit drug trafficking and use. This was especially the case of the civic leagues whose leadership also participated with the NEAT Teams. Civic leagues had designed their own specialized letters for channeling concerns to PACE and PACE officers were expected to communicate back with the civic leagues about what they had done to abate a particular issue. The “Problem-­Solving School” PACE’s orientation around NEAT-­related functions was also apparent during observations of the “Problem-­Solving School.” Required of all NPD officers, this two-­day training included an overview of community policing philosophy and encouraged officers to find solutions beyond arrest as social control tools. Program materials emphasized problem-­solving efforts that “do not simply respond to the symptoms of disorder and crime but assesses those symptoms in order to identify the underlying conditions that foster community problems.” The program curriculum was developed and presented by NPD officials, social workers from Norfolk Social Services, and city code enforcement officials. The training was moderated by Officer Hart, named “best in nation” by the National League of Cities for her commitment to building police–community partnerships and the point person for all matters having to do with community policing reform in the NPD. Officers typically did not want to attend the Problem-­Solver’s School, at least at first. During the first morning session that I observed, one officer complained

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   189 to Officer Hart, “why should I spend my time making sure that Johnny goes straight?” Officer Hart responded by saying that “people forget that community policing is about enforcement. But I tell you that it is still about PB&J—putting butts in jail.” Eventually, officers were won over by the use of environmental strategies, in particular, as a strategy for regulating crime and disorder. For example, I was part of a group of officers charged with solving theft crimes that were occurring near Old Dominion University. We all went to the site, and upon surveying it, officers began to conceive of crime control strategies that did not involve arresting perpetrators such as increasing pedestrian visibility and light. Officers also embraced the NEAT concept as an effective weapon in the drug war. It was so popular that additional training sessions were offered for police officers and code inspectors so that they would work cooperatively in shutting down properties associated with drug crime and other disorderly activities. By contrast, officers showed little interest in the human service aspects of PACE. For example, one officer workgroup was tasked with managing loitering homeless people and alcoholics in Norfolk’s downtown. Their solution was to “move the drunks to another part of town.” This was the response despite presentations by Norfolk Social Services emphasizing linkages to remedial services. “Organizing Out” Human Services The FAST Teams were intended as the primary mechanism of doing human service outreach under PACE. Initially they were to be part of a “weed and seed” sequence of intervention (Cronin 1994, 21; Sadd and Grinc 1996). The first phase involved drug enforcement sweeps that arrested offenders identified through undercover operations and search and seizure actions. The second or “stabilization” phase involved increased neighborhood surveillance by the police, civic leagues, and religious groups with the intention of suppressing illegal drug activities. The third or “community partnership” phase mobilized the FAST Teams as a pre-­arrest effort designed to stave off drug use and crime. As described by The Virginian-­Pilot (1991) this process involved “a corps of city departments” launching a “comprehensive assault on the social ills that leave adults and youths vulnerable to drug abuse, dealing and related violence.” PACE officers were to play a leading role in this effort going: Door-­to-door, asking residents, “how can I help you,” “What city services do you need?” That puts officers in a position to spot troubled or at-­risk youths and whole families where drug or alcohol problems spawn child abuse and neglect, truancy, domestic violence, malnutrition, and eventually crime. The weed and seed process nevertheless led some residents to distrust the PACE initiative. There were reports of physical and racial harassment during the first phase drug sweeps (Jackson 1991). There was also limited evidence of the police or any other agencies doing the “door-­to-door” visits that were promised as a

190   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity way to “seed” the community with remedial services. Indeed, an evaluation of the PACE policy would later find that the third or “community partnership” phase of the weed and seed sequence was “not fully implemented” (Sadd and Grinc 1996, 6). The FAST Teams did hold public meetings with civic leagues and other community-­based organizations as a strategy to identify candidates for service intervention. The Teams also attempted to generate referrals through their own participants and through NPD beat officers. Nevertheless, FAST caseloads remained sparse. In 1992, for example, there were only 14 cases for all Teams city-­wide (Cronin 1994, 23). The FAST Teams proved problematic as an operational construct. First, there were confidentiality concerns over whether different branches of government, and especially the police, could share information (Cronin 1994). Second, the Teams were difficult to maneuver in terms of logistics and organizational buy-­in. Individual agencies were assigned case management responsibilities for particular clients depending on the nature of a referral while working with other FAST members to coordinate needed services. For example, Norfolk Social Services—responsible for child and family protective matters—would take on a domestic case but would then be expected to work with the Community Services Board—responsible for substance abuse and mental health services—to address underlying addiction concerns. Over time, however, Social Services became the face of the FASTs and the Teams had come to be associated primarily with domestic problems. The result of this was that substance abuse—a primary target of the PACE policy agenda—ceased to be treated as a problem in itself, i.e., outside the context of a domestic concern. Some informants argued that the Community Services Board was partially responsible for this outcome, taking a “back seat” to Social Services in terms of generating referrals for the FAST Teams. The Board’s director of substance abuse services, in particular, was fearful that the FAST outreach would overtax Norfolk’s drug treatment infrastructure. Although there were accessible outpatient and 12-step programs offered by both the Community Services Board and private entities (e.g., Narcotics Anonymous and faith-­based organizations) there were “gaping holes”—as one minister put it—as it pertained to long-­term residential care and methadone (and related) drug maintenance therapies. The Board was looking to the city’s drug court as a way to expand treatment resources. However, drug courts would do nothing to promote the availability of treatment resources outside the criminal justice context. An additional impediment to the FAST concept was the NPD. PACE officers were willing to work with the community on a range of crime and drug use prevention efforts (e.g., “red ribbon” campaigns for “drug-­free” youth) but maintained that they “were not social workers.” Indeed, the police had an entirely different interpretation of their role in the “community partnership” phase of weed and seed. They saw it not as one of social outreach but rather as an opportunity to help the community “police itself ” through block watches and other surveillance efforts.8 Moreover, although NPD Annual Reports were replete with information about how officers supported NEAT-­related efforts there was rarely, if any, mention of police involvement with FAST-­related activities.

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   191 Eventually the FAST concept would be “phased out” and replaced by PACE Family Advocates, a new initiative that encouraged the police, other government agencies, and citizens to refer victims of family violence to Norfolk Social Services. However, PACE Family Advocates had the effect of further institutionalizing PACE outreach efforts around domestic violence versus substance abuse. Furthermore, PACE Family Advocates did little to encourage reintegrative community policing. All officers needed to do was fill out a form to make referrals. They did not play a role in case management or client follow-­up. The demise of the FAST concept placed a greater onus on regular patrol officers to engage in social outreach as part of PACE. In particular, Norfolk’s chief of police encouraged regular patrol officers to divert intoxicated individuals to the city’s detoxification facility as a pre-­arrest/booking intervention, including those under the influence (but not in possession) of illegal drugs. This facility, operated by the Community Services Board, was a potent resource for dealing with Norfolk’s drug problem in that 60 percent of those presenting for services were using something other than alcohol, including heroin or cocaine. Yet, the police provided only 3 percent of all referrals to the facility. One reason for this outcome, the police argued, was that many of the intoxicated individuals they encountered were “repeat offenders” and therefore limited in terms of how often they could get detoxification services. According to the director of Norfolk’s facility, however, there were no rules limiting use. Furthermore, unlike other treatment resources administered by the Community Services Board, there were no capacity problems at the detoxification center. The more compelling explanations for why the police did not favor diversion to “detox” had to do with officers not wanting to drive out of their districts to transport offenders and fearing that intoxicated individuals would vomit in patrol units or otherwise get out of control. There was also the problem of officers simply walking away from situations involving inebriated individuals or viewing them as undeserving of service intervention. For example, when I asked Officer Hart about why the NPD was reluctant to actively embrace substance abuse outreach she told me that “the police are not going to wipe the noses of drug users.” Summary PACE promoted community policing as a means to achieve community-­oriented government—an innovative way to assist with the delivery of urban services while promoting the well-­being of Norfolk’s citizens. In particular, PACE was viewed as an effective response to Norfolk’s drug problem, combining traditional enforcement with human service outreach. Ultimately, however, community policing in Norfolk became narrowed around nuisance abatement and order maintenance concerns. Indeed, upon George Crawley’s retirement from city government in 1996 the responsibility for overseeing PACE got shifted from the Assistant City Manager in Charge of Public Safety to the Codes Administration section of the Department of City Planning. In contrast, reintegrative community policing was “organized out” of the PACE agenda. During an interview

192   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity with George Crawley in 1998 he remarked that the human service aspects of PACE had been a “dismal failure.” The institutional selectivity associated with PACE was rooted in the normative order of state structures and practices. The NPD rank-­and-file were able to accept the concept of community policing as long as it was “about enforcement.” Officers embraced the notion that they should enforce illegal trespass and other minor ordinances because these were framed as effective strategies in preventing drug crime and related felonies. Although NEAT activities required that officers step out of their occupational comfort zone and use civil versus criminal methods of social control these too were viewed as an effective way to rid the community of illegal drug activities and related disorder and crime. Furthermore, civil enforcement remedies resonated with police officers in the procedural sense in that they had technical familiarity with delivering legal papers, serving as witnesses in court, etc. Human service outreach, on the other hand, did not correspond with officers in the cognitive or procedural contexts. Without working linkages between law enforcement and human service sectors—that is, beyond meetings and planning sessions—reintegrative community policing is not possible. One could argue that the selective orientation of PACE resulted from what the community wanted. Norfolk’s civic leagues were active players in directing the implementation of PACE and their priorities centered on heightened community surveillance and NEAT-­related actions. Conversely, there was no constituency equal to the civic leagues promoting PACE as a mechanism of social outreach. However, leaders like Crawley had envisioned PACE as a model of community policing that could both promote enhanced enforcement and reintegrative community policing. Crawley’s retirement, however, meant that PACE had lost its voice as a program of social outreach. Without sustained leadership for such an objective—or without a constituency to require it—community policing agendas are likely to fall back on conservative crime control agendas. PACE would continue as an order/nuisance abatement program until 2006 when it was disbanded amid complaints that it placed an undue burden on low-­ income homeowners, compelling them to make repairs that they could not afford (Roy and Minium 2006). Although some argued to keep the program, crime had been on a downward trend in Norfolk since the late 1990s, and drugs were not on the public agenda as they had been in 1990. Norfolk’s City Manager also argued that the program had become too sequestered within special NPD units and argued that community policing should permeate the whole of the police department. This was an ironic end to the PACE era given that it was promoted as a way to reform all of city government.

Baltimore’s Health-­Based Drug Control Policy One of the plot lines of the critically acclaimed television series The Wire, which aired on HBO beginning in 2007, focused on a policy enacted by fictional Western District commander “Bunny” Colvin to establish containment zones where illicit

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   193 drug use and trafficking would be tolerated. Colvin’s objective was to isolate Baltimore’s drug control problem and the violence and disorder that accompanied it in an area with few residents and legitimate businesses. Adopting the parlance of drug suspects in the neighborhood, Colvin’s experiment became known as “Hamsterdam,” after “Amsterdam,” a city known for liberal drug control policies. As a means to deal with matters of addiction, Colvin allowed in treatment workers and others committed to implementing harm reduction services. “Hamsterdam” had some basis in reality, including looking to the Netherlands as a way to find solutions for dealing with the societal demand for psychoactive substances. During the 1990s Baltimore’s drug problem was considered one of the nation’s most intransigent. With a population of roughly 723,000 persons in 1993, it was estimated that 47,800 persons were “abusing illegal drugs in Baltimore,” especially heroin (Baltimore 1993, 6; Shenk 1999). As in Norfolk, Baltimore’s leaders saw its drug problem as causal of its crime and violence problems. From the late 1980s into the 1990s Baltimore had seen a surge in violent crime with 1993 designated the city’s “most murderous year ever.” Almost half of the city’s homicides were considered drug-­related, and arrests for drug offenses alone had doubled between 1980 and 1993 (James and Jackson 1994). Overall, the violent crime rate in Baltimore rose 75 percent between 1989 and 1993, from 27.5 incidents per 100,000 to 48.2 (Roth and Kelling 1998, 4). Kurt Schmoke, the mayor of Baltimore from 1987–1999, viewed illicit drug use and abuse as “the root of most everything wrong in Baltimore” (Matthews 1997a). He was also a staunch opponent of the federal government’s “war on drugs” and the use of criminal sanctions to stem problems of addiction and recreational drug use. “I view the addicts more as patients to be treated than persons to be incarcerated,” Schmoke told the media (Baltimore Sun 1999a). In 1993 he convened the Mayor’s Working Group on Drug Policy Reform, including a judge, academics, the city’s health commissioner and representatives from private foundations, that would focus on “health-­based” solutions for dealing with drug users as opposed to traffickers. The Group’s report (Baltimore 1993, 3–10) called for “expansion in the number of treatment slots across all treatment modalities,” including drug maintenance programs and needle-­exchange programs (NEPs). The Group also called on the police to place “less emphasis” on making arrests for non-­violent drug offenses and help facilitate access to treatment services. “I want to get to them before they get into the criminal justice system,” Schmoke said of drug users (Baltimore Sun 1999a). The Working Group also recommended that Baltimore study the “merits” of decriminalizing marijuana. Critics immediately seized on the Schmoke Administration for raising drug decriminalization as part of its reform policy. Schmoke was also criticized for supporting NEPs, which some politicians—and the federal government—viewed as encouraging drug use (Bor 1999; AIDS Information Exchange 1994). The mayor attempted to calm critics by referring to his reforms as “medicalization” (Shenk 1999, 24). However, Schmoke maintained that illicit drug use should be handled “primarily as a public health problem and not primarily as a criminal

194   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity justice problem.” He called on Peter Beilenson, Baltimore’s Commissioner of Public Health from 1992 to July of 2005, to be the primary architect of the city’s drug policy reforms. Beilenson implemented “Treatment on Request,” a policy calling for any addict seeking treatment to get services within 24 hours of their declaring a need (Baltimore 1993, 16). To increase the treatment capacity for the uninsured and to improve the range of services provided to this population, Beilenson created Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems, Inc. (BSAS), a quasi-­ governmental entity responsible for administering all state, local, and federal grants for publically-­funded substance abuse services in Baltimore, including those associated with alcohol use. Chaired by Commissioner Beilenson, the BSAS doubled public treatment capacity from about 4,100 available slots in 1997 to more than 8,100 by 2001, much of it through grants from private foundations that the agency could legally solicit. BSAS did not administer services directly but rather contracted with 39 publically-­funded private contractors dispersed throughout the city that offered a range of treatment modalities including detoxification, 28-day residential, intensive outpatient and drug maintenance programs offering methadone, levo-­alpha-acetylmethadol or buprenorphine (Beilenson 1999; Craig 1999).9 Beilenson also made needle-­exchange— administered through the Baltimore Health Department—a centerpiece of reform. Community Policing and Drug Control In 1994 Kurt Schmoke brought in Thomas Frazier to be Commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department (BPD). A protégé of San Jose’s former police chief and staunch critic of the drug war, Joseph McNamara, Frazier promised a new approach to regulating violence and drugs in Baltimore. Frazier proposed clamping down not on “street-­level” sellers and users but rather on higher-­level operators who imported drugs to the city and ran the major distribution rings. He called for increased undercover operations to build an intelligence base about the criminal organizations pushing illegal drugs in Baltimore, a policy that led to a number of well-­publicized raids against “large-­scale and violence-­prone organizations” (Taylor 2001, 60 quoting the Baltimore Sun). Once describing himself as a “social worker with a gun,” Frazier was an advocate of using a combination of strong enforcement measures, drug treatment and other mechanisms of community outreach to reduce crime and violence (Hermann 1995; Beilenson et al. 1998). BPD documents claimed that “every sworn officer in the city has been trained” and is “fully engaged in community policing,” but in practice community policing was a patchwork affair in Baltimore with distinct initiatives stretching back to the 1980s (Taylor 2001). A department of approximately 3,034 sworn officers in 2000 (up from 2,800 in 1990),10 the BPD was divided into nine geographic districts where each might have its own particular community policing program depending on the availability of outside funding, the leadership of particular officials or the role of partnership agencies. Here I

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   195 summarize experiments with reintegrative community policing during the Schmoke/Frazier years, especially as these pertained to advancing Baltimore’s health-­based drug control policy or other forms of social outreach. De-­Emphasizing Arrest and Supporting Harm Reduction A harm reduction philosophy of drug control is based on the premise that there is a distinction between drug use and trafficking and that arrests for the former are not legally warranted or effective (Bok 1998; Nadelmann et al. 1994). Baltimore never went in the direction of creating “free-­use” areas such as those tried in Europe or dramatized in The Wire’s “Hamsterdam.” However, Commissioner Frazier had “ordered his troops to concentrate on arresting gun-­toting drug dealers rather than drug users, arguing that incarcerating users won’t solve any problems” (Hermann 1996a). Officers were encouraged to use pre-­arrest/booking strategies, referring users to treatment and related services. In the city’s Southern Policing District, for example, one lieutenant—a former fellow at “Join Together,” a drug policy reform organization in Boston—instructed his patrol officers to pass out informational brochures on Baltimore’s treatment and harm reduction programs to street addicts. Frazier also arranged for a personnel exchange program with the police department in Rotterdam, the Netherlands (a city the similar size of Baltimore) so that his officers could witness how law enforcement officers abroad supported harm reduction efforts. For example, Dutch officers distributed syringes from police stations, tolerated low levels of use and distribution provided that these were not connected to predatory crime and disorder, and used community policing techniques to get to know individual users and sellers for the purposes of monitoring their activities (Hermann 1996b; Hermann 1996c). There was little evidence, however, that BPD officers adopted Frazier’s directive of “de-­emphasizing arrests” for drug users. Those involved in the Netherlands exchange viewed the Dutch model of control as largely inapplicable in the American context where, they argued, the drug problem was much more pervasive and violent. Officers also rejected the notion that users should be immune from enforcement. After all, Frazier’s order asked that the police ignore the state’s penal code that made no distinction between users versus traffickers in terms of whether one was in violation of the law. Moreover, from the standpoint of the police it made sense to crack down on drug users because their behavior was inextricably linked to trafficking and other crime and problems such as sex work and larceny. During ride-­alongs it was apparent that officers took drug enforcement very seriously, no matter how small the offense. They saw it not simply as a way to enforce the law but as a way of setting a standard of what public behaviors were acceptable. In one instance I observed an officer stop an individual on suspicion of concealing an illegal substance in his mouth (the officer would eventually force his hand into the detainee’s mouth in search of the substance). In another I observed the police call out the Baltimore Fire Department to search the roof of a row-­house where it was suspected that a detainee had tossed a handful of drugs.

196   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity The one exception to this rule was support for needle-­exchange. During the early 1990s the Baltimore Health Department estimated that 61 percent of the city’s AIDS cases were spread through the sharing of “dirty” needles among intravenous drug users. Following the lead of other cities, Baltimore implemented a needle-­exchange program (NEP) in 1993 as an effective way to distribute clean syringes to drug injectors and prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and other infections (AIDS Information Exchange 1994, 2). Services were provided through a mobile service run by the Health Department using two 26-foot Winnebago vans that operated five days a week, alternating among six specially-­ designated neighborhoods. The vans were staffed with health and substance abuse counselors who would talk with clients about safe injection practices. Counselors were also authorized to enroll users in treatment programs. Mobile needle-­exchange therefore provided an efficient mechanism for promoting Baltimore’s Treatment on Request policy and addressing problems of drug addiction.11 The efficacy of NEPs nationally has depended on the support of the police. Some programs have operated in opposition to “drug paraphernalia” laws, passed at the height of the drug war, which made the possession of drug injection equipment without a doctor’s prescription a crime (Bluthenthal et al. 1997). Even when NEPs have been sanctioned by law, their impact has been diminished by adverse policing actions (Beletsky et al. 2015; Schneider 1998). Aggressive drug enforcement measures have been shown to drive NEP clients underground, and intravenous drug users have been victims of “officer prejudice,” including cases of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse (Cooper et al. 2004, 1109; Cooper et al. 2005). Frazier’s directive of de-­emphasizing arrests for use or possession was therefore crucial for assuring the success of Baltimore’s initiative. Needle-­exchange clients could be seen lining up outside the Winnebago units waiting for services, making them “easy pickings” for officers wanting to make arrests.12 To keep the police from hassling clients, the City of Baltimore—with the cooperation of Police Commissioner Frazier—sought and obtained legal authorization from the Maryland legislature to operate an NEP (AIDS Information Exchange 1994). Participants in the program were issued identification cards to verify their participation with the NEP and program syringes were specially marked. These steps were intended to put officers on notice that they should not make a drug paraphernalia arrest should they discover a program syringe. All bets were off, however, if the police discovered a controlled substance in the syringe. Commissioner Beilenson announced that he had had “excellent” cooperation from the BPD in support of the NEP.13 However, outreach workers and clients claimed that the police continued to confiscate or destroy program syringes. One officer told me—as we looked on at one of the Winnebago units from his patrol car—that while he did not interfere with NEP clients he derided the concept of providing syringes to users saying “you give a junkie a method by which he can remain a junkie, so what is the point?” Focus groups with BPD officers to assess whether they would support a syringe disposal project in East Baltimore found

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   197 similar attitudes, with officers viewing such an initiative as providing tacit support for intravenous drug use (Riley et al. 1998). Arrest and incarceration data from the 1990s also showed little change in drug enforcement practices in Baltimore despite reform efforts. Maryland’s prison population surged 69 percent during the 1990s, from 13,000 inmates in 1988 to 22,000 in 1998, an increase fed by drug violations of all types. Arrests for marijuana possession alone more than doubled in Maryland between 1990 and 1997, from 5,581 to 11,754 (Mauer and King 2007, 2). For Maryland’s African-­American population, marijuana possession arrests more than tripled from 1,773 in 1990 to 5,775 in 2000 while actually declining for whites (Reuter et al. 2001, 8–10). Roughly 16 percent of the state’s drug arrests were occurring in Baltimore, a percentage that was higher than the proportion of Baltimoreans in Maryland overall (about 10 percent by the end of the millennium). Police Athletic League Police Athletic League (PAL) centers were an important symbol of reintegrative community policing in Baltimore, especially as a drug use and crime prevention tool aimed at children of elementary and middle school age. When Frazier took over as commissioner, the city’s 27 PAL centers were “dirty and dingy” and overrun by crime and drug dealers. Frazier reorganized PAL into a tax-­exempt organization and raised private funds to pump into the centers, significantly redoing a number of them and paying for computers, television sets, snacks, and recreational equipment. Uniformed officers—at one time as many as 87 of them—oversaw the centers, making them refuges for students looking for a place to come after school to do homework, play sports or engage in other enrichment activities. Frazier considered PAL to be a “signature” aspect of the BPD’s overall crime prevention strategy, describing the centers as a place where social capital could be built. “Every time a cop helps a kid in a computer lab, I put $1 in social capital in the bank account,” Frazier was quoted as saying. The centers were also viewed as fostering good police–community relations (Hermann and Hotchkin 1998). Comprehensive Communities Program The Comprehensive Communities Program (CCP) was designed by the U.S. Department of Justice to encourage local communities to “integrate law enforcement with social programs—and public agencies with nongovernmental organizations and individuals—to control crime and improve the quality of life” in urban neighborhoods (Kelling et al. 1998, 2). Baltimore’s CCP was initiated in 1995 with funding from both federal and private sources with the central objective of reducing the crime and social disorder “resulting from open air drug trafficking.” Its efforts were focused on eight specially-­designated “core” neighborhoods known for having crime and drug problems. Most were in the western and southwestern sections of the city including Boyd-­Booth, Carrollton Ridge,

198   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity Fayette Street, Franklin Park, New Southwest, and Harlem Park.14 CCP was implemented through the Mayor’s Coordinating Council on Criminal Justice (MCCCJ), which attempted to forge a cooperative crime prevention structure bringing together the resources of law enforcement, other governmental bureaucracies, community-­based organizations, and citizens. Over time, the CCP would come to prioritize order maintenance, nuisance abatement, and grime-­fighting as social control strategies, although it was also intended as a mechanism for doing reintegrative community policing, especially as this concerned “recovering addicts and youth.”15 Each CCP core neighborhood—at least ostensibly—had a full-­time foot officer. They worked with neighborhood residents to “solve ongoing problems” and patrolled “aggressively to make an impact on quality of life issues” especially as these concerned open-­air drug trafficking, sex work, and “intimidating behavior.” Foot officers were also viewed as playing a crucial intelligence role, serving as informal and formal information conduits between residents and the police about illegal or disorderly behaviors. They were also regarded as a resource for community outreach, using their discretion, for example, to engage in pre-­arrest/booking interventions such as referring recalcitrant youth to PAL centers or minor offenders to social services.16 The foot officer concept was nevertheless difficult to implement. In its first year of operation, some of the foot officers assigned to CCP neighborhoods were either working the detail part-­time or as an overtime opportunity. By 1996, this problem had reportedly been rectified, with 13 foot officers assigned to CCP neighborhoods full-­time (Roth and Kelling 1998). Still, officers were slow to embrace the foot officer concept. Without access to a vehicle, some felt vulnerable or stranded in their districts, and unable to cover enough ground quickly if an emergency arose. The most successful example of foot patrol under the CCP involved Will Narango, who had achieved some renown after being featured in The Baltimore Sun. Narango was described as something of a “town marshal,” clearing dealers from street corners, keeping an eye on troublemakers, and showing zero-­tolerance for social disorder (Matthews 1997b; also see Roth and Kelling 1998). I was able to observe Narango on two occasions in 1999, where he was still walking a foot beat in the Carrollton Ridge and New Southwest neighborhoods. Narango appeared to be popular among residents, including ex-­ offenders. In one case a woman came up to him, giving him a hug and chatting freely. After the encounter Narango confided in me that he had earlier “busted” the woman on prostitution charges. Narango’s presence and familiarity with his district also laid the foundation for pre-­arrest outreach. For example, he referred sex workers to a neighborhood-­based initiative called “YANA” (You Are Never Alone) that helped its clients seek legitimate work and overcome personal problems such as drug addiction. As a community policing initiative, the CCP was most successful in the areas of nuisance abatement, grime-­fighting, and devising environmental crime prevention strategies. These efforts did not necessarily involve specially-­designated foot officers but rather Neighborhood Service Officers (NSOs),17 a regular

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   199 assignment in the BPD. NSOs assisted community organizers from Baltimore’s Citizens Planning and Housing Association (CPHA), lawyers from Baltimore’s Community Law Center (CLC), city code enforcement officials and resident associations to get abandoned properties boarded-­up, demolished or rehabilitated as a deterrent to drug crime. These efforts—as was the case in Norfolk—relied on civil remedies as a problem-­solving tactic. For example, neighborhood residents could file lawsuits against suspected “crack” houses under a local Drug Nuisance Law, and eviction actions could be taken against tenants engaging in drug trafficking (also see Taylor 2001; Kelling and Coles 1996). Officers also helped to implement a strategy called “Crime Prevention through Environmental Design,” which helped residents “reclaim” public spaces by manipulating the built environment (e.g., blocking escape routes for would-­be perpetrators). Officers also worked to address a range of citizen concerns raised at public meetings or channeled through Baltimore’s “311” system, designed for non-­emergency calls coming into the BPD. These often had to do with getting rid of abandoned cars, unwanted trash, and high weeds. The CCP also encompassed an initiative called Community Support for Recovery (CSR). This was described as a “support system within the community to help recovering addicts stay on the road to recovery.” The CSR was an informal network made up of former addicts, church groups, and substance abuse counselors that partnered with the city’s drug court to help released offenders get access to housing and other remedial programs.18 It was supervised by the city’s Alternative Sentencing Unit, and some released offenders participating with the CSR also worked on the service crews that were called upon to attend to problems of physical disorder in CCP neighborhoods (e.g., cutting down high weeds). The CSR never really got off the ground, however, partially because of failures by the Alternative Sentencing Staff to adequately monitor released offenders (The Baltimore Sun 1997). Moreover, no BPD officers that I observed or spoke with had any linkage with CSR, and some did not even know about the initiative. Re-­Direction Between 1995 and 1996 violent crime in Baltimore declined by about 10 percent, following a national trend.19 This was the first decrease that the city had seen in ten years, and Commissioner Frazier was quick to attribute it to his policies of “seizing guns rather than making busts for minor drug possession, and opening up more Police Athletic League recreation centers to keep young people out of trouble” (Baltimore Sun 1996). Nevertheless, Frazier was not popular among the BPD rank-­and-file and officers. Many grew “frustrated with arresting druggies only to find them back on the streets . . . ostensibly in rehab but in fact selling their wares in menacing open-­air drug markets” (Siegel and Smith 2001; Hermann 1995). Martin O’Malley—a city councilperson later to become mayor—was pressuring the Schmoke Administration to adopt zero-­tolerance policing policies as a way to more quickly achieve crime reduction goals (Taylor

200   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity 2001). State officials were also calling for more assertive crime reduction measures in the city and attempted to achieve these through the implementation of Maryland Hotspots, begun in 1997. Maryland Hotspots funding allowed for the continuation of crime prevention efforts begun under the CCP as its federal support lapsed. In Baltimore, Hotspots would subsume CCP, and become known as “CCP/Hotspots.”20 The initiative was implemented through the Baltimore city MCCCJ, but with significant state oversight. As a community policing program, CCP/Hotspots maintained the emphasis on nuisance abatement and related environmental crime prevention strategies developed under the original CCP, especially as these involved partnerships between NSOs and community-­based actors such as the CPHA, the CLC, and resident associations. CCP/Hotspots also deployed officers to do order maintenance patrols and to communicate with residents about their needs and concerns. However, CCP/Hotspots phased out the foot officer concept, at least as a mechanism of patrolling residential blocks. Instead, officers would patrol on bicycles or on three-­wheeled “trackers.” Some patrols were carried out by graduates of the Maryland Police Corps, a federally-­funded initiative backed by the Clinton Administration that attempted to recruit college graduates into a career in law enforcement. Specially trained in community policing techniques, state planners hoped that Police Corps graduates could help compensate for the loss of foot officers and the familiarity that they brought, at least theoretically, to the patrol function. However, the Police Corps graduates that I observed were “filled with piss and vinegar,” as one BPD regular put it, anxious to make arrests as a way to prove their competence. CCP/Hotspots also deployed law enforcement “teams” of BPD officers and parole and probation agents that monitored the activities of released offenders. From the standpoint of many residents, then, CCP/Hotspots had undermined the sense of community engagement engendered by CCP. As one resident told me, the program appeared to mostly be about “putting people in jail.” The Maryland Hotspots initiative also called for local agencies to incorporate a reintegrative component, especially as this concerned youth outreach and linking residents to community-­based services. In Baltimore, this included community support for addiction recovery.21 In the Franklin Square/Boyd-­Booth neighborhood, for example, a CCP/Hotspot law enforcement team worked with Recovery In Community (RIC), a substance abuse outreach initiative funded by the Abell Foundation and the Open Society Institute. A staff member of RIC served as an “unofficial” member of the team, serving as a referral resource for probationers and parolees who were in need of treatment services. However, as was the case with the CSR, officers that I spoke to had little involvement with RIC, seeing it as a correctional initiative having little relevance to the police. The Schmoke Administration would also make adjustments to its health-­ based drug policy in response to media and political pressure. In 1999, an election year and Schmoke’s last year in office (the mayor had decided not to run again), the Baltimore Sun (1999a) published an editorial arguing that drug addiction in the city continued to fuel a “murderous trend” where 75 percent of the

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   201 city’s slayings were said to be drug-­related.22 The editorial also emphasized that drug dependency fed “other criminal activity, from break-­ins and hold-­ups to prostitution and panhandling.” BSAS (Baltimore Substance Abuse Services, Inc.), and by extension Health Commissioner Beilenson, were being scrutinized by the state for failing to assure the effectiveness of voluntary drug treatment programs whose completion policies were said to be among the “worst in the state.” This set off a public debate over the efficacy of coercive drug treatment programs, e.g., drug courts and other criminal justice approaches, versus non-­ coercive programs such as the Treatment on Request initiative advocated by the Schmoke Administration (Baltimore Sun 1999b; Beilenson 1999). A state-­wide drug policy task force, also headed-­up by Lieutenant Governor Townsend, argued that the “stick of prison time” was necessary for achieving successful outcomes in the area of substance abuse treatment, and wanted the city to put more dollars behind correctional initiatives such as drug courts (Baltimore Sun 1999a). Beilenson, however, resisted coercive regimens on philosophical grounds, arguing that treatment worked best when individuals sought services voluntarily and not because they were forced to do so. BSAS had mandated that the city’s 39 publically-­funded treatment providers commit most of their available slots to those seeking services voluntarily, with only 15 percent going to the criminal justice system. Eventually, however, Beilenson relented to pressure from the state, which also controlled some of BSAS’s funding through block grant allocations, and shifted more resources into coercive treatment programs (Beilenson’s position that voluntary treatment would decrease drug use and crime was subsequently validated in a study done by researchers at Johns Hopkins and other universities—see Johnson et al. 2002). The Schmoke Administration also began to experiment with “reverse drug stings,” where drug buyers were offered treatment as an alternative to prosecution by police officers posing as sellers (Craig 2000). “Less Social Work, More Law Enforcement” Kurt Schmoke was succeeded by Martin O’Malley in November of 1999. O’Malley ran on a platform renouncing the policies of the Schmoke Administration. O’Malley was especially “infuriated by the failures of liberal, community-­ based policing” (Pelton 2002). Shortly after O’Malley’s election, he closed nine PAL centers and reduced officer involvement with those that remained, arguing that the police were best deployed on the streets where they could play a direct role in fighting crime (Ribbing 2000). O’Malley conceded that homicide had begun to decline under Schmoke, but noted that Baltimore continued to have an inordinately high violent crime rate, ranked second among the nation’s 30 largest cities (Kane 1999). O’Malley appointed Ed Norris, a veteran of the New York City Police Department, as his police commissioner23 with the intention of having him “replicate the zero-­tolerance tactics” that had been credited with precipitous reductions in New York City’s crime rate. These included the strict enforcement of seemingly minor quality of life offenses such as loitering (Pelton

202   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity 2002). Upon his appointment Norris was quoted as saying of the BPD “we’re not social workers—I’d like for us to be the police again” (Hermann 2000). Norris was embraced by BPD officers for re-­prioritizing crime-­fighting as the central role of urban police and ending the social outreach directives of the Frazier years (Gibson and Wilber 2004). However, Norris’s policies angered many in Baltimore’s African-­American and poorer communities who saw zero-­ tolerance policing, in particular, as a way for the police to “run roughshod over citizens’ rights” (Fenton 2011; Kane 2000). O’Malley’s election also symbolized the end of what many considered to be Schmoke’s “dogged adherence to an ineffective soft-­on-drugs policing strategy” (Siegel and Smith 2001). The O’Malley Administration ended the use of pre-­ arrest/booking diversion tactics, including reverse drug stings, and Commissioner Norris called for the prosecution of all drug offenders, making no distinction, as Frazier had done, between the inherent criminality of users versus traffickers. The O’Malley Administration did remain committed to increasing drug treatment capacity, and kept on Peter Beilenson as its health commissioner. This allowed for the NEP to stay in place, although O’Malley was in favor of a coercive treatment model as the best way to reduce illicit drug use and crime.24 Reintegrative Community Policing and Freddie Gray By 2005 crime was once again on the increase in Baltimore. The police commissioner at the time, Kevin Clark, had gotten into trouble over domestic issues giving Mayor O’Malley a good excuse to fire him. Clark, another New Yorker who had been hired in 2003 to continue the zero-­tolerance policies of Commissioner Norris,25 was replaced by Leonard Hamm (2005–2007), appointed from the ranks of BPD. Hamm supported policies consistent with the goals of reintegrative community policing in Baltimore, introducing a program called “Get Out of the Game.” The program assigned community affairs officers “to patrol some of Baltimore’s toughest streets in search of addicts and low-­level dealers—not to arrest them, but to help them find treatment, job counseling, and other social services.” Hamm told the New York Times, “we can do all the enforcement we want, but if we don’t help people find work, find affordable housing, get treatment, we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing, locking the same people up.” However, “Get Out of the Game” lacked the “imprimatur” of Mayor O’Malley, who “refused to comment” about whether he supported the initiative. There were also doubts among some officers who worried that “Get Out of the Game” would turn officers into “over-­extended social workers” (Dao and Gately 2005). The killing of Freddie Gray while in BPD custody in April of 2015 and the community uprisings that followed refocused attention on the O’Malley era as the cause of deteriorated police–community relations in Baltimore. David Simon, co-­author of The Corner and creator of HBO’s acclaimed television series The Wire (2002–2008) blamed the drug war and zero-­tolerance policing practices for destroying any kind of decent relationship that the BPD had forged with the city’s African-­American community (Keller 2015). O’Malley would be

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   203 credited for reducing homicide in Baltimore, but Simon argues that he pushed his commanders to achieve unrealistic crime reduction goals at the cost of alienating residents. Arrests frequencies during the O’Malley years would soar to unprecedented heights—108,447 in 2005—or one-­sixth of the city’s population (Schwartzman and Wagner 2015). A lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and NAACP in 2006, which resulted in an out of court settlement requiring the City of Baltimore to pay $870,000 in damages, charged that the BPD was engaging in mass arrest for relatively minor “quality-­of-life” crimes (Fenton 2010). Another price of aggressive enforcement was the suspension of policing outreach practices instituted during the Schmoke-­Frazier era that had helped build community trust, such as PAL.26 It is noteworthy, then, that the Baltimore Police Department announced in late 2015 that it would begin experimenting with a privately-­funded LEAD-­style initiative specifically designed as a mechanism for channeling “low-­level drug offenders” to treatment services. Although the initiative has been promoted as a way to deal with Baltimore’s ongoing heroin addiction problem and high homicide rate, it is also seen as a response to U.S. Justice Department inquiries into the circumstances surrounding the Gray incident (Rentz 2015). What is most significant about the Baltimore initiative is its reliance on service diversion in the pre-­arrest context, a nod to Schmoke/Frazier era reforms and the continuing emphasis of Baltimore’s health department on voluntary versus coercive treatment interventions. Summary The Schmoke Administration saw community policing as a vehicle for implementing its health-­based drug control policy. However, community policing reform in Baltimore reflected dynamics of institutional selectivity where traditional enforcement concerns were prioritized over reintegrative strategies. Officers rejected the idea that they should de-­emphasize arrests for drug use or possession offenses, making no distinction between these violations and those involving trafficking. Although officers did not necessarily see using illegal drugs as a serious form of criminality, they did see such actions as inextricably linked to drug trafficking, social disorder, and violence. Therefore, they reasoned, de-­emphasizing arrests for drug possession and use offenses risked a state of permissiveness whereby more serious wrongdoing could proliferate. Police did, however, agree to support Baltimore’s NEP when it was sanctioned by the Maryland legislature. Even with this law in place, however, NEP workers and clients complained that the police continued to hassle intravenous drug users and destroy program syringes. The dynamics of institutional selectivity in Baltimore went beyond the normative order of the police and extended to the decisions and nondecisions of policy planners, especially state officials and those on the MCCCJ. The CCP initiative, promoted by the federal government as a way to “integrate law enforcement with social programs,” was in Baltimore organized toward goals of nuisance abatement, order maintenance, and the reduction of environmental

204   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity blight. This emphasis was continued under CCP/Hotspots, a program that called for the ramping up of aggressive order maintenance measures. Foot patrol was the one aspect of CCP that promised any success in the area of social outreach. Officer Will Narango, in particular, personified the potential for forging a community policing agenda that combined order maintenance with reintegrative goals. However, Narango was more the exception than the rule, and the foot officer concept as it was proposed under CCP would be discontinued and replaced under CCP/Hotspots with mobile order maintenance patrols. As for the two dedicated treatment outreach components associated with CCP and CCP/ Hotspots, CSR and RIC, these initiatives were defined as corrections programs with little relevance for community policing. In time, the Schmoke Administration would find itself pressured to commit more resources to drug courts amid debates over the efficacy of its “Treatment on Request” policy. Schmoke would also turn to more coercive methods of getting users into treatment, exemplified by the use of reverse drug stings. After coming to power, the O’Malley Administration would reject the concept of reintegrative policing altogether, labeling it “social work.” This included cutting back on the city’s PAL centers, which although not directly concerned with drug users, were intended as a way to reduce the social strains leading to drug use and abuse. Treatment diversion would continue under O’Malley but on a post-­ booking/pre-­trial basis. As I argued in Chapter 5, however, trends in policing practice reflect a dialectical relationship with the community being served. Aggressive policing practices under the O’Malley Administration eventually backfired, and the killing of Freddie Gray in 2014 refocused critical attention on the social control policies of the O’Malley Administration. By 2015 the policies of the Schmoke/Frazier era appeared to be validated as Baltimore announced the implementation of a LEAD-­style initiative to deal with problems of drug use and addiction through the use of pre-­arrest interventions.

San Francisco: Progressive Politics and Order Maintenance San Francisco was the center of America’s counter-­culture during the 1960s and this included significant levels of experimentation with LSD and other psychoactive substances. When the 1960s ended San Francisco continued to be a center of drug use, and by the 1990s it was a center for the use and procurement of “street” drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine. A 1997 report by the California State Department of Health Services found that 90,000 persons in San Francisco were “at-­risk” for alcohol or drug use problems, and roughly 45,000 required some kind of treatment intervention. San Francisco had the highest ratio of drug-­related emergency room visits involving heroin or methamphetamine of all major U.S. metropolitan areas, and San Francisco’s rate of death for drug-­ related causes was 20.4 persons per 100,000, more than twice what it was for the State of California as a whole. Cocaine use had also reached “epidemic” proportions in the city.27

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   205 In 1996 the San Francisco Board of Supervisors adopted a “Treatment on Demand” (TOD) policy to address its drug abuse crisis. Similar to Baltimore’s Treatment on Request policy, TOD was defined as the immediate provision of publically-­funded treatment services to “active drug users,” including chronic abusers of alcohol (Guydish et al. 1999, 4). The San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) was in charge of administering the program through its division of Community Substance Abuse Services (CSAS). Like Baltimore, the SFDPH did not directly provide therapies but rather contracted with 46 or so community-­based providers that offered a range of treatment modalities. Nevertheless, the treatment capacity of CSAS was seriously lacking. About 12,000 persons were in treatment at any one time and an additional 10,000 were on waiting lists. Furthermore, the resources provided by CSAS supported not only the voluntary treatment sector but also helped to support probation and jail-­based programs. The DPH estimated that an additional 23,000 persons in San Francisco desired treatment or required treatment but were not actively seeking it or able to get it.28 To support TOD, the city increased the CSAS budget by 88 percent from $27 to $51 million between 1995 and 1999. Mayor Willie Brown (1996–2004) was a big proponent of the policy, committing an additional $14 million to the initiative (Isaacs 1999; Guydish et al. 1999). The SFDPH also adopted harm reduction as its official policy in 2000. Treatment providers contracting with CSAS were made responsible for implementing drug maintenance therapies, teaching safe use practices and providing materials for cleaning dirty needles and skin injection sites (i.e., bleach, alcohol wipes, and clean cotton), and providing anti-­overdose drugs (i.e., naloxone for heroin users). Needle-­exchange had also been operating in San Francisco since 1988 in response to the city’s AIDS crisis, but it was administered by voluntary associations such as the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Technically, needle-­ exchange was not legal in California because of strict anti-­drug paraphernalia laws, but the city’s district attorney, Arlo Smith (1987 to 1996) had agreed not to prosecute clients or volunteers involved with NEPs. The police, too, had agreed not to interfere with clients using NEPs, especially in support of a public health emergency that had been announced in the city during 1993 concerning the spread of HIV/AIDS (Bluthenthal et al., 1997). However, when San Francisco made harm reduction official policy in 2000, it promoted needle-­exchange not only as a way to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS but as a way to protect the general health of drug users. As a result, some public officials ridiculed the city for adopting a policy of “harm promotion,” arguing that needle-­exchange encouraged drug use (Torassa 2001). Democratized Implementation San Francisco officials criticized Baltimore for being top-­down in its approach to implementing a health-­based drug policy, especially following the lead of Health Commissioner Beilenson, and instead sought a “grassroots” model of reform. The CSAS was charged with the creation of a TOD (Treatment on

206   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity Demand) Planning Council, a “consensus-­based, community-­oriented strategy” responsible for developing program philosophy, implementation guidelines, and funding priorities. Initially, the Planning Council included 37 members, representing health contractors to the city, public officials, community leaders, and advocacy groups representing San Francisco’s homeless and many “ethnic, gender, age and sexual communities.” Ultimately, the Council developed 58 priorities centering around harm reduction goals, detoxification, jail-­based diversion and the specialized needs of families, women, youth, and the city’s gay/ lesbian/bisexual and transgender communities (Guydish et al. 2000, 363–366). Reflecting San Francisco’s treatment culture with roots in the 1960s and the Haight-­Ashbury Free Clinic, advocacy groups on the TOD Planning Council leaned toward a “non-­judgmental” drug control philosophy where the legal prosecution of recreational users was viewed as wrong-­headed and instead supported medical approaches for dealing with addiction and dependency (Broadhead and Margolis 1993, 505). Still, there were some on the Council who were “anti-­methadone” and committed to goals of abstinence (Isaacs 1999). San Francisco also established a centralized intake unit called the Treatment Access Program, which served as a “one-­stop” screening, assessment, and referral service. Functional by 1997, TAP served both walk-­in clientele and individuals in the city’s criminal justice system. The SFDPH also established a “stabilization center,” a 24-hour facility staffed with medical and TAP officials located within the “McMillan Center,” a temporary shelter and drop-­in point near the civic center designed for the city’s homeless and public inebriate populations. The stabilization center at McMillan was a pre-­arrest/booking referral resource available to police officers although rarely did they use it. There were two reasons for this. One was that the city maintained a Mobile Assistance Patrol (“MAP”) staffed with outreach workers that patrolled the city’s streets after dark looking to transfer homeless or public inebriates in need of diversion to either the McMillan Center or San Francisco General Hospital, where TAP had personnel on hand. The police also linked with MAP for this purpose. The second reason was that many of those serving on the TOD Planning Council, especially advocates for the homeless, distrusted the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) and discouraged their being directly involved with treatment diversion. One informant told me “anything having to do with police, they [meaning the homeless advocates] don’t want to have anything to do with it . . . as far as they’re concerned, any involvement with the police means arrest or jail.” Unlike Baltimore, where the city’s health commissioner and police commissioner collaborated in their attempts to implement the city’s health-­based drug control policy, the Treatment on Demand Council left the police out of its planning process altogether. Community Policing To understand the distrust existing between the TOD Planning Council, community activists, and the police, one must understand the contradictory elements

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   207 of community policing reform in San Francisco, especially as this pertained to the use of quality of life enforcement models in combination with social outreach. The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) first developed a community policing plan in 1989 and then revised it in 1995 to reflect the federal grant-­inaid priorities of the Clinton Crime Bill of 1994.29 The department later developed a written set of priorities in 1998 that included the use of regularly assigned foot and bicycle patrol officers in the city’s neighborhoods to build community trust and familiarity, a “code enforcement task force” for nuisance abatement purposes, especially as this pertained to getting rid of abandoned or decaying properties that attracted drug use and trafficking, multilingual outreach, community meetings, a senior escort program, citizen patrols, domestic violence advocates and youth service programs, including the Police Athletic League. The SFPD also emphasized “aggressive enforcement” as one of its key community policing priorities, especially as this pertained to “quality of life” offenses related to public inebriation, panhandling, and sleeping/living in public spaces.30 Nowhere was San Francisco’s commitment to quality of life objectives more apparent than in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood. Taking up about 50 square blocks near the city center, and taking in some of the northern blocks of the South of Market (SOM), the Tenderloin housed many of San Francisco’s transient poor and new immigrant populations, many of them living in single-­ room occupancy (SRO) residential hotels. The Tenderloin/SOM was where San Francisco’s “problem populations” were “kept and swept,” including the “homeless, drug addicts, petty criminals, and sex workers” (Lynch et al. 2013, 348). The districts had gone through significant economic changes, beginning with the opening of the George Moscone Convention Center in 1981 in SOM that spurred the building of new luxury hotels and commercial developments. Efforts to revitalize Union Square, the city’s traditional retail center on the eastern edge of the Tenderloin, and San Francisco’s “dot.com” boom and other post-­industrial shifts, made the Tenderloin and SOM districts especially vulnerable to gentrification pressures, especially in the form of upscale retail and the building of even more commercial developments and luxury hotels, some of them converted from formerly low-­rent office properties or SROs (Hartmann 2002; Johnston 1980). These changes forever altered the boundaries between the Tenderloin/SOM and the rest of the city, and a wealthier San Francisco meant that its citizens—and city officials—demanded new “sanitized” spaces from which the more “unsettling” aspects of urban life—such as homelessness and street deviance—were removed (Murphy 2009, 310). The increasing gentrification of San Francisco and the crisis of housing affordability that it created called into question the city’s reputation for political progressivism (see DeLeon 1992). By the mid-­1980s, a sprawling encampment of homeless had begun to live on the Beaux Arts plaza outside San Francisco’s City Hall, which many blamed on the city’s left-­liberal social policies, especially under Art Agnos, mayor from 1988–1992. Agnos had refused to clear the encampment, but relented in 1990, forcibly evicting hundreds.31 This action was

208   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity followed by a series of other aggressive enforcement measures aimed specifically at the Tenderloin and SOM, considered by the police to be the epicenters of San Francisco’s social problems. The SFPD organized the “Tenderloin Task Force” in 1991 primarily as a means to clamp down on “street” level drug activity (i.e., possession and use) and sex work (Lynch et al. 2013). Two years later, under Mayor Frank Jordan (1992–1996), a former police chief who had served under Agnos, the Tenderloin Task Force concept was expanded under the name of “Operation Matrix,” which intensified the enforcement of local ordinance violations pertaining to public drinking and drunkenness, public urination and defecation, aggressive panhandling, and sleeping/living in public spaces. However, Mayor Jordan saw Matrix as a way to combine quality of life policing practices with social service outreach. Jordan envisioned Matrix as a “multi-­departmental city effort to help people living on the streets obtain shelter and other services (such as psychiatric, and drug and alcohol treatment), while at the same time protecting the public against criminal offenses committed in public” (Gardner and Lindstrom 1997, 101). Teams of social workers, mental health workers, a substance abuse specialist, and police officers were dispatched to comb the city looking for needy individuals in the interest of offering them remedial services (MacDonald 1995). The notion that the police should be involved with reintegrative strategies was not out of line with the ways in which police officers saw their mission, especially in “skid row” districts (Bittner 1967). Plotkin and Narr (1997) documented the role of police officers in helping to promote services to the homeless in a number of American cities. In Huey’s (2007) work on San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, she found that many SFPD officers saw themselves as “social workers,” playing a key role in diverting the homeless to shelters and public inebriates to detoxification services. The lieutenant in charge of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Task Force during the 1990s gained national notoriety for co-­sponsoring outreach programs to help women and girls exit the sex work industry (Nieves 1999).32 However, the research on Matrix shows how it is difficult to strike a balance between enforcement and social outreach. Social service workers were reluctant to support Matrix because they did not “want to be seen as law enforcement,” fearing that this would make homeless individuals afraid to interact with them. One public health worker voiced the concern that “you can’t help someone with their mental health woes when they are being handcuffed” (McGarry 2008, 259). At the urging of Mayor Jordan, the police and human service agencies found a way to work with each other, and the police would stay in the background when social or health workers approached a homeless individual. In time, however, Matrix evolved into a “large-­scale police dragnet with small social service outreach appendages” (Gardner and Lindstrom 1997, 101). The mayor’s office had greatly overestimated the quantity and quality of housing and substance abuse services. From the standpoint of the police, however, Matrix was a success. Claiming that one-­third of the homeless that they encountered were involved in “some form of criminal conduct,” the SFPD argued that Matrix led not only to a reduction in minor offenses but major crimes as well (McGarry

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   209 2008, 263). The police also argued that they were effectively protecting the homeless through their aggressive measures by getting predatory criminals off the streets. The lion’s share of enforcement actions carried out under Matrix, however, were not about serious crimes but rather minor infractions, including thousands of citations for public inebriation, sleeping/lodging in public, obstructing the sidewalk and other public order violations. Criticized for criminalizing homelessness, the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy organizations filed lawsuits to halt Matrix (McGarry 2008; Gardner and Lindstrom 1997). Willie Brown, succeeding Frank Jordan as mayor of San Francisco in 1996, ran on a platform disavowing Matrix and called for expanding treatment services as a means of dealing with the city’s homeless and substance abuse problems— eventually giving rise to the city’s TOD policy. Nevertheless, Brown continued with policies that emphasized the enforcement of quality of life offenses. In 1999, for example, the SFPD issued a record 23,871 “quality of life” tickets for violations such as “camping” or sleeping on the street or in public parks.33 Brown also attempted to merge goals of enforcement with reintegration. In 1998 he introduced a program called “San Francisco Cares,” a “hold-­for-court” policy aimed specifically at “street alcoholics” (O’Connor and Hirschmann 1998). Designed to appease neighborhood residents who were pressuring city officials to do more about problems of disorderly conduct and public drunkenness, San Francisco Cares was called a “humane alcohol rehabilitation policy program within the criminal justice system.” Under the initiative, any chronic inebriate arrested three times for the same offense within a 60-day period would be forced to stay in jail awaiting a court hearing. If convicted, the offender would be offered the choice of a six-­month jail sentence or court-­supervised treatment, much like a drug court.34 The hold-­for-court policy was relevant to drug enforcement in that police could not necessarily differentiate between alcohol and other forms of intoxication, and street alcoholics might also be engaged in poly-­drug use. Consequently, San Francisco Cares was also viewed as a means of suppressing open-­air drug use and addiction. San Francisco Cares faced an immediate and vocal backlash from the TOD Planning Council on both philosophical and practical grounds. One member wrote in the San Francisco Examiner that the program “criminalizes people who are poor and addicted,” violating the city’s policy of finding “humane” solutions to problems of drug use (O’Connor and Hirschmann 1998). The Coalition on Homelessness called San Francisco Cares another version of Matrix, and mobilized with other advocacy groups to block implementation of the program. There was also a capacity problem. Mayor Brown had been telling national audiences that TOD in San Francisco was a tremendous success and a model for the nation. The TOD Planning Council, on the other hand, had been telling the mayor that there were still waiting lists of 1,000 to 1,400 persons deep to get treatment (Marinucci 1997). Drug and alcohol-­related emergency visits to San Francisco General Hospital had also increased between 1997 and 1999 (Isaacs, 1999). As with Matrix, then, San Francisco Cares had greatly overstated the availability of services for dealing with entrenched social problems.

210   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity Furthermore, despite Brown’s backing of TOD, the Brown Administration and the SFPD continued to crack down on street-­level users and dealers with traditional drug war enforcement tactics. The following excerpts are from field notes taken in 1998: I accompanied the police on a routine visit of south-­of-Market residential hotels where they asked to view the registers of guests, looking for drug offenders who had recently been released from the county jail. After viewing the register in one hotel, we proceeded to one room where the police knocked and announced their presence. An emaciated young man came to the door. The officers next asked to enter the room and the man consented. The police asked questions about whether the man, and his girlfriend, who was also present in the room, were doing any dope. They said no, but then another officer discovered a suspicious rock-­like substance on a window landing. The man was arrested. At least one other hotel we visited that day ended in the same result. I am spending the afternoon with a group of plain clothes officers who are doing surveillance on a park in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood that is frequented by drug users and alcoholics. The officers are using high-­ powered binoculars with which to spy on individuals in a park from a window in the upper floors of a nearby residential hotel. They let me look through the binoculars to see two persons appearing to be lighting a joint of marijuana. After seeing this, the officers in the hotel relay down to the street officers that they should move in to make an arrest. Indeed, drug arrests intensified under the Brown Administration, with more recorded in 1998 than in any other year in the 1990s.35 The Campaign Against Drug Abuse The controversies over San Francisco Cares and the continuing use of drug enforcement crackdowns symbolized a continuing contradiction in San Francisco city government as this pertained to pursuing policies of public health and social outreach. This contradiction was sustained through the implementation of the Campaign Against Drug Abuse (CADA), a pre-­booking initiative designed to divert street addicts, especially heroin and methamphetamine users, into treatment. Initiated in 1998, CADA was devised not by top-­level planners in the mayor’s office but rather by an SFPD narcotics lieutenant named Robert Hernandez and his unit colleagues in cooperation with the federal government’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area initiative (HIDTA). CADA materials described the program as a “judicious, cost-­effective, and therapy-­based response” to San Francisco’s substance abuse problem allowing “law enforcement personnel to assist drug rehabilitation providers to accomplish the difficult task of motivating substance abusers to undertake and maintain a recovery program.” CADA was  called a “community-­oriented policing” program that pursued “demand

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   211 reduction” and “prevention” goals as these pertained to illicit drug use. CADA was also viewed as a way to advance San Francisco’s TOD policy by putting an end to the cycle of “arresting the same people over and over again” (Isaacs 1999, 8). Using funding from HIDTA to pay for overtime officers, including some from outside San Francisco looking for a training option, CADA operated only twice a month, conducting early morning enforcement sweeps of areas where street addicts were known to concentrate. Candidates for the program were arrested under California’s Health and Safety code section 11–5–50, a misdemeanor that prohibited using or being under the influence of a controlled substance (i.e., illegal drugs), and that could result in a jail sentence of 90 days to one year. Arrestees were taken to a police district station where they were assessed by officers to determine legal levels of intoxication (e.g., sounds of speech, appearance of eyes, etc.). If determined to be under the influence of drugs and otherwise eligible for diversion (e.g., free of felony warrants), they were offered transportation to the McMillan Center and assessment by Treatment Access Program (TAP) staff, ostensibly for entry into a treatment program. Huey (2007, 105–106) has called CADA an example of “coercive inclusion” in that arrests were used as a mechanism for diverting individuals to services. Huey also found that those picked up during CADA sweeps were told that they could either accompany officers to a treatment center or be “charged and potentially prosecuted.” Nevertheless, the timing of such threats was unclear, and the legal sanctions under CADA were murky. During my observation of the CADA process, arrestees cited with an 11–5–50 violation were still free to “walk” whether they agreed to diversion or not, pending a later court date. Even those agreeing to diversion might still face an 11–5–50 citation, but were told that seeking diversion would “help their case,” for example, having a controlled substance charge reduced to a lesser public intoxication offense. CADA officials also claimed that 11–5–50 violations were “usually thrown out” by the courts and in this way saw the entire citation process as more bluff than bite.36 Still, there was no guarantee of this, and those arrested under the CADA program might still find themselves facing some type of legal penalty such as a fine once they had their court date. The SFDPH was resistant to the CADA initiative, fearing that it would inundate the TAP with referrals (Isaacs 1999, 9). Some on the TOD Planning Council also rejected CADA on philosophical grounds, seeing it as reminiscent of Matrix and rejecting what they viewed as coercive tactics for getting individuals into treatment. There was also the view that if CADA was part of HIDTA then the federal government should reimburse San Francisco for any treatment resources spent on the program. All of this frustrated Hernandez and his colleagues, who anticipated that CADA would mean diverting street addicts by the “truckload.” Because of DPH resistance, however, CADA sweeps were limited to two a month, and sometimes less. “We had nowhere to take these people,” Hernandez complained, referring to those picked up during drug sweeps. The result was that by the end of its first year CADA could account for only four persons entering treatment as a result of the initiative.

212   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity Eventually Lieutenant Hernandez sought to circumvent TAP and the DPH altogether by turning to federal funds to pay for treatment. CADA attempted to contract with service providers on their own without going through CSAS. This included the use of public and private resources outside San Francisco where CADA officials were planning to divert arrestees for detoxification and treatment needs. For example, I observed a CADA “sting” in the city’s Mission District after which arrestees were taken to the SFPD’s Mission District Station. CADA had arranged for treatment providers and substance abuse counselors to be on hand, including one agency from San Mateo County, next to San Francisco, to assess arrestees and enroll them in rehabilitative programs. By 1999 public pressure was mounting on the Treatment on Demand Planning Council to more assertively reach out to its target population. Those seeking treatment, especially for residential services and methadone maintenance, were still being placed on waiting lists, and the Planning Council was accused of being too concerned with funding constituencies not directly concerned with drug treatment but rather related services concerned with assisting the homeless and other marginalized groups. CADA itself received a boost when a local journalist asked why it was that the DPH and the police were not doing more to cooperate to support treatment diversion (Isaacs 1999). Eventually, an accommodation was reached whereby TAP officials would be present at police stations after a CADA sweep to do screenings and set up follow-­up appointments. The DPH also assured CADA that their detainees would be able to access treatment resources through the CSAS, although they would not receive priority over other clients. This allowed the program to have more success, but only minimally. Huey (2007, 106) estimates that over a two-­year period only about 150 of 1,200 persons detained ever entered treatment. Proposition 36 and Beyond Robert Hernandez left the SFPD in 2003 and CADA went dormant as a result. It was reinvigorated for a short time in 2004, again featuring two sweeps per month and firmer linkages with TAP. However, the CADA program was obviated by the passage of Proposition 36, the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act of 2000 (SACPA). The SACPA mandated that all individuals arrested in California for a non-­violent drug possession offense (i.e., having small amounts of a controlled substance for personal use) be offered the option of community-­based treatment as an alternative to incarceration. Offenders successfully completing treatment could petition the court to have a conviction dismissed. The SACPA also contained provisions for greatly increasing California’s spending on substance abuse services leading to an “explosion” in available treatment slots and different types of therapies (Drug Policy Alliance 2006, 11; Hser et al. 2007). Proposition 36 led to sweeping changes in California’s drug control landscape. In 2000, only 104,657 persons in California were undergoing some kind of drug treatment but by 2004 this number had increased by 34 percent to 140,041. This compared to only a 4 percent increase in persons getting drug

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   213 treatment nationwide over the same period. The SACPA also led to a reduction in the number of California prison inmates doing time for drug possession offenses, declining 27 percent between 2000 and 2005, from 19,736 to 14,325. This corresponded with a reduction in the rate of drug possession offenders incarcerated over the same period, from 89 to 58 per 100,000 (Ehlers and Ziedenberg 2006, 16, 4–5). Still, the SACPA instituted a post-­booking model of intervention. Much like a drug court, one was “sentenced” to treatment after pleading guilty to a drug offense. Indeed, one could face jail time for refusing treatment and imprisonment was still an option should one violate the conditions of the diversion program (Drug Policy Alliance 2006). In this way, the SACPA would seem to have violated the “non-­judgmental” tenets of San Francisco’s TOD initiative. Indeed, the SACPA appeared to have the effect of shifting resources away from voluntary treatment resources, especially as this concerned opiate users, and undermining the goals of TOD (Hser et al. 2007). Nevertheless, the new treatment dollars coming from the State of California under the SACPA helped to close the substance abuse services deficits in San Francisco and so it was supported by both public health officials and the TOD Planning Council. Also, the SACPA was aimed at the user of hard-­core drugs such as heroin or methamphetamine and not at the marijuana user, for whom treatment activists did not endorse compulsory treatment. Most importantly for this analysis, the passage of Proposition 36 did not necessarily change policing attitudes toward drug users. “As officers see it,” Gardiner (2012, 283–286) found in her research on Orange County, CA, “addicts are criminals,” not because of their decision to take drugs but “because they commit other crimes to support their habit.” In this way, the SACPA offered a “get out of jail free card” to those involved in burglary, fraud and other predatory offenses, allowing them to enter community-­based treatment. Moreover, police argued that because possession offenses were relatively easy to prove in court they served as a useful tool for getting those individuals suspected of committing more serious offenses off the streets and into jail or prison. As the police saw it, the SACPA “nullified the very popular incapacitative function of a narcotics violation arrest,” and gave potentially dangerous offenders the option to take advantage of social services that they did not deserve. The police also criticized the SACPA for sending a message to the public that the possession of illicit substances, although still a felony in many cases, was not a serious offense. Consequently, Gardiner argues, police began arresting those found to be possessing illicit substances on related charges—such as driving without a license— to increase the chances of getting a judge to impose a jail sentence. Lynch and colleagues (2013, 335) also found that drug sweeps continued in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district even with the passage of the SACPA, used as a means of discovering other forms of criminality and enhancing police surveillance of the area. Drug enforcement in San Francisco also continued to be “racialized” to the extent that many of those stopped were disproportionately African-­American or Latino/a. “Buy and bust” operations too, including those involving marijuana

214   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity possession, continued in San Francisco after the passage of the SACPA if only as a means to enforce quality of life standards in upper middle and middle-­class neighborhoods (Roberts 2013a). Nevertheless, drug arrests in San Francisco declined by 75 percent between 2008 and 2013, a reduction that was largely attributed to a 2010 change in California law that made marijuana possession an infraction punishable only by the payment of a fine versus imprisonment (Roberts 2013b). Furthermore, Greg Suhr, San Francisco’s chief of police from 2011 to 2016 downsized the SFPD’s narcotics unit and made the enforcement of “low-­level, non-­violent drug offenses” a low priority. Suhr recognized a “push” across the city to get drug users into treatment and policy priorities that called for responding to “drugs” as a “public health issue and not a criminal issue.” Summary The SFPD was willing to engage in service outreach to socially marginalized citizens provided that this contained some element of coercion. Lynch and colleagues (2013, 341) have referred to this as a “tough love” model of policing outreach, where there is an attempt to “incentivize derelicts and petty criminals to take advantage of intervention services,” but where the penalty for doing so may be prosecution or other legal sanctions. The use of coercion as an element of policing outreach fit with the normative order of policing and the emphasis on order maintenance and crime-­fighting goals. However, the debacles of Matrix and San Francisco Cares shows that citizens may reject reintegrative efforts if these appear to be primarily about enforcement versus benevolence. San Francisco’s public health officials and activists did not want to involve the SFPD in helping to implement Treatment on Demand because they feared that its “non-­judgmental” foundations would be violated through the use of aggressive and coercive policing tactics. Eventually, a kind of forced alliance was made between CADA and the SFDPH as critics charged that the Treatment on Demand Planning Council was not doing enough to link citizens to treatment services. Still, CADA existed at the margins of the SFPD, and its efforts paled in comparison to the SFPD’s more traditional drug enforcement efforts during the 1990s that focused on arresting offenders—even those involved with low-­level possession and use—and putting them into the criminal justice system. However, changes in the law did have some impact on altering the normative order of drug enforcement in San Francisco. The SACPA resulted in the downsizing of the SFPD’s Narcotics Unit and the re-­orientation of enforcement priorities around trafficking versus use and possession offenses. Nevertheless, the SACPA is not a legalization measure, and research done since the passage of Proposition 36 shows that the police will continue to use aggressive drug enforcement measures, even for misdemeanors, if only as a tool for achieving broader crime control and order maintenance objectives.

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   215

Reintegrative Community Policing and the Policing Mission Community policing reforms in the three cities examined reflected dynamics of institutional selectivity whereby broken windows or environmental crime control agendas were prioritized over reintegrative outreach. Reintegrative policing methods either got “organized out” of the community policing agenda or were incorporated into a broken windows framework. The rejection of reintegrative outreach was especially notable as this concerned direct policing involvement with the service diversion process, with San Francisco’s CADA the exception. Still, CADA used some element of coercion—the use of arrests—to identify potential candidates and link them to services. The institutional selectivity noted in Norfolk, Baltimore, and San Francisco reflects broader contradictions in the community policing movement over the use of broken windows versus reintegrative models and their implications for community outcomes. For many American police departments, the adoption of broken windows crime control models, including the use of militaristic crime control strategies, is tantamount to community policing reform (Kraska 2007; Terrill and Mastrofski 2004). But such approaches have threatened to undermine the legitimacy of the community policing movement in the name of restoring community order. New York’s quality of life initiative evolved into a zero-­ tolerance program featuring the use of controversial “stop and frisk” tactics that unfairly targeted persons of color and socially marginalized populations (Goldstein 2013; Harcourt 2001; Greene 1999).37 Zero-­tolerance practices have been implicated in the deaths of Eric Garner in New York in 2014 (Baker et al. 2015), and as discussed above, Freddie Gray in Baltimore (Keller 2015). The research presented in this chapter shows that the institutional selectivity inherent to the community policing movement can be traced to a normative order of state structures and practice that stresses crime-­fighting and order maintenance as central technologies of control for managing social risk. Officers in Norfolk were told that community policing was about “PB&J,” or putting butts in jail, and not about making sure that “Johnny goes straight.” Such a viewpoint resonated with officers and their “taken-­for-granted” assumptions about what the police do (see Crank and Langworthy 1992). Quality of life and zero-­tolerance policing practices were also consistent with the procedural routines of policing patrol, e.g., writing citations for public order violations, responding to citizen complaints about deviant activities and looking out for perceived troublemakers that could up-­end community life. Officers also embraced environmental crime control strategies such as NEAT or those adopted under Baltimore’s CCP because these were viewed as effective drug enforcement tools, and therefore the proper purview of the police. Nuisance abatement procedures, although civil remedies, also fit with the officers’ bureaucratic orientation toward legal process through the use of formal complaints, court orders, and appearances in court. Despite the fact that American police spend much of their time engaged in community service activities, there has been longstanding institutional resistance within police organizations to formalizing such activities in ways that would

216   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity make them equal to crime-­fighting and order maintenance. Herbert (2006, 97–98) argues that policing subculture is characterized by central values of adventurousness and machismo and this means the rejection of any function defined as “social work.” Klinenberg (2015, 147) argues that involving the police in service outreach represents a problem of “organizational mismatch,” where social welfare protections are left to paramilitary organizations not designed to deliver them. Yet, politicians and community leaders continue to look to the police to solve social problems, including using them to respond to a variety of human crises on a 24-hour basis. In Chapter 5, I argued that policing reforms reflect a dialectic whereby social conflicts give rise to new ideas about how to regulate and engage urban communities. The Black Lives Matter movement, mobilizations against zero-­tolerance law enforcement tactics, and a backlash to “militarized” policing methods have all culminated in a reset in the community policing movement that has reinvoked the need for liberal approaches (President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing 2015; Balko 2013). In its review of racial bias in the Ferguson, MO police department after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-­American teen, the U.S. Department of Justice (2015, 90) argued that community policing methods should be employed to ease strained community relations and reform crime prevention practices. After investigating a string of fatal police shootings of persons of color in Chicago between 2008 and 2016, the  independent Police Accountability Task Force (2016, 53) called on the  Chicago Police Department to adopt community policing as a “core philosophy” that could be “infused throughout the culture and organizational structure” of the entire agency. Community policing, the Task Force argued, could help rebuild trust in law enforcement and also help prevent deadly police–citizen encounters. The new enthusiasm for a community policing agenda has a decidedly reintegrative thrust. The Obama Administration has called Seattle’s LEAD initiative a community policing “best practice” because of its emphasis on treatment outreach as a way to offset the racial disparities and “mass incarceration” associated with America’s drug war.38 LEAD has now expanded to other American cities (Emshwiller and Fields 2015). As noted earlier, Baltimore, too, has also begun implementing a version of LEAD with the dual objectives of dealing with the city’s ongoing heroin addiction problem and defusing the community tensions resulting from the Freddie Gray incident. A number of cities have also initiated the “Angel” program, first developed in Gloucester, MA, where police officers work with local volunteers to divert to detoxification services any addicts that present themselves at a police station and voluntarily ask for help (Seelye 2016). I have argued in this book that the police officer’s community service role should be viewed not simply as benevolence but about social control—what Foucault (1991, 87) called “governmentality,” or the ways by which modern social institutions attempt to manage and discipline social and individual conduct (also see Rose 1993; Rose and Miller 1992). The main distinction between

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   217 broken windows and reintegrative policing, then, has primarily to do with the technologies of power that they employ to regulate community life. Whereas broken windows policing promotes blunt exclusionary measures aimed at those groups or behaviors seen as threatening to social order, reintegrative policing emphasizes the use of “bio-­political” measures, such as treatment diversion, as a way to regulate the “habits” of deviant populations and normalize them into the flow of conventional life (Hewitt 1991, 238; Bunton 2001, 235). Reintegrative models also contain within them dynamics of institutional selectivity distinguished by the use of more-­or-less coercive tactics. Pre-­booking programs such as CADA and Seattle’s LEAD represent more coercive approaches because treatment diversion is offered at the point of arrest. Less coercive approaches to reintegrative policing cast the officer as a source of treatment referral in the pre-­ arrest context or as a figure in community-­building, involved in community crime prevention programs or supporting the availability of remedial services, including harm reduction resources or other social supports for drug users. The police will be more willing, I argue, to adopt pre-­booking models of treatment diversion because these are more in line with the normative order of the policing mission. Similar to pluralized approaches used in Europe, there is an attempt to merge objectives of treatment outreach, harm reduction. and enforcement, e.g., through what Kubler and Walti (2001, 50) have labeled a “social public-­order regime.” Pre-­booking programs also tend to use some formalized assessment to weed out more serious offenders or those that may not be “amenable” to treatment (Beckett 2014, 9). This heightened level of scrutiny, however, also means that pre-­booking initiatives are likely to have a more detrimental impact on drug users, street addicts and other socially marginalized groups compared with pre-­arrest interventions. Although designed to keep offenders out of jail in the immediate sense, the use of arrests as a “stick” to convince users to seek treatment under pre-booking formulas can still have legal consequences. Under CADA, those agreeing to diversion still faced the possibility of a public intoxication charge. Under Seattle’s LEAD initiative, those agreeing to treatment diversion still have their arrest citations sent to prosecutors, although there is a “presumption” that charges will not be filed (Beckett 2014, 10). Pre-­booking regimes do not guarantee, therefore, that a low-­level drug offender will avoid some legal sanction for illegal use, if only a fine for a public order offense. Even the imposition of a fine, however, can land someone in jail if they are unable to pay their debt (Subramanian et al. 2015). Beckett (2014, 13) also notes that while participants in LEAD were not to face punitive sanctions for “non-­ compliance” with program protocols, they could face charges for “past crimes” or crimes committed while in LEAD. Pre-­booking interventions also have the potential for creating what Spooner et al. (2001, 283) have referred to as a “net widening” problem where suspected drug users, often viewed as young, low-­ income or persons of color, are targeted with arrests—albeit in the interest of linking them to services. There is also the question of whether pre-­booking interventions are tantamount to compulsory treatment if an arrestee’s only choice under a pre-­booking initiative is treatment versus being taken to jail.

218   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity Less coercive outreach measures carried out in the pre-­arrest context, ostensibly without the threat of arrest or other forms of police scrutiny, would appear to be more consistent with objectives of pure benevolence on the part of government, as well as with the more libertarian aspects of a harm reduction mode that rejects the use of any criminal justice interventions for restricting the freedom to use an intoxicating substance (O’Malley and Mugford 1991). As with pre-­ booking programs, however, pre-­arrest initiatives may heighten the likelihood that a drug user will face arrest simply by coming into contact with the police, especially if officers discover outstanding warrants.39 But more than this, my research suggests that there will be more police resistance to pre-­arrest measures without corresponding legal changes or organizational sanctions. In Baltimore, officers refrained from arresting clients of the city’s NEP (needle-­exchange program) only when it was legalized by the Maryland legislature. Similarly, it took the passage of Proposition 36 and the decriminalization of marijuana offenses in California to bring about a significant reduction in the persons arrested on minor drug offenses in San Francisco. Still, “laws on the books” do not always translate into “law in action.” Police have continued to hassle drug users and street addicts in California even with the passage of the SACPA if only as a way to impose order maintenance objectives or to discover and make arrests for other crimes. During my research in Baltimore during the 1990s outreach workers and addicts complained to me that some police officers still confiscated or destroyed syringes that were part of the city’s legalized NEP, a situation that continues to occur according to research by Beletsky and colleagues (2015). Understanding what Schneider and Ingram (1993) have called the “social construction” of target populations is therefore an additional variable to consider for understanding the extent to which law enforcement agencies are willing to adopt reintegrative community policing measures, whether in the pre-­arrest or post-­booking context. Huey (2007, 112) shows that the police are more likely to engage in social outreach when it involves citizens that they perceive as “morally worthy.” The proliferation of crisis intervention teams (CITs) in the United States, I argue, has largely to do with their being directed at mentally ill populations who are viewed as suffering from biological or psychological maladies beyond their control—and therefore deserving service diversion. The opposite is true of drug addicts, who are more likely to be viewed as exercising rational choice over their decision to use intoxicating substances, more intrinsically threatening to the community, and therefore less deserving of officer or governmental assistance (Wood et al. 2013). This may help to explain why there is some reluctance among officers to support pre-­arrest/booking treatment diversion for mentally ill offenders if they are found to have a co-­occurring drug problem (see discussion above). It is important to remember, however, that the CIT model emerged out of a  history of acrimonious and sometimes deadly encounters between the police and the mentally ill. As with other socially marginalized populations, the police have also “maintained negative attitudes” toward the mentally ill, a situation

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   219 mitigated only through the use of assertive training programs (Hartford et al. 2006, 849). In their work on Australian drug policy reforms, Spooner et al. (2004, 10) have argued that the police can also be trained to positively engage psychoactive drug users for purposes of doing reintegrative outreach. This includes teaching officers about the social and psychological dimensions of use and addiction, about the nature of treatment services and their importance in deterring use, and about the need to engender a “less blaming” attitude toward substance abusers. Although training is important, it alone will not erase the institutional barriers associated with reintegrative community policing models. The community policing movement cast the officer as a primary catalyst in mobilizing community resources to address social and individual needs. However, it is often outside agencies that have taken the lead in assuring policing reform. Although policing leaders are now active in developing and promoting CIT programs, the CIT concept was first devised by the National Association for the Mentally Ill with some initial resistance from law enforcement (Dupont and Cochran 2002). Beckett (2014) has argued that successful treatment diversion programs depend on willing cooperation among criminal justice, social service and other community actors. Such inter-­organizational collaborations were lacking in outreach efforts in all three of the cities examined in this chapter; policing officials were reluctant to take the lead in outreach efforts, and social service providers were reluctant to involve themselves with the police. There also remains the problem of community policing reforms having limited impact on structural change in police organizations, especially as this concerns citizen engagement, service outreach, and implementing initiatives that permeate the whole of a department beyond specialized officers or units (Mastrofski 2006; Greene 2004; Maguire et al. 2003). The Chicago Police Department has been criticized for allowing its once celebrated Community Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) to become a “small, underfunded program,” having little impact on maintaining positive community relations (Police Accountability Task Force 2016, 53). CADA existed at the fringes of the San Francisco Police Department, operated only a few times a month, and relied not on regularly assigned beat officers but rather those looking for a chance to work overtime or who were interested in a training detail. CIT training remains limited to only a select number of officers and departments nationwide, a situation blamed both on cost and the belief among some police executives that it is unnecessary to teach crisis intervention techniques to all officers (Pauly 2013). CIT units have also been cut in some major departments, with deadly consequences, as in Chicago when a mentally ill man wielding a baseball bat was shot by an officer untrained in crisis intervention methods (Lee 2016). LEAD programs, too, rely on specially trained officers for purposes of diversion. Furthermore, the “nuts and bolts” of linking citizens to services is done not by the police but by dedicated case managers from the drug treatment sector (Beckett 2014). It is therefore apparent that law enforcement agencies are reluctant to make reintegrative policing part of the daily routine of all patrol officers. Finally, there remains the problem of funding. The service

220   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity outreach aspects of PACE were largely financed under the federal Innovative Neighborhood Oriented Policing (INOP) program. Federal dollars also helped to pay for foot patrol under CCP and CADA in San Francisco. The expansion of LEAD initiatives in some communities has been promoted through foundation funding.40 Once outside funding dries up, however, local policing agencies appear less willing to support service outreach. What all of this suggests is that the implementation of reintegrative policing models will depend on forces outside law enforcement who want them to exist, on the willingness of human service agencies to actively partner or take the lead in social outreach efforts, and on the willingness of American police departments to embrace social service outreach and engagement as useful strategies in the prevention of crime and social disorder. Furthermore, reintegrative policing models must be able to retain political legitimacy. Social welfare interventions may be resisted by citizens if they are construed as a form of bio-­political control. This was the case in San Francisco where activists resisted using the police for any kind of drug treatment outreach. Moreover, in this era of legalizing marijuana, it is more likely that psychoactive drug use will be claimed as a social right. Local governments therefore continue to face the challenges of regulating drug use and its deleterious effects. Reintegrative policing models will therefore become even more important in the United States as city leaders experiment with the decriminalization of drug possession and use offenses, and as citizens demand less repressive approaches to policing practice.

Notes   1 My use of the term reintegrative is derived from Braithwaite’s concept of “reintegrative shaming,” which de-­emphasizes the use of imprisonment as a method of corrections in favor of community-­based options. Braithwaite (1989, 12–14) argues that imprisonment ultimately stigmatizes offenders and imposes a “deviant master status” that draws individuals into criminal subcultures. Braithwaite argues that shaming is necessary but must be done “through words or gestures of forgiveness or ceremonies to decertify the offender as deviant” (Braithwaite 1989, 100–101). Concurring with control theorists, however, Braithwaite argues that effective crime prevention can only be achieved through conformity to conventional social attachments and commitments (e.g., family, work, and school). This can be achieved by fostering “communitarian” values where “individuals are deeply enmeshed in interdependencies which have the special qualities of mutual help and trust.” Rehabilitation services, especially in lieu of incarceration, represent such values.   2 See Mike Lofts, Cheshire Drug Squad, “Policing the Cheshire Drug Treatment Program: The Cheshire Experience.” Presentation given at the Conference on the Swiss Project on the Medical Prescription of Narcotics, Swiss Public Health Service, Thun, Switzerland, N.D. The author also personally interviewed Inspector Lofts during a visit to Cheshire and spent two days on ride-­alongs with him in 1996.   3 Seattle Police Department: “SPD Blotter: Seattle Crime News.” Accessed April 1, 2016 from spdblotter.seattle.gov/2015/04/08/study-­innovative-seattleking-­countydiversion-­program-shows-­success/   4 See “Chief Rehab.”Aired June 2, 2016 on On Assignment, NBC News. Reported by Josh Mankiewicz. Available at www.nbcnews.com/feature/on-­assignment/assignment­chief-rehab-­n575751

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   221   5 Normative order is defined as the interplay between bureaucratic structures and procedures, agency subcultures, and the cognitive orientations of state actors (see Chapter 2).   6 U.S. Census of the Population, 1990. Volume 1, Part 2, Issue 6, Table 57. Also U.S. Census of the Population and Housing,1990, Parts 47–49, Table 22.   7 Information on the Mayor’s Task Force on Drugs and Community Drug Control Master Plan taken from an interview with George Crawley and the written text of a speech he gave to the Governor’s Crime Prevention Recognition Luncheon, Richmond, VA, 1992, reported in Crime Prevention (Winter, 1992).   8 From Norfolk Police Department Annual Report 1994.   9 Also see “Mayor’s Substance Abuse Initiative,” November, 1997 and BSAS program description (internal documents). 10 See Reaves and Hickman (2002). 11 Commissioner Beilenson attributed a decline in the prevalence of drug abuse in Baltimore to its NEP. See “Harm Reduction or Harm Maintenance: Is There Such a Thing as Safe Drug Abuse?” Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources of the Committee on Government Reform. House of Representatives, One Hundred and Ninth Congress, First Session, February 16, 2005. 12 I observed the mobile vans in operation on two occasions at different sites and spoke with health workers. I also rode with officers that would be watching the vans and those lining up for services. 13 Written Testimony of Dr. Peter Beilenson, Baltimore City Health Commissioner, to the Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs and Criminal Justice, Congress of the United States, September 18, 1997, p. 2. 14 Roth and Kelling (1998) mention only five core neighborhoods including Historic East Baltimore. There were also additional “apprentice” neighborhoods associated with the CCP, whose residents participated in training and planning sessions. 15 Comprehensive Communities Program (CCP) and Baltimore City Hotspots Communities Initiative, City of Baltimore Mayor’s Coordinating Council on Criminal Justice, Internal Document, p. 1. 16 CCP and Baltimore City Hotspots Communities Initiative, p. 3. 17 Some of these officers were also paid for through the federal Community Empowerment Zone initiative, whose boundaries sometimes overlapped with CCP districts. 18 CCP and Baltimore City Hotspots Communities Initiative, p. 5. 19 Baltimore’s decreases could also be partially explained by a 12 percent reduction in the city’s population between 1990 and 2000. 20 “Maryland Hotspot Communities.” An Initiative of the Cabinet Council on Criminal and Juvenile Justice. Governor Parris Glendening, Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Chair. 21 See Profile of Baltimore Comprehensive Communities Program by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Available at www.ojjdp.gov/pubs/gun_ violence/profile01.html 22 There were only 16,024 violent crimes in Baltimore in 1999, down from 17,416 in 1997. However, homicide rates stayed the same at 312 in 1997 and 1999. See the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports for 1997 and 1999. 23 Norris was actually O’Malley’s second commissioner. His first, Ron Daniel, had resigned after only 57 days in office. 24 O’Malley also implemented a public awareness campaign called “Baltimore BELIEVE” that encouraged residents to “rise up” and “cure this drug infection that holds the city hostage through addiction and fear” (Linder and Associates 2002, 1). 25 Norris had officially resigned in 2002 to become commander of the Maryland State Police, although under the cloud that he was misappropriating BPD funds for personal use—activities for which he was later convicted. See Gibson and Wilbur (2004). 26 Blogpost for the Baltimore Sun by Peter Hermann, “Baltimore Police PAL Cuts.”

222   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity 27 Substance Abuse Treatment on Demand: First Steps and Summary of Recommendations. Community Substance Abuse Services, San Francisco Department of Public Health, May, 1997, p. 2. 28 Substance Abuse Treatment on Demand: First Steps and Summary of Recom­menda­ tions, p. 2. 29 See Policing With Our Community, 1998–2003, Abridged Strategic Plan Goals and Objectives, San Francisco Police Department, Fred Lau, Chief of Police. 30 “San Francisco Police Department Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving: Neighborhood Strategies 1998–2003.” San Francisco Police Department, Internal Document. Also Policing With Our Community, 1998–2003, Abridged Strategic Plan Goals and Objectives, San Francisco Police Department, Fred Lau, Chief of Police. 31 “San Francisco Mayor Ousts Homeless Camp,” by Associated Press for the New York Times, July 6, 1990. Accessed August 15, 2015 from www.nytimes.com/1990/07/06/ us/san-­francisco-s-­mayor-ousts-­homeless-camp.html 32 Specifically, the lieutenant worked with activist Brenda Hotaling of “SAGE” (Standing Against Global Exploitation), an advocacy organization working on behalf of sex workers. 33 “City Attorney’s Ill-­Informed and Unworkable Infraction Prosecution Program Targeting Homeless People,” Media Advisory distributed by the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco. January, 2000. 34 647(f ) PC “Hold For Court Arrest Policy and Procedure,” San Francisco Police Department, Order 98–07, Revised November 6, 1998. 35 “Drug Arrests in California, 1990–1999,” California Department of Attorney General, Appendix, p.  32. Accessed August 15, 2015 from http://ag.ca.gov/cjsc/publications/ misc/drugarrests/drugs3.pdf 36 A charge of intoxication on a controlled substance was difficult to prove in court. Short of a confession, the police required medical evidence (i.e., the presence of certain drugs in the blood) that was considered too expensive for the police to obtain in misdemeanor cases. 37 Goldstein (2013) reports that a federal judge found that persons of color accounted for 83 percent of those stopped and frisked by New York City’s police between 2004 and 2012. In only 6 percent of these stops did the police find evidence of more serious crime. 38 See “LEAD-­ing the Way to a More Efficient Criminal Justice System.” July 2, 2015. White House press release available at www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/07/02/­ leading-way-­more-efficient-­criminal-justice-­system 39 “Facing Opioid Abuse in Escanaba, Police Try Rehab Approach.” As heard on June 14, 2016 on Stateside, WUOM Radio, Ann Arbor. Accessed June 15, 2016 from http://michiganradio.org/post/stateside-­6142016 40 The Open Society Institute announced in December of 2015 that they were awarding grants to seven cities, including Los Angeles and Atlanta, to develop pre-­booking diversion programs explicitly for low-­level drug offenders. See www.opensocietyfoundations.org/press-­releases/open-­society-foundations-­announce-new-­investmentsinnovative-­drug-policy

References Aaronson, David, C. Thomas Dienes, and Michael Musheno. 1977. “Changing the Public Drunkenness Laws: The Impact of Decriminalization.” Law and Society Review 12: 405–436. Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. 1994. Drug Misusers and the Criminal Justice System, Part II: Police, Drug Misusers and the Community. London: British Home Office.

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   223 AIDS Information Exchange. 1994. “Initiating Needle-­Exchange Programs: A Look at Two Communities.” The United States Conference of Mayors. Aids Information Exchange 11: 7. Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow. New York: The New Press. Baker, Al, J. David Goodman, and Benjamin Mueller. 2015. “Beyond the Chokehold: The Unexplored Path to Eric Garner’s Death.” New York Times, Sunday, June 14: 1, 26, 27. Balko, Radley. 2013. Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces. Philadelphia, PA: Public Affairs Books. Baltimore, City of. 1993. Mayor’s Working Group on Drug Policy Reform. City of Baltimore, MD: Kurt Schmoke, Mayor. Baltimore Sun. 1999a. “Drug Addiction Fuels Murderous Trend.” Editorial, 27 June. Accessed September 23, 1999 from http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-06-27/ news/9906290299_1_drug-­treatment-schmoke-­drug-courts Baltimore Sun. 1999b. “How the Safety Net Fails Addicts—and City; Drugs, Crime: Linked Ills Fester as Baltimore Spends Millions on Inefficient Treatment.” Editorial, June 28. Accessed September 23, 1999 from http://articles.baltimoresun.com/ 1999–06–28/news/9906290293_1_baltimore-­substance-abuse-­systems-methadone-­ program-addicts Baltimore Sun. 1997. “Probation Program Abused.” Editorial, August 17: 2F. Baltimore Sun. 1996. “Finally, violent crime rate drops. Good news: For a while it looked as if Baltimore wouldn’t follow national trend.” Editorial, December 7. Accessed December 4, 2015 from http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996–12–07/news/19963420 26_1_drug-­addicts-violent-­crime-rate-­major-crime Bass, Sandra. 2001. “Policing Space, Policing Race: Social Control Imperatives and Discretionary Decisions.” Social Justice 28: 156–176. Beckett, Katherine. 2014. Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Program: Lessons Learned from the First Two Years. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Law, Societies and Justice Program and Department of Sociology. Beckett, Katherine and Steve Herbert, 2008. “Dealing with Disorder: Social Control In the Post-­Industrial City.” Theoretical Criminology 12: 5–30. Beilenson, Peter. 1999. “City Successes on Drug Treatment are Overlooked.” Editorial, Baltimore Sun, July 5. Accessed December 3, 2015 from http://articles.baltimoresun. com/1999–07–05/news/9907030339_1_drug-­treatment-substance-­abuse-treatment-­ slots Beilenson, Peter, Carl Stokes, and Thomas Frazier. 1998. “For Baltimore, It Will Take a Village.” The Baltimore Sun, July 22. Accessed November 21, 2015 from http:// articles.baltimoresun.com/1998–07–22/news/1998203036_1_children-­village-parents-­ village-program Belenko, Stephen. 2000. The Challenges of Integrating Drug Treatment into the Criminal Justice Process. Albany Law Review 63: 833. Beletsky, Leo, Jess Cochrane, Anne Sawyer, Chris Serio-­Chapman, Marina Smelyanskaya, Jennifer Han, Natanya Robinowitz, and Susan Sherman. 2015. “Police Encounters Among Needle-­Exchange Clients in Baltimore: Drug Enforcement as a Structural Determinant of Health.” American Journal of Public Health 105: 1872–1879. Binder, Arnold, and Gilbert Geis. (1984). “Ad Populum Argumentation in Criminology: Juvenile Diversion as Rhetoric.” Crime and Delinquency 30: 624–647. Bittner, Egon. 1967. “The Police on Skid Row: A Study of Peacekeeping.” American Sociological Review 32: 699–715.

224   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity Bluthenthal, Ricky, Alex Kral, Jennifer Lorvick, and John Waters. 1997. “Impact of Law Enforcement on Syringe Exchange Programs: A Look at Oakland and San Francisco.” Medical Anthropology 18: 61–83. Bok, Marcia. 1998. “Harm Reduction: Dealing Differently with Drugs.” Journal of Progressive Human Services 9: 3–21. Bor, Jonathan. 1999. “Needle Program No Spur to Crime.” Baltimore Sun, March 30. Accessed November 25, 2015 from http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-03-30/ news/9903300196_1_clean-­needles-needle-­program-needle-­exchange Braithwaite, John. 1989. Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bratton, William. J. 1996. “Cutting Crime and Restoring Order: What America Can Learn from New York’s Finest.” The Heritage Foundation. Accessed September 15, 2015 from www.heritage.org/research/lecture/hl573nbsp-cutting-­crime-and-­restoring-order\ Broadhead, Robert S., and Eric Margolis. 1993. “Drug Policy in the Time of AIDS: The Development of Outreach in San Francisco.” The Sociological Quarterly 34: 497–522. Broner, Nahama, Randy Borum, and Kristen Gawley. 2002. “Criminal Justice Diversion of Individuals with Co-­Occurring Mental Illness and Substance Abuse Disorders.” In Serving Mentally Ill Offenders, 83–106, edited by Gerald Landsberg, Marjorie Rock, Lawrence Berg, and Amy Smiley. New York: Springer. Brown, Larry W. 1995. “Not All Hail Community Policing.” The Virginian-­Pilot, April 2: A1. Bunton, Robin. 2001. “Knowledge, Embodiment and Neo-­Liberal Drug Policy.” Contemporary Drug Problems 28: 221–245. Caulkins, Jonathan and Peter Reuter. 1997. “Setting Goals for Drug Policy: Harm Reduction or Use Reduction,” Addiction 92: 1143–1150. Conklin, John. 2003. Why Crime Rates Fell. New York: Allyn and Bacon. Cooper, Hannah, Lisa Moore, Sophia Gruskin, and Nancy Krieger. 2005. “The Impact of a Police Crackdown on Drug Injectors’ Ability to Practice Harm Reduction: A Qualitative Study.” Social Science and Medicine 61: 673–684. Cooper, Hannah, Lisa Moore, Sophia Gruskin, and Nancy Krieger. 2004. “Characterizing Perceived Police Violence: Implications for Public Health.” American Journal of Public Health 94: 1109–1118. Craig, Tim, 2000. “Reverse Drug Sting Nets 240 Suspects In City.” Baltimore Sun, February 15. Accessed August 26, 2005 from http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2000-02-15/ news/0002150151_1_sting-­drug-baltimore-­police Craig, Tim. 1999. “Baltimore Health Chief Proposes an Overhaul of Drug Treatment.” Baltimore Sun, August 19. Accessed September 23, 1999 from http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-08-19/news/9908190094_1_drug-­t reatment-treatment-­s ystemtreatment-­option Crank, John P. 1994. “Watchman and Community: Myth and Institutionalization in Policing.” Law and Society Review 28: 325–352. Crank, John P. and Robert Langworthy. 1992. “An Institutional Perspective of Policing.” The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 83: 338–363. Cronin, Roberta. 1994. Innovative Community Partnerships: Working Together For Change. Washington, DC: Office for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Dept of Justice. Dao, James and Gary Gately. 2005. “Police Chief Sees Drug Tolls With Father’s Eyes.” New York Times, August 24. Accessed October 22, 2007 from www.nytimes. com/2005/08/24/us/police-­chief-sees-­drug-toll-­with-fathers-­eyes.html

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   225 Dean, Charles W., Richard Lumb, Kevin Proctor, James Klopovic, Amy Hyatt, and Rob Hamby. 2000. Social Work and Police Partnerships: A Summons to the Village Strategies and Effective Practices. Charlotte, NC: University of North Carolina Department of Crime Control and Public Safety, State of North Carolina. DeLeon, Richard. 1992. Left Coast City: Progressive Politics in San Francisco, 1975–1991. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. Des Jarlais, Don. 1995. Editorial: “Harm Reduction—A Framework for Incorporating Science Into Drug Policy,” American Journal of Public Health 85: 10–11. Drug Policy Alliance. 2006. Proposition 36: Improving Lives, Delivering Results. New York: The Drug Policy Alliance. Duncan, David, Thomas Nicholson, Patrick Clifford, Wesley Hawkins, and Rick Petosa. 1994. “Harm Reduction: An Emerging New Paradigm for Drug Education.” Journal of Drug Education 24: 281–290. Dupont, Randolph Y., and Charles S. Cochran. 2002. “The Memphis CIT Model.” In Serving Mentally Ill Offenders, 59–69, edited by G. Landsberg, M. Rock, L. Berg, and A. Smiley. New York: Springer. Dwyer, Jim. 2008. “Closing Family Lifeline That Won Drug Battles.” New York Times, November 25. Accessed July 15, 2015 from www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/nyregion/ 26about.html?_r0 Eck, John. 1990. “A Realistic Approach to Controlling Drug Harms.” Public Management 72: 7–12. Eck, John, and William Spelman. 1987. “Who Ya Gonna Call? The Police as Problem-­ Busters.” Crime and Delinquency 33: 31–52. Ehlers, Scott, and Jeffrey Ziedenberg. 2006. Proposition 36: Five Years Later. Washington, DC: Justice Policy Institute. Emshwiller, John, and Gary Fields. 2015. “Seattle LEAD Program to Keep Offenders Out of Jail Draws Nationwide Interest.” Wall Street Journal, July 20. Accessed May 23, 2016 from www.wsj.com/articles/seattle-­lead-program-­to-keep-­offenders-out-­of-jail-­ draws-nationwide-­interest-1437434693 Fenton, Justin. 2011. “With fewer arrests in Baltimore, fewer cases that don’t stick.” Baltimore Sun, July 3. Accessed December 9, 2015 from http://articles.baltimoresun. com/2011-07-03/news/bs-­md-ci-­released-without-­charges-20110703_1_fewer-­arrestsdrug-­dealers-city-­police/2 Fenton, Justin. 2010. “City Approves Settlement With NAACP, ACLU in ‘Mass Arrest’ Case.” Baltimore Sun, June 23. Accessed August 11, 2015 from http://articles.­ baltimoresun.com/2010-06-23/news/bal-­naacp-settlement-­0623_1_arrests-­by-city-­ police-zero-­tolerance-naacp-­and-aclu Foucault, Michel. 1991. “Governmentality.” In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, 87–104, edited by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Franz, Stephanie, and Randy Borum. 2010. “Crisis Intervention Teams May Prevent Arrests of People With Mental Illnesses.” Police Practice and Research 12: 1–8. Gardiner, Christine. 2012. “ ‘An Absolute Revolving Door’: An Evaluation of Police Perception and Response to Proposition 36.” Criminal Justice Policy Review 23: 275–303. Gardner, Anthony, and Peter Lindstrom. 1997. “Police on the Homeless Front Line: A Postmortem of San Francisco’s Matrix Program.” In The Police and the Homeless, 98–117, edited by Martin L. Forst. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

226   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity Gibson, Gail, and Del Quentin Wilber. 2004. “Norris Enters Plea of Guilty to Corruption.” Baltimore Sun, March 9. Accessed January 15, 2016 from www.baltimoresun. com/bal-­te.md.norris09mar09-story.html Goetz, Barry, and Roger Mitchell. 2006. “Pre-­Arrest/Booking Drug Control Strategies: Diversion to Treatment, Harm Reduction, and Police Involvement.” Contemporary Drug Problems 33: 473–520. Goldstein, Herman. 1977. Policing a Free Society. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. Goldstein, Joseph. 2013. “Judge Rejects New York’s ‘Stop and Frisk’ Policy.” New York Times, August 12. Accessed January 7, 2016 from www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/ nyregion/stop-­and-frisk-­practice-violated-­rights-judge-­rules.html?_r0 Goodman, J. David, and Anemona Hartocollis. 2014. “Anti-­Overdose Drug Becoming an  Everyday Part of Police Work.” New York Times, June 12. Accessed March 11, 2016 from www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/nyregion/anti-­overdose-drug-­becoming-an-­ everyday-part-­of-police-­work.html Green, Lorraine A. 1995. Policing Places with Drug Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Greene, Jack. 2004. “Community Policing and Police Organization.” In Community Policing (Can it Work?), 30–53, edited by Wesley Skogan. Belmont, CA: Thomson-­ Wadsworth. Greene, Judith. 1999. “Zero-­Tolerance: A Case Study of Policing Policies and Practices in New York City.” Crime and Delinquency 45: 171–187. Guarino-­Ghezzi, Susan. 1994. “Reintegrative Police Surveillance of Juvenile Offenders: Forging An Urban Model.” Crime and Delinquency 40: 131–153. Guydish, Joseph, James Sorensen, Alice Gleghorn, James Kahn, and Lisa Moore. 1999. Treatment on Demand in San Francisco. San Francisco, CA: Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, and San Francisco Department of Public Health Community Substance Abuse Services. Guydish, Joseph, Lisa Moore, Alice Gleghorn, Thomas Davis, Clare Sears, and John Harcourt. 2000. “Treatment on Demand in San Francisco: Preliminary Findings.” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 32: 363–370. Harcourt, Bernard E. 2001. Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hartford, Kathleen, Robert Carey, and James Mendonca. 2006. “Pre-­arrest Diversion of People with Mental Illness: Literature Review and International Survey.” Behavioral Sciences and Law 24: 845–856. Hartmann, Chester. 2002. City for Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hellawell, Keith. 1995. “The Role of Law Enforcement in Minimizing the Harm Resulting From Illicit Drugs.” Drug and Alcohol Review 14: 317–322. Herbert, Steven. 2006. Citizens, Cops and Power: Recognizing the Limits of Community. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hermann, Peter. 2000. “Wanted: Less Social Work, More Enforcement; ‘I’d Like for Us to Be the Police Again’ Says Commissioner.” Baltimore Sun, April 20. Accessed December 5, 2015 from http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2000–04–20/news/0004210 341_1_norris-­police-commissioner-­crime-plan Hermann, Peter. 1996a. “Dutch Police Walk Beat With Baltimore Officers.” Baltimore Sun, June 24. Accessed September 26, 1998 from http://articles.baltimoresun.com/ 1996–06–24/news/1996176064_1_rotterdam-­netherlands-baltimore-­police

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   227 Hermann, Peter. 1996b. “Dutch Police Teach City Officers.” Baltimore Sun, March 10. Accessed September 26, 1998 from http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-03-10/ news/1996070163_1_rotterdam-­ormrod-netherlands Hermann, Peter. 1996c. “Baltimore Police Check Out Dutch Drug Policies.” Baltimore Sun, March 21. Accessed September 26, 1998 from http://articles.baltimoresun. com/1996-03-21/news/1996081069_1_crack-­cocaine-rotterdam-­jenssen Hermann, Peter. 1995. “Morale Issues Lurk Behind City Police Chief ’s Successes.” Baltimore Sun, February 12. Accessed September 26, 1998 from http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-02-12/news/1995043006_1_frazier-­baltimore-police-­commissioner Hermann, Peter, and Sheila Hotchkin. 1998. “Youths Have a ‘PAL’ in Sports Centers.” Baltimore Sun, April 16: B1, B6. Hewitt, Martin. 1991. “Bio-­Politics and Social Policy: Foucault’s Account of Welfare.” In The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, 225–255, edited by Mike Featherstone, Mike Hepworth, and Bryan Turner. London: Sage. Hixenbaugh, Mike. 2011. “Homicide Rate in South Hampton Roads is Cut in Half.” Virginian-­Pilot, November 21. Accessed March 11, 2016 from http://pilotonline.com/ news/local/crime/homicide-­r ate-in-­s outh-hampton-­r oads-is-­c ut-in-­h alf/article_ b7c061e6–5b5f-582e-8b18-bdb76dc82b5a.html Hser, Yih-­Ing, Cheryl Teruda, Alison Brown, David Huang, Elizabeth Evans, and Douglas Anglin. 2007. “Impact of California’s Proposition 36 on the Drug Treatment System Capacity and Displacement.” American Journal of Public Health 97: 104–109. Accessed January 4, 2016 from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1716257/ pdf/0970104.pdf Huey, Laura. 2007. Negotiating Demands: The Politics of Skid-­Row Policing in Edinburgh, San Francisco and Vancouver. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Hunter, Gillian, Tim McSweeney, and Paul Turnbull. 2005. “The Introduction of Drug Arrest Referral Schemes in London: A Partnership Between Drug Services and the Police.” International Journal of Drug Policy 16: 343–352. Isaacs, Matt. 1999. “Broken Fix.” San Francisco Weekly, December 22. Accessed June 6, 2001 from www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/broken-­fix/Content?oid2137665 Jackson, Joe. 1991. “Tension High in Diggs Town Drug Fight: Police Harassment is Alleged.” By Joe Jackson, Virginian-­Pilot, May 10: D1. James, Michael, and Harold Jackson. 1994. “46 Slayings in 41 Days Push Homicide Rate Up.” Baltimore Sun, November 1. Accessed November 25, 2015 from http://articles. baltimoresun.com/1994-11-11/news/1994315031_1_eastern-­district-homicide-­ratepolice-­report Johnson, Jeannette, Ashraf Ahmed, Bradford Plemons, Walter Powell, Hugh Carrington, James Graham, Robert Hill, Robert Schwartz, and Robert Brooner. 2002. Steps To Success: Baltimore Drug and Alcohol Treatment Outcomes Study. Baltimore, MD: Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems, Inc. (BSAS). Johnston, David. 1980. “The Battle of the Tenderloin,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, December 10: 4. Kane, Gregory. 2000. “Confrontational Policing May Be Inciting Incidents.” Baltimore Sun, September 10. Accessed March 2, 2001 from http://articles.baltimoresun. com/2000-09-10/news/0009090280_1_myrtle-­johnson-john-­cotton-monroe-­street Kane, Gregory. 1999. “Top Mayoral Candidates Announce Takes on Frazier.” Baltimore Sun, August 8. Accessed August 26, 2005 from http://articles.baltimoresun. com/1999-08-08/news/9908080174_1_frazier-­police-department-­police-commissioner

228   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity Keller, Bill. 2015. “David Simon on Baltimore’s Anguish, Freddie Gray, the Drug War, and the Decline of ‘Real Policing.’” The Marshall Project, April 29. Accessed December 13, 2015 from www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/29/david-­simon-on-­baltimores-­anguish#.2trxqtxf0 Kelling, George, and Katherine Coles. 1996. Fixing Broken Windows. New York: Touchstone. Kelling, George M., M.R. Hochberg, S.L. Kaminska, A.M Rocheleau, D.L. Rosenbaum, J.R. Roth, and W.G. Skogan. 1998. The Bureau of Justice Assistance Comprehensive Communities Program: A Preliminary Report. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, Research in Brief series. Kennedy, David M., and Sue-­Lin Wong. 2009. The High Point Drug Intervention Strategy. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Klein, Malcolm. 1976. “Issues and Realities in Police Diversion Programs.” Crime and Delinquency 421: 421–427. Klinenberg, Eric. 2015. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Second Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kraska, Peter B. 2007. “Militarization and Policing: Its Relevance to 21st Century Police.” Policing 1: 501–513. Kristoff, Nicholas. 2014. “Inside a Mental Hospital Called Jail.” New York Times, February 9. Accessed January 22, 2016 from www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/opinion/sunday/ inside-­a-mental-­hospital-called-­jail.html Kubler, Daniel, and S. Walti. 2001. “Drug-­Policy Making in Metropolitan Area Urban Conflicts and Governance.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 25: 35–54. Lattimore, Pamela K., Nahama Broner, Richard Sherman, Linda Frisman, and Michael Shafer. 2003. “A Comparison of Prebooking and Postbooking Diversion Programs for Mentally Ill Substance-­Using Individuals With Justice Involvement.” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 19: 30–64. Lee, Jaeah. 2016. “What the Hell Happened to Chicago Police’s ‘Crisis Intervention’ Training?” Mother Jones, January 15. Accessed July 23, 2016 from www.motherjones. com/politics/2016/01/chicago-­p olice-program-­w as-supposed-­p revent-deaths-­ quintonio-legrier Linder and Associates. 2002. Baltimore Believe: Progress Report, Phase I. New York: Linder and Associates. Lynch, Mona, Marisa Omori, Aaron Roussell, and Matthew Valasik. 2013. “Policing the ‘Progressive’ City: The Racialized Geography of Drug Law Enforcement.” Theoretical Criminology 17: 335–357. MacDonald, Heather. 1995. “San Francisco’s Matrix Program for the Homeless.” Criminal Justice Ethics 14: 2, 79–80. McGarry, Daniel. 2008. “The Politics of Homelessness in San Francisco: 1998–2002.” Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of History, Stanford University. Maguire, Edward, Yeunhee Shin, Jihong Zhao, and Kimberly Hassell. 2003. “Structural Change in Large Police Agencies During the 1990s.” Policing 26: 251–265. Maher, Lisa, and David Dixon. 1999. “Policing and Public Health: Law Enforcement and Harm Minimization in a Street-­Level Drug Market.” British Journal of Criminology 39: 488–512. Marinucci, Carla. 1997. “Brown Wrong About Drug Treatment, Advocates Say.” San Francisco Chronicle, October 17: A21.

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   229 Mastrofski, Stephen. 2006. “Community Policing: A Skeptical View.” In Police Innovation: Contrasting Perspectives, 44–73, edited by David Weisburd, and Anthony Braga. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Mastrofski, Stephen. 1988. “Community Policing as Reform: A Cautionary Tale.” In Community Policing: Rhetoric Or Reality, 47–66, edited by J. Greene, and S. Mastrofski. New York: Praeger. Matthews, Joe. 1997a. “Schmoke to Add Drug Programs: 3 Agency Heads Told to Find $5 Million to Pay for Expansion.” Baltimore Sun, January 14. Accessed September 23, 1999 from http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1997–01–14/news/1997014017_1_schmoke-­drugtreatment-­program-heroin Matthews, Joe. 1997b. “Crime-­Busters on Every Block. Safety: A ‘Zero-­Tolerance’ Police Officer and Residents With a ‘Do-­It-Yourself ’ Attitude Are Driving Criminals Out of City’s Southwest.” Baltimore Sun, January 30. Accessed August 7, 2015 from http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1997-01-30/news/1997030015_1_violent-­c rimecarrollton-­ridge-new-­southwest Mauer, Marc, and Stephen S. King. 2007. A 25-Year Quagmire: The War on Drugs and Its Impact on American Society. Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project. Miethe, Terance, Hong Lu, and Erin Reese. 2000. “Reintegrative Shaming and Recidivism Risks in Drug Court: Explanations for Some Unexpected Findings.” Crime and Delinquency 46: 522–541. Monkkonen, Eric H. 1981. Police in Urban America: 1860–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Murphy, Stacey. 2009. “ ‘Compassionate’ Strategies of Managing Homelessness: Post Revanchist Geographies in San Francisco.” Antipode 41: 305–325. Nadelmann, Ethan, P. Cohen, E. Drucker, U. Locher, G. Stimson, and A. Wodak. 1994. “The Harm Reduction Approach to Drug Control.” Princeton, NJ: Woodrow Wilson School for Public Policy, Princeton University. Nieves, Evelyn. 1999. “For Patrons of Prostitutes, Remedial Instruction.” New York Times, March 18: A1, A19. Nimmer, Raymond. 1971. Two Million Unnecessary Arrests: Removing a Social Service Concern from the Criminal Justice System. Chicago, IL: American Bar Foundation. O’Connor, Marykate, and Jo Hirschmann. 1998. “Scarcity of Treatment Beds is Treatment Bottleneck.” San Francisco Examiner, November 11: A21. Oerton, Juliet, Gillian Hunter, Matthew Hickman, Derrick Morgan, Paul Turnbull, Gemma Kothan, and John Marsden. 2003. “Arrest Referral in London Police Stations: Characteristics of the First Year, a Key Point of Intervention for Drug Users?” Drugs: Education Prevention and Policy 10: 73–85. O’Malley, Pat. 1992. “Risk, Power and Crime Prevention.” Economy and Society 21: 252–275. O’Malley, Pat, and Stephen Mugford. 1991. “The Demand for Intoxicating Commodities: Implications for the ‘War on Drugs.’” Social Justice 18: 49–75. Parker, H., and P. Kirby. 1996. Methadone Maintenance and Crime Reduction in Merseyside. London: Home Office Police Research Group. Crime Detection and Prevention Series, #72. Pastore, Nick. 2000–2001. “Police Others as You Would Have Them Police You.” The Reconsider Quarterly 1: 10–14. Pauly, Megan. 2013. “How Police Officers Are (or Aren’t) Trained in Mental Health.” The Atlantic, October 11. Accessed January 10, 2016 from www.theatlantic.com/health/ archive/2013/10/how-­police-officers-­are-or-­aren-t-­trained-in-­mental-health/280485/

230   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity Pelton, Tom. 2002. “O’Malley Bound to Norris, For Good or Ill.” Baltimore Sun, August 19. Accessed December 6, 2015 from www.baltimoresun.com/bal-­md.omalley 19aug19-story.html Plotkin, Martha R., and Tony Narr. 1997. “Police: The Forgotten Service Provider.” In The Police and the Homeless, 58–86, edited by Martin L. Forst. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Police Accountability Task Force. 2016. Recommendations for Reform: Restoring Trust Between the Chicago Police and the Communities That They Serve. Accessed April 15, 2016 from https://chicagopatf.org/ President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. 2015. Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Reaves, Brian, and Matthew Hickman. 2002. Police Departments in Large Cities. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Special Programs, May. Rentz, Catherine. 2015. “Baltimore Police to Try Treatment Instead of Arrest for Drug Abusers.” Baltimore Sun, December 23. Accessed May 23, 2016 from www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-­md-heroin-­economy-follow-­20151223-story.html Reuter, Peter, Paul Hirschfield, and Curt Davies. 2001. “Assessing the Crackdown on Marijuana in Maryland.” Department of Criminology, University of Maryland. Unpublished Manuscript. Ribbing, Mark. 2000. “O’Malley Announces Plans to Pare Down Police Athletic League: 18 Centers to Keep Officers; Eight Go Up For Bid,” Baltimore Sun, April 13. Accessed July 15, 2015 from http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2000-04-13/news/0004130150_1_ police-­athletic-omalley-­administration-pal Riley, Dianne, and Pat O’Hare. 1998. “Harm Reduction: Policy and Practice.” Policy Options (October): 7–10. Riley, Elise, Peter Beilenson, David Vlahov, Laura Smith, Matthew Koenig, T. Stephen Jones, and Meg Doherty. 1998. “Operation Red Box: A Pilot Project of Needle and Syringe Drop Boxes for Injection Drug Users in Baltimore.” Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and Human Retrovirology 18 (Supplement 1): S120–S125. Roberts, Chris. 2013a. “San Francisco Police Still Using Buy-­Bust Tactic on Marijuana Dealers in Haight-­Ashbury.” San Francisco Examiner, August 26. Accessed March 11, 2016 from http://archives.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/san-­francisco-police-­stillusing-­buy-bust-­tactic-on-­marijuana-dealers-­in-haight-­ashbury/Content?oid2336809 Roberts, Chris. 2013b. “San Francisco Drug Arrests Tumble as Police Focus on Serious and Violent Crime.” San Francisco Examiner, August 13. Accessed January 7, 2016 from http://archives.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/san-­francisco-drug-­arrests-tumble-­ as-police-­focus-on-­serious-and-­violent-crime/Content?oid2544067 Rose, Nikolas. 1993. “Government, Authority and Expertise in Advanced Liberalism.” Economy and Society 22: 283–297. Rose, Nikolas, and Peter Miller. 1992. “Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government.” British Journal of Sociology 43: 172–205. Roth, Jeffrey, and George Kelling. 1998. Baltimore’s Comprehensive Communities Program: A Case Study. Washington, DC: BOTEC Analysis Corporation. Prepared for the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. Roth, Jeffrey, J. Roehl, and C. Johnson. 2004. “Trends in the Adoption of Community Policing.” In Community Policing (Can it Work?), 3–29, edited by W. Skogan. Belmont, CA: Thompson-­Wadsworth.

Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity   231 Roy, Matthew, and Harry Minium. 2006. “Pace Program to Take New Path in Norfolk.” The Virginian-­Pilot, January 2. Accessed March 11, 2016 from http://certification27. bloxcms.com/news/local/crime/pace-­p rogram-to-­t ake-new-­p ath-in-­n orfolk/ article_221dcdea-267f-5ee9-ad84-4a8ab2eedc7c.html Sadd, Susan, and Randolph. M. Grinc. 1996. Implementation Challenges in Community Policing: Innovative Neighborhood-­Oriented Policing in Eight Cities. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, Research in Brief series (February). Sadd, Susan, and Randolph Grinc. 1994. “Innovative Neighborhood Oriented Policing.” In The Challenge of Community Policing: Testing the Promises, 27–51, by Dennis Rosenbaum. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Schneider, Anne, and Helen Ingram. 1993. “The Social Construction of Target Populations: Implications for Politics and Policy.” The American Political Science Review 87: 334–347. Schneider, Cathy. 1998. “Racism, Drug Policy and AIDS.” Political Science Quarterly 113: 427–446. Schwartzman, Paul, and John Wagner. 2015. “As Baltimore Mayor, Critics Say, O’Malley’s Police Tactics Sowed Distrust.” Washington Post, April 25. Accessed March 11, 2016 from https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-­politics/as-­mayor-of-­ baltimore-omalleys-­p olicing-strategy-­sowed-mistrust/2015/04/25/af81178a-ea9d11e4-9767-6276fc9b0ada_story.html Seelye, Katharine. 2016. “Massachusetts Chief ’s Tack in Drug War: Street Addicts to Rehab, Not Jail.” New York Times, January 24. Accessed June 5, 2016 from www. nytimes.com/2016/01/25/us/massachusetts-­chiefs-tack-­in-drug-­war-steer-­addicts-to-­ rehab-not-­jail.html?_r=0 Shenk, Joshua W. 1999. “An Old City Seeks a New Model: Baltimore Moves Towards Medicalization.” The Nation 269: 22–28. Siegel, Fred, and Van Smith. 2001. “Can Mayor O’Malley Save Ailing Baltimore?” City Journal (Winter). Accessed January 21, 2004 from www.city-­journal.org/html/11_1_ can_mayor_omalley.html Sondhi, Arun, and Richard Huggins. 2005. “Towards an Effective Social Care Model for Arrest Referral: Implications for Criminal Justice Intervention for Problem Drug Users.” Drugs, Education, Prevention and Policy 12: 189–195. Spooner, Catherine, Mark McPherson, and Wayne Hall. 2004. The Role of Police in Preventing and Minimising Illicit Drug Use and Its Harms. Sydney, NSW: National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund, National Drug Strategy, Commonwealth of Australia. Spooner, Catherine, Wayne Hall, and Richard Mattick. 2001. “An Overview of Diversion Strategies for Australian Drug-­Related Offenders.” Drug and Alcohol Review 20: 281–294. Subramanian, Ram, Ruth Delaney, Steve Roberts, Nancy Fishman, and Peggy McGarry. 2015. Incarceration’s Front Door: The Misuse of Jails in America. New York: Vera Institute of Justice. Taylor, Ralph. 2001. Breaking Away from Broken Windows. Boulder, CO: Westview. Terrill, William, and Stephen Mastrofski. 2004 “Working the Street: Does Community Policing Matter?” In Community Policing: (Can it Work?), 109–135, by Wesley Skogan, and Jeffrey Roth. Belmont, CA: Thomson-­Wadsworth. Torassa, Ulysses. 2001.“Changing Method of Treatment for Drug Addiction: San Francisco Models ‘Harm Reduction’ Theory,” SFGate, January 15. Accessed June 5, 2001 from www.sfgate.com/health/article/Changing-­Method-Of-­Treatment-for-­DrugAddiction-­2964500.php

232   Community Policing, Institutional Selectivity Treger, H. 1975. The Police-­Social Work Team: A New Model for Inter-­professional Cooperation. Springfield, IL: Thomas. Trojanowicz, Robert, B. Bucqueroux, T. McLanus, and D. Sinclair. 1992. The Neighborhood Network Center: Part One, Basic Issues and Planning and Implementation in Lansing, MI. Community Policing Series, No. 23. Michigan, MI: National Center for Community Policing, Michigan State University. U.S. Department of Justice. 2015. Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department. Accessed November 15, 2015 from www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-­ releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf U.S. Department of Justice. 1994. Understanding Community Policing. Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance, Document # 148457. Virginian-­Pilot. 1991. Fighting Drugs in Norfolk: Setting the Pace. Commentary, May 12: C4. Walker, Samuel. 1977. A Critical History of Police Reform. Lexington: D.C. Heath. Watson, Amy C., and Anjali Fulambarker. 2012. “The Crisis Intervention Team Model as a Police Response to Mental Health Crises: A Primer for Mental Health Practitioners.” Best Practices in Mental Health 8: 71–81. Watson, Amy C., James Swartz, Casey Bohrman, Liat Kriegel, and Jeffrey Draine. 2014. “Understanding How Police Officers Think About Mental/Emotional Disturbance Calls.” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 37: 351–358. Wilson, J.Q., and George Kelling. 1982. “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety.” The Atlantic Monthly 249: 29–38. Wood, Jennifer, Caitlin Taylor, Elizabeth Groff, and Jerry Radcliffe. 2013. “Aligning Policing and Public Health Promotion: Insights from the World of Foot Patrol.” Police Practice and Research: An International Journal 16: 211–223. Young, Douglas, Catherine Stayton, Emily Rosenzweig, and Laura Wycoff. 2005. Process Evaluation of an Effort to Engage Police in Alternative Responses to Neighborhood Drug Problems. Washington, DC: Final Report for National Institute of Justice Grant #96-IJ-­CX-0064. Available electronically through National Criminal Justice Reference Service.

7 Public Safety Agencies, Dimensions of Power, and the Shaping of Social Problems

Public safety protections, like other essential public goods and services such as health care and education, promote “social rights” of citizenship and what Marshall (1983[1950], 258) called the “concrete substance of civilized life.” Fire and policing services are crucial to the social safety net that protects all Americans. Nevertheless, like other aspects of the welfare state, the public safety sector reflects what Marcuse (1986, 248) called the “myth of the benevolent state.” Policies ostensibly aimed at promoting societal well-­being often fail in their mission or promote unequal outcomes. I use the concept of institutional selectivity to better understand the ways in which governments shape social problems and the dynamics of social inequality. This concept is derived from Claus Offe’s (1974, 35–39) work on “selection mechanisms,” described in detail in Chapter 2, which argues that political and especially class biases in government are rooted in their “own routines and formal structures.” The perspective of selection mechanisms merges neo-­Marxist theories of the state with Weberian sensibilities about the ways in which organizations operate. In short, if the state perpetuates unequal outcomes in terms of class relations then this must occur through the dynamic of ostensibly neutral organizational structures. Otherwise, the structures of government will appear to be blatantly political, lack legitimacy, and produce overt forms of social conflict. To be sure, there are times when government reveals itself to be biased, as when fire officials blame lower-­income tenants for the fires set by unscrupulous landlords (Chapter 1, this volume). Police also reveal themselves to be biased when they voice racial epithets or target African-­Americans or other populations with enforcement actions (Chapters 5 and 6, this volume). Yet, state bias is often not clear-­cut. Rather, it tends to be implicit and institutional, rooted in the normative orders of state structures and practices. In this book I have defined these normative orders as the interplay between bureaucratic structures and procedures, agency subcultures, and the “micro-­foundational” aspects of organizational life, including the cognitive orientations of state actors. The biases implicit to institutional selectivity produce contradictions and conflict that eventually lead to managerial, fiscal, and legitimacy crises that require the reorganization of state structures and practices. It is important to show, however, that changing public policy agendas will introduce new forms of social

234   Public Safety Agencies, Power, Social Problems and political bias. Neil Smith (1996) argued that we are now in the era of the “revanchist” city, characterized by increasing gentrification, unaffordable housing prices, and curtailments in urban and especially social welfare services. Local governments face unprecedented levels of fiscal austerity, forced to seek neo-­liberal solutions for dealing with social problems, outsourcing or privatizing even the most essential of public services (Miller and Hokenstad 2014). Still, citizens demand services, and governments are expected to do more with less, leading to new institutional arrangements for dealing with social problems. As a result of austerity reorganization, local social welfare services are concentrated and expanded in those functions deemed most necessary for security, in police and fire services. These services are asked to do more and more, with uneven consequences.

Explanations of Bias and the Third and Fourth Dimensions of Power A “three-­dimensional” view of power is concerned with the systemic ways in which governmental structures and processes perpetuate bias short of overt conflict or the influence of political actors. This three-­dimensional view of power is illustrated in this book through an examination of the structures and practices of both fire and policing agencies, and in particular, the emphasis on firefighting versus prevention and investigation and crime-­fighting and order maintenance versus an emphasis on community outreach and service. Despite its analytic advance, Lukes (2005) cautions that the three-­dimensional view of power may not go far enough to account for why dominated groups fail to make their interests heard. Drawing on Gramsci’s view of consent, Lukes (2005, 124) states that “domination can work against people’s interests by stunting, diminishing and undermining their powers of judgment and by falsifying, distorting and reducing their self-­perceptions and self-­understanding.” This dynamic becomes clear when one examines regulatory matters such as fire control. Few question the goals of equity surrounding emergency response, where public safety agencies are dispatched to protect the lives of all citizens. During times of crisis, however, the selective biases of government are revealed, prompting political mobilization around regulatory failures and weaknesses. Such was the case during the 1970s when state agencies were charged with doing too little to address the nation’s social problem of fire (Chapters 1 and 3, this volume). Even as government responded to the nation’s fire problem, however, it did it selectively, reimposing new dynamics of bias. In this way, then, the organizational dynamics of government work to obfuscate and shape the ways in which the citizen comes to understand the meaning of public policy, and tend to dull political conflict until a social disaster or other moment of crisis emerges. The institutional selectivity inherent to community policing reform, which I have characterized as the distinction between broken windows and reintegrative models, exemplifies a three-­dimensional power analysis in that it perpetuates

Public Safety Agencies, Power, Social Problems   235 unequal outcomes. Smith (1996) argues that “quality of life” and zero-­tolerance policing methods are a hallmark of the revanchist city through their reinforcement of social class and racial inequities. At the same time, community policing reform is also rooted in a call for increased community engagement and service outreach, arguably as a way to deal with the fallout of revanchism and a retrenchment in welfare state spending. Understanding the contradictions of community policing reform therefore requires a theoretical frame that looks beyond the reproduction of social inequities to one that looks at the challenges of “governmentality,” or the process by which modern social institutions seek to manage and discipline social and individual conduct (Foucault 1991, 87). From the standpoint of a Foucauldian or “fourth dimensional” power analysis, state bias reflects more than traditionally defined political struggles rooted in class or other interests. It also reflects sources of domination that may emanate from cultural beliefs and trends, norms regarding social and individual behavior, or the opinions and practices of experts (Digeser 1992, 977; Lukes 2005). Similar to the third-­dimensional view of power, biases are reflected in the structures and practices of governance, or the specific “technologies” of power used to carry out governmental ambitions and regulate social risk (Chapters 1 and 2, this volume). Policing is one of the most obvious control technologies associated with modern societies, and the policing concept has always been central to the Foucauldian theoretical repertoire, not only as a mechanism of criminal justice but also of other regulatory institutions such as the workplace and schools (Foucault, 1979). Hewitt (1991, 237) notes that for Foucault, policing was much more than a “specific form of repression.” Instead, it was a mechanism for assuring “bio-­ power,” representing a “range of interventions” to assure individual compliance with the social conventions of living within capitalist economies and liberal democratic states. These conventions may include those governing sexuality, mental health and other aspects of personal appearance (Power 2011; Rose 1993). Similar to other aspects of the welfare state, then, policing may be viewed as playing a “productive and positive” role in normalizing social behavior and conduct, i.e., in ways that invite the consent of governed populations and avoid expressions of popular discontent or upheaval (see Jessop 1990). It is in this context that the contradictions in community policing reform need to be understood, in that objectives of social order and social welfare may be viewed as two sides of the same coin. The main distinction between broken windows and reintegrative policing models, therefore, has largely to do with the distinct technologies of power that are used to attain desired outcomes. Whereas broken windows policing promotes the use of blunt exclusionary measures aimed at those groups or behaviors seen as threatening social order, reintegrative policing emphasizes the use of “bio-­political” measures designed to change behavior, such as treatment diversion, as an alternative method of managing social problems and regulating deviance (Hewitt 1991, 238). The research that I have presented in this book nevertheless shows that American law enforcement is more likely to adopt community policing reforms when

236   Public Safety Agencies, Power, Social Problems these emphasize broken windows strategies. This institutional selectivity is rooted in the normative order of American policing and its prioritization of crime-­fighting and order maintenance functions over those of social service outreach and community engagement. Broken windows strategies also complement the punitive nature of the nation’s drug war through the use of “stop and frisk” and other aggressive social control measures. Although broken windows policing has been celebrated for making American communities safer, it has created its own legitimacy crisis. Broken windows policing has made pariahs out of persons of color and socially marginalized populations, and has played a role in creating the highly charged law enforcement atmosphere that led to a string of police-­involved fatalities involving African-­Americans (Keller 2015; Baker et al. 2015). Broken windows policing is also seen as encouraging the militarization of policing through the use of paramilitary units to do “quality-­of-life” enforcement patrols, i.e., those that crack down on minor crimes and disorder (Kraska 2007). Resistance to broken windows and other aggressive policing practices has materialized in the “Black Lives Matter” movement and its mobilization against continuing racial biases in American law enforcement. Recent police shootings of unarmed citizens or of those involved in seemingly minor offenses speak to the fear that officers have of the public, and help to explain why law enforcement agencies avoid becoming involved with outreach initiatives requiring extended interaction with potentially dangerous individuals, including drug users and the mentally ill (New York Times 2016). The targeted assassinations in 2016 of police officers in Dallas, TX, and Baton Rouge, LA, have only intensified this fear, and reinforce the argument that a police officer’s first obligation is to stay safe, even if this means shooting someone who is later determined to have posed no threat (Apuzo 2015). Nevertheless, the preoccupation of law enforcement officers with safety, and the use of militaristic strategies and hardware as an extra line of defense, promotes a “warrior” culture that continues to undermine policing legitimacy, especially among communities of color (President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing 2015, 1; Balko 2013). Indeed, the trust gap between African-­Americans and the police, in particular, appears to have changed little since the Kerner Commission Report was published in 1968. PEW Research Center research from 2014 found that as many as 70 percent of blacks believe that the police do a poor job of treating racial and ethnic groups equally (compared with 25 percent of whites), and 57 percent of blacks (compared to 23 percent of whites) have little confidence that the police will use the “right” amount of force during citizen encounters.1 The racial (and to some extent ethnic) trust gap in policing persists despite there being many more officers of color, and despite the fact that African-­Americans now head many of the nation’s urban police departments. Nevertheless, government officials, civic leaders, and policy experts continue to look to community policing reform as a way to heal strained citizen relations, restore the public’s trust in law enforcement, and minimize police use of force, especially the fatal shooting of citizens. These new calls for reform have a decidedly reintegrative thrust. For example, as I outlined in Chapter 6, the Obama

Public Safety Agencies, Power, Social Problems   237 Administration has endorsed the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program, first developed in Seattle, as a community policing “best practice” because of its use of treatment diversion as a way to offset the racial disparities and “mass incarceration” linked with America’s drug war. But it remains unclear whether American law enforcement agencies are ready to make reintegrative measures part of everyday policing practice. For many in law enforcement, service outreach is the domain of social work and not an appropriate aspect of police work (Chapter 6, this volume). The fire case presented in this book serves as an excellent illustration of a three-­dimensional view of power in that the regulatory structures and practices of the fire service are shown as shaping a social problem of fire. Although urban fires have receded from the national consciousness in recent decades, problems of unequal risk remain. Residential fire rates, in particular, continue to serve as a barometer of broader social inequities associated with lower-­income housing markets, especially as these pertain to disinvestment, structural deterioration, and speculative real estate practices. This situation is most pronounced in Detroit, where a convergence of factors including economic decline, fiscal austerity, and collapsing housing values have correlated with a steady increase in fires. Detroit’s fire problem, with roots in the 1970s, became even worse in the wake of the Great Recession of 2008 that led to accelerated mortgage and tax foreclosures. Detroit is not alone as a place where fire and housing dynamics are connected. Other American cities with the highest arson rates were also hit hard by the nation’s mortgage crisis, among them Flint, Toledo, Buffalo, and Cleveland, leading to increased abandonment, vacancies, and fire (Chapter 3, this volume).2 As the overall prevalence of fire has declined in the United States, the American fire service has been struggling to reinvent itself. In most communities, calls for medical and other types of non-­fire emergencies make up an increasing proportion of the alarms, and some have argued that it is time to take the word “fire” out of “fire department” (Keisling 2015). Although urban fires are less pronounced as a social problem, this does not mean that they have ceased being one altogether. The austerity of urban governments has meant that some localities do not have enough personnel to operate emergency equipment, or the equipment itself may sit broken down or unavailable (LeDuff 2014; Celock and Sledge 2012). Fewer fire personnel also means fewer fire investigators and investigations, diminishing our understanding of the urban fire problem. Some cities are not able to investigate all fires (e.g., Detroit), and the veracity of the fire investigations remains problematic because firefighters may be reluctant to do the job and lack the skills to do it properly. This is especially important in that arson-­ for-profit continues to accompany urban gentrification and post-­industrial transformation, moving to new “markets” and sites of development including Brooklyn and San Francisco (Chapter 3, this volume). The organization and impact of the fire service on urban life may also be viewed from the perspective of governmentality, exhibiting its own technologies of control that change over time. “Post-­industrial” fire control involves cooperative strategies between firefighters and automated “life-­safety” systems

238   Public Safety Agencies, Power, Social Problems that have increasingly become part of the built environment (Chapters 5 and 6, this volume). Life-­safety systems depend on sophisticated software, and fire officials must know how to operate and monitor programs to assure effective fire suppression operations. Just as “hands-­on” and labor intensive factory work has given way to computerized production systems, similar changes are afoot in firefighting. Increasingly, fire officials will respond to secure locations where they direct firefighting operations from “safe” rooms within buildings as sprinklers, ducts, and fans direct and control a blaze. There will, of course, always be a need for firefighters to perform rescue operations and to step in when operations fail (this was the case during 9–11 where life-­safety systems themselves were impaired by the enormity of the event). Indeed, automated control systems are only useful if they are operational and maintained. Still, changing service demands means that government executives will be looking for new ways to save on the enormous costs of firefighting itself, including the legacy costs and survivor benefits. Changes in the technologies of fire control mean changes to the traditional normative order of fire agencies. The act of firefighting is organized around a paramilitary organizational structure that requires the rapid deployment of personnel and a smooth “chain of command” for delegating tasks. The functional diversification of fire agencies, however, calls for different types of organizational structures. Emergency medical response, code enforcement, and fire investigation do not require a paramilitary model of organizing service delivery, and indeed the paramilitary model may hinder these functions (Chapters 3 and 4, this volume). Moreover, as fire control systems become more reliant on computer software and hardware, the fire service will require new partners, particularly fire protection engineers and fire safety consultants, such as those that work for companies managing commercial mega-­structures.3 In Hyde, the fire department was forced to hire civilian engineers to help it deal with the new challenges of high-­ rise firefighting. In doing so, the agency altered the normative dynamics of the agency, making prevention activities respectable in an organization that had always marginalized them. However, organizational changes will reflect institutional selectivity. Fire officials in Hyde saw the department’s reorganization around high-­rise fire control as necessary for protecting their firefighting mission. At the same time, regulatory enforcement in Hyde’s neighborhoods—where fire incidents were more likely to occur—remained lax. Mike Davis’s (1998, 137–138, 130) work on Los Angeles has similarly found a “double-­standard” in the fire inspection process that favors upper-­income suburban areas (e.g., such as Bel Air or Encino) versus the “poor and fire-­prone” areas such as Los Angeles’s Westlake or South Central districts. Whereby government officials exhibit an “official hysteria” about the risk of wildland fires and their threat to multi-­million dollar homes, Davis argues, they show a “phlegmatic” attitude toward the risk of “tenement” fires in lower-­income and often immigrant areas where fire fatalities casualties are concentrated. Such observations about the inherent biases in adjudicating regulatory violations that do harm versus “street” crimes remains central

Public Safety Agencies, Power, Social Problems   239 to the white collar crime literature (Friedrichs 2009; Aulette and Michalowski 1993). Code enforcement in Hyde was marked by a “no prosecutions” civil adjudication policy that community activists saw as blatantly pro-­business and allowing for tragedies such as the Sixteen Arms apartment fire, where 14 low-­income tenants died. The code enforcement double-­standard continues to be a special problem for low-­income populations even if life-­safety systems are present, in that their workability relies on their being constantly monitored. Increasingly, communities are turning to the outsourcing of government functions, including code enforcement (Lester and Kraus 2016). The outsourcing of inspection activities is a dangerous proposition for those most vulnerable to fire and other risks, further perpetuating community inequities.

On the Frontlines of the Welfare State: Policy Considerations Going Forward Fire and policing agencies remain on the frontlines of the welfare state, responsible for protecting the safety and property of citizens on a daily basis. The protective responsibilities of public safety agencies have only expanded in this current era of government austerity, especially as traditional social and human service agencies see their budgets slashed. Given the focus on institutional selectivity throughout this book, what can be done to minimize governmental bias in the areas of fire control and community policing reform? What are potential areas of reform? Here I explore these questions by examining four themes that speak to both broader dynamics of change as well as the adoption of specific policies. Political Will, Reform, and the Law The American public appears to have reached a consensus over the failure of punishment models of drug control, which led to historic levels of incarceration, marked racial biases in law enforcement, and increased fiscal burdens on the state (Chapter 5, this volume). Taxpayers and politicians embracing the model of a neo-­liberal state are in no mood for huge criminal justice expenditures, and there are increasing calls for reform within the U.S. Congress and state legislatures.4 Law enforcement leaders and prosecutors are calling for fewer arrests of non-­violent offenders, especially those involved in illegal narcotics possession and use, realizing that aggressive enforcement models undermine police–community relations and increase hostility toward the police.5 There is also recognition that imprisonment did little to reduce the use and misuse of intoxicating substances. Republicans and Democrats agree that treatment is the best policy path going forward, especially in light of the nation’s recent opioid addiction crisis and the realization that it affects millions of middle-­class Americans. Echoing the policy trends of the 1990s, there has been a shift toward “pluralized” drug control models that bridge the gap between social order and social

240   Public Safety Agencies, Power, Social Problems welfare objectives (Bunton 2001). The expansion of pre-­arrest and pre-­booking diversion initiatives such as LEAD (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion) and the Angel initiative, introduced in Gloucester, both signify this shift (Seelye 2016; Emshwiller and Fields 2015). In addition, legal changes that decriminalize or legalize cannabis use and the possession of drug paraphernalia allow for the successful implementation of reintegrative policing initiatives in support of harm reduction interventions such as needle-­exchange. Support for needle-­exchange is one of the lasting legacies of Mayor Schmoke’s policing reforms in Baltimore (Chapter 6, this volume). California’s move to decriminalize marijuana possession also appears to have had an impact on drug possession arrests, laying the groundwork for the expansion of pre-­arrest/booking strategies for low-­level drug offenders. As the prevalence of urban fires has declined, so has political attention to the problem. But political will was essential in getting state agencies to pay attention to the social problem of fire during the 1970s. Groups such as the Symphony Tenants Organizing Project and People’s Firehouse challenged the complacency of local fire officials and their unwillingness to recognize problems such as arson-­for-profit and fires caused by negligence. Political mobilization around the fire issue, including the voice of politicians, led to crucial structural reforms in local fire agencies such as the creation of arson task forces, arson early warning systems, and legal changes that redesignated arson as an FBI “part 1” crime. Mobilization around the fire problems is less pronounced today than 40 years ago, and resistance has also taken new forms. In Detroit, for example, anger over the city’s failure to abate fire hazards has led to “guerrilla” actions where residents light fires to hasten the demolition of abandoned and run-­down properties (see Kinder 2014). Therefore, what is clear from the fire case, as well as the policing case, is that political will must be present as an exogenous force that imposes change on legal and state structures. Workable Strategies and Mediating Normative Orders Despite political will for reform, organizations will continue to be marked by their own institutional dynamics and normative orders. This is doubly the case for fire and policing agencies, which remain among the most entrenched governmental agencies in terms of structural design and organizational culture. Police officials continue to dismiss social service outreach as “social work,” and firefighters continue to prefer fighting fires to preventing and investigating them. To be successful, then, organizational and policy reforms must either adapt to the normative order of policing of fire control or seek to alter it fundamentally. In Chapter 6, I addressed the former option, arguing that police will adopt reintegrative strategies providing that these are in line with the normative order of the policing mission, and in particular, objectives of coercion. The CADA program in San Francisco, discussed in Chapter 6, was developed by the police themselves as a way to get users into treatment, albeit at the point of arrest. The LEAD initiative, too, offers diversion at the point of arrest. To this extent then,

Public Safety Agencies, Power, Social Problems   241 the police are not forced to sanction the illegal use of drugs, but instead may opt for another model of dealing with a social problem. The use of coercion to help carry out reintegrative policing approximates to what Kubler and Walti (2001, 50) have labeled a “social public-­order regime,” where police are willing to support treatment diversion and harm reduction programs as long as these are consistent with social control objectives. Still, there is the problem of institutionalization. As I noted earlier, significant barriers remain to doing reintegrative community policing. Even as pre-­ arrest/booking interventions have expanded in some communities, they have receded in others. Crisis intervention skills, which are designed for defusing tense encounters with mentally ill and emotionally distraught citizens, are taught to only a limited number of officers nationwide (Chapter 6, this volume). In some jurisdictions, crisis intervention “teams” have actually been cut back even when demands for such services are on the increase. Although budgets are seen as one reason for the cut-­backs in crisis intervention initiatives, it is also clear that not all police officials see such policing methods as crucial for their departments in light of other crime-­fighting and order maintenance concerns (Lee 2016). Therefore, it remains an open question as to whether social public-­ order regimes will become a marked characteristic of policing normative orders going forward. Workable strategies for dealing with the social problem of fire may require subverting an organizational normative order that prioritizes firefighting over all other functions. In Hyde, city administrators attempted to make the fire department more committed to prevention objectives by civilianizing its code enforcement bureau, hiring non-­firefighter college graduates with degrees in fire safety. Eventually, however, the normative order of firefighting won out, and the civilianization decision was reversed. Nevertheless, the functions of America’s fire agencies are much more diversified than they were in the 1980s, especially with new demands for emergency medical response and regulating automated fire safety systems. This may serve to dilute the traditional fire service normative order built around suppression functions and allow for more innovative reforms, including the implementation of collaborative prevention strategies featuring state officials and community-­based organizations (Chapters 3 and 4, this volume). Collaborative Partnerships/Mobilizing Resources The successful implementation of reintegrative policing models will depend on intergovernmental partnerships as well as partnerships with community-­based organizations. Such partnerships were notable in the case cities examined in Chapter 6, although they proved problematic especially as this concerned social welfare outreach and sustained commitment from participating agencies. Partnerships with community-­based organizations will be essential for doing reintegrative community policing in the future, especially with declining public resources to pay for social services and the “outsourcing” of what used to

242   Public Safety Agencies, Power, Social Problems be exclusively state functions to quasi-­governmental (non-­profit) or private providers. One reason for the expansion of crisis intervention teams is that they are backed by agencies outside law enforcement, i.e., advocates for the mentally ill, who continuously lobby to assure that police departments seek to develop de-­ escalation techniques for dealing with mentally ill and emotionally distraught individuals. Programs promoting alternative drug policies are also much more likely to be successful when they have the sustained backing of agencies outside of law enforcement. Support for Seattle’s LEAD initiative, for example, almost collapsed until civic leaders both inside and outside law enforcement, as well as other community advocates, pushed for its sustenance (Shapiro 2015). Although partnerships are important for implementing reintegrative policing strategies, there also must be resources available to support them. The Norfolk case (Chapter 6, this volume) shows that an elaborate model of policing reform cannot be sustained unless there are adequate public resources available to provide services. Norfolk relied on largely neo-­liberal approaches to providing drug treatment, but this was simply not enough. Significant public resources are therefore required to adequately respond to drug and other social problems. Community collaborations to better track and prevent fires have also been promoted, and are a useful way to track fire-­risk. In Chapter 3, I examined the development of “housing early warning systems” and other proposals by community activists to work with local governments to track housing deterioration, real estate speculation, and the risk of fire. Community residents argued that they could subsidize financially-­strapped local governments and create exhaustive housing inventories with essentially volunteer labor, although these overtures were rejected by many in the fire service. This position is likely to change, however, as municipal budgets shrink and there is less money for routine building inspections. Deserving Target Populations One especially notable similarity in the fire and policing cases in this book is the negative way in which they viewed certain populations. Fire officials in both Hyde and elsewhere were easily willing to blame the victims of fires for causing them, especially poor people, members of the LGBTQ community, the mentally ill, drug users or others living non-­conventional lifestyles. These attitudes did not have an apparent effect on emergency service: firefighters were willing to risk their lives to save anyone. But when it came to searching for evidence of arson-­for-profit or embracing their prevention responsibilities, fire officials were willing to allow low-­income people to be vulnerable to fire. The status of target populations may therefore have a good deal to do with how welfare states organize responses to citizens-­in-need, an issue that gets back to questions over the “deserving poor” raised in Chapter 1. The evidence presented in this book (Chapter 6, this volume) indicated the reluctance of officers to reach out to drug users, who they may view as unworthy of service inter­ vention. The police continue to see many drug users as inherently criminogenic,

Public Safety Agencies, Power, Social Problems   243 or at least indicative of bigger crime and disorder problems in the community that must be suppressed. The Baltimore case showed that some policy-­makers oppose pre-­arrest/booking formulas as allowing drug users too much freedom in deciding to seek services, and instead prefer post-­booking/pre-­trial interventions such as drug courts that continue to use imprisonment for those that continue to use illicit substances or fail to stick with their treatment regimens. Also, since pre-­arrest/booking programs may support harm reduction initiatives they may be viewed as doing too little to promote abstinence. Needle-­exchange, in particular, continues to be opposed by some politicians, treatment advocates, and the federal government on the basis that it promotes drug use (Turkewitz 2012). Some prosecutors also oppose pre-­arrest interventions on the basis that it is up to them, and not the police, to decide whether a person gets diverted to treatment as an alternative to being charged for a drug offense.6 But our current period of fiscal austerity has forced politicians into positions of finding extra-­state solutions for dealing with social problems. Also, the public’s perception of marginalized populations such as drug users has begun to shift, especially with the opioid addiction crisis among the middle class, the legalization of marijuana (both recreational and medical), and the decriminalization of low-­level drug offenses, i.e., those for use or for cannabis possession. Increasingly, substance use and misuse are being redefined as public health concerns rather than criminal justice mandates, and this will inevitably lead to the expansion of police diversion and community-­based treatment remedies, similar to detoxification diversion methods for dealing with chronic street alcoholics. As we move into the future, policing will find itself more and more medicalized in terms of its functions, exemplified by the decision of some local governments to have police administer naloxone to users experiencing a potentially fatal overdose (Goodman and Hartocollis 2014). Fire department personnel are also increasingly tasked as emergency medical responders. Examining the work of public safety infrastructures provides important lessons about the expanse and limitations of the local welfare state. Examining the functions and service delivery responsibilities of public safety agencies also has important implications for the challenges of governmentality. Ultimately, we are all reliant on police officers and fire agencies to protect us from harm, but these agencies remain “agents of civic governance,” as Loader and Walker (2001, 14) put it, that reflect contradictory structures and practices that may serve to perpetuate social problems and community inequities. Public safety services and policies will remain subject to democratic calls for change, leading to governmental reforms. I have argued in this book that governmental agencies will always reflect some degree of institutional bias. However, it is also true that some approaches are more promising than others in protecting the social rights of citizens and promoting the programs of a benevolent state.

244   Public Safety Agencies, Power, Social Problems

Notes 1 See PEW Research Center data accessed July 25, 2016 from www.people-­press. org/2014/08/25/few-­say-police-­forces-nationally-­do-well-­in-treating-­races-equally/. Figures reported for whites and blacks include only those who are not Hispanic. 2 For an excellent summary of the link between housing foreclosures and abandonment, see “A Hurricane Without Water: Detroit Property Tax Foreclosure.” Accessed July 30, 2016 from www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi6uoRNtVyQ 3 “Trends in Fire Protection and Life Safety for the Global Built Environment.” Jensen-­ Hughes, Inc., Baltimore, MD, 2015. Accessed July 29, 2016 from www.jensenhughes. com/wp-­content/uploads/2015/09/JensenHughes-­TrendsReport-20152.pdf 4 See, for example, “Criminal Justice Reform: Breaking the Cycle of Drug Use and Crime,” Office of National Drug Control Policy, The White House, President Barack Obama. Accessed October 22, 2015 from www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/criminal-­justicereform 5 PBS NewsHour, “Police, prosecutors call for fewer arrests of nonviolent offenders,” October 21, 2015. Accessed October 22, 2015 from www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/police-­ prosecutors-call-­fewer-arrests-­nonviolent-offenders-­952/ 6 See “Chief Rehab.”Aired June 2, 2016 on On Assignment, NBC News. Reported by Josh Mankiewicz. Accessed June 3, 2016 from www.nbcnews.com/feature/on-­ assignment/assignment-­chief-rehab-­n575751

References Apuzo, Matt. 2015. “Training Officers to Shoot First and He Will Ask Questions Later.” New York Times, August 1. Accessed July 23, 2016 from www.nytimes.com/2015/ 08/02/us/training-­officers-to-­shoot-first-­and-he-­will-answer-­questions-later.html?hp& action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-­spot-region®ion=top-­news&WT. nav=top-­news&_r=0 Aulette, Judith, and Raymond Michalowski. 1993. “Fire in Hamlet: A Case Study of a State-­Corporate Crime.” In Political Crime in Contemporary America: A Critical Approach, 171–206, edited by Kenneth Tunnell. New York: Routledge. Baker, Al, J. David Goodman, and Benjamin Mueller. 2015. “Beyond the Chokehold: The Unexplored Path to Eric Garner’s Death.” New York Times Sunday, June 14: 1, 26, 27. Balko, Radley. 2013. Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces. Philadelphia, PA: Public Affairs Books. Bunton, Robin. 2001. “Knowledge, Embodiment and Neo-­Liberal Drug Policy.” Contemporary Drug Problems 28: 221. Celock, John, and Matt Sledge. 2012. “Fire Department Cuts Force Firefighters to Watch and Wait.” Huffington Post, July 13. Accessed May 5, 2016 from www.huffingtonpost. com/2012/07/13/fire-­department-cuts-­a-thousand-­cuts_n_1659671.html Davis, Mike. 1998. Ecology of Fear. London: Picador. Digeser, Peter. 1992. “The Fourth Face of Power.” Journal of Politics 54: 977–1007. Emshwiller, John, and Gary Fields. 2015. “Seattle LEAD Program to Keep Offenders Out of Jail Draws Nationwide Interest.” Wall Street Journal, July 20. Accessed May 23, 2016 from www.wsj.com/articles/seattle-­lead-program-­to-keep-­offenders-out-­of-jail-­ draws-nationwide-­interest-1437434693 Foucault, Michel. 1991. “Governmentality.” In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, 87–104, edited by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish. New York: Random House/Vintage.

Public Safety Agencies, Power, Social Problems   245 Friedrichs, David. 2009. Trusted Criminals: White Collar Crime in Contemporary Society, 4th Edition. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning. Goodman, J. David, and Anemona Hartocollis. 2014. “Anti-­Overdose Drug Becoming an  Everyday Part of Police Work.” New York Times, June 12. Accessed March 11, 2016 from www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/nyregion/anti-­overdose-drug-­becoming-an-­ everyday-part-­of-police-­work.html Hewitt, Martin. 1991. “Bio-­Politics and Social Policy: Foucault’s Account of Welfare.” In The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, 225–255, edited by Mike Featherstone, Mike Hepworth, and Bryan Turner. London: Sage. Jessop, Bob. 1990. State Theory: Putting Capitalist States in their Place. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Keisling, Phil, 2015. “Why We Need to Take the ‘Fire’ Out of ‘Fire Department.’” Governing the States and Localities, July 1. Accessed May 5, 2016 from www.governing. com/columns/smart-­mgmt/col-­fire-departments-­rethink-delivery-­emergency-medical-­ services.html Keller, Bill. 2015. “David Simon on Baltimore’s Anguish. Freddie Gray, the Drug War, and the Decline of ‘Real Policing.’” The Marshall Project, April 29. Accessed December 13, 2015 from www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/29/david-­simon-on-­baltimores-­anguish#.2trxqtxf0 Kinder, Kimberly. 2014. “Guerrilla-­style Defensive Architecture in Detroit: A Self Provisioned Security Strategy in a Neoliberal Space of Disinvestment.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38: 1767–1784. Kraska, Peter B. 2007. “Militarization and Policing: Its Relevance to 21st CenturyPolice.” Policing 1: 501–513. Kubler, Daniel, and S. Walti. 2001. “Drug-­Policy Making in Metropolitan Area Urban Conflicts and Governance.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 25: 35–54. LeDuff, Charlie. 2014. Detroit: An American Autopsy. New York: Penguin. Lee, Jaeah. 2016. “What the Hell Happened to Chicago Police’s ‘Crisis Intervention’ Training?” Mother Jones, January 15. Accessed July 23, 2016 from www.motherjones.com/ politics/2016/01/chicago-­police-program-­was-supposed-­prevent-deaths-­quintonio-legrier Lester, Patrick, and Scott Kraus. 2016. “More Municipal Governments Outsourcing Services.” The Morning Call, July 29. Accessed July 29, 2016 from www.mcall.com/ business/outlook/all-­government-030908-story.html Loader, Ian, and Neil Walker. 2001. “Policing as a Public Good.” Theoretical Criminology 5: 9–35. Lukes, Steven. 2005. Power: A Radical View, 2nd Edition. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Marcuse, Peter. 1986. “Housing Policy and the Myth of the Benevolent State.” In Critical Perspectives on Housing, 248–257, edited by Rachel Bratt, Chester Hartmann, and Ann Meyerson. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Marshall, T.H. 1983[1950]. “Citizenship and Social Class.” In States and Societies, 248–260, edited by David Held. New York: New York University Press. Miller, David B., and Terry Hokenstad. 2014. “Rolling Downhill: Effects of Austerity on Local Government Social Services in the United States.” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare (June) XLI: 93–108. New York Times. 2016. “One Police Shift: Patrolling an Anxious America.” New York Times, July 24. Accessed July 24, 2016 from www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/us/police-­ ridealongs.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-­heading &module=second-­column-region®ion=top-­news&WT.nav=top-­news&_r=0

246   Public Safety Agencies, Power, Social Problems Offe, Claus. 1974. “Structural Problems of the Capitalist State: Class Rule and the Political System. On the Selectiveness of Political Institutions.” In German Political Studies, 31–51, edited by Klaus von Beyme. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Power, Michael. 2011. “Foucault and Sociology.” Annual Review of Sociology 37: 35–56. President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. 2015. Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Rose, Nikolas. 1993. “Government, Authority and Expertise in Advanced Liberalism.” Economy and Society 22: 283–297. Seelye, Katharine. 2016. “Massachusetts Chief ’s Tack in Drug War: Street Addicts to Rehab, Not Jail.” New York Times, January 24. Accessed June 5, 2016 from www. nytimes.com/2016/01/25/us/massachusetts-­chiefs-tack-­in-drug-­war-steer-­addicts-to-­ rehab-not-­jail.html?_r=0 Shapiro, Nina. 2015. “How the Much-­Lauded LEAD Program was Revived After Near Collapse.” Seattle Weekly, April 14. Accessed March 10, 2016 from www.seattleweekly.com/home/957881–129/how-­seattles-much-­lauded-lead-­program-almost Smith, Neil. 1996. The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. New York: Routledge. Turkewitz, Julie. 2012. “The War on Drug Users: Are Syringe Exchanges Immoral?” The Atlantic, March 13. Accessed May 23, 2016 from http://harmreduction.org/wp-­content/ uploads/2011/12/recent-­press-march-­14.pdf

Index

Page numbers in bold denote figures. ABC News 14, 49, 57 Aetna Life and Casualty 66, 68, 84n22 Agnos, Art Mayor 207–8; see also San Francisco, City of American Insurance Association 69 American Journal of Public Health 180 American Municipal Association see fire insurance Angel initiative 13, 240; see also pre-arrest/booking diversion Anslinger, Harry see Federal Bureau of Narcotics Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 see war on drugs Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 see war on drugs arrest diversion see pre-arrest/booking diversion arson: behavioral and social pathologies 97; in Boston 10–11, 55–7, 63, 67; and building code violations 10, 58, 65, 118, 121; in the City of Hyde 15–16, 52, 93–100, 110–13, 115–22, 132n5, 242; clearance rates 60, 70, 80, 97, 112–13, 131; and code violations 2, 10, 12, 55, 65–7, 99–100, 114, 116, 121, 127–8, 239; definition of 49–50, 74, 131; detection through public records 10, 64–5, 114, 116–17; in Detroit 1, 10, 56, 75, 78–9, 237, 240; early warning systems 15, 64–5, 113–15, 117, 118–22, 127, 132, 133n16, 240; and economic recession and changing mortgage rates 78–9, 237; and evictions 10, 56, 63, 79, 99, 120; for-profit and fraudulent motives behind 10–12, 16, 40, 49–50, 55–8, 60, 62–5, 75, 79–80, 83n12, 97–9,

113, 115–17, 121, 122, 131–2, 237, 240, 242; and gay and lesbian populations 10, 55, 96, 98, 112; gentrification 11, 57, 70, 79, 98–9, 131–2, 237; and incendiary and suspicious fires 9, 50, 61, 72–7, 84–85n28, 85n31, 85n35, 85n37, 114; incendiary and suspicious fire rates and frequencies in the United States 51, 75, 76–7; information management systems 62, 112, 117; and intentional fires 50, 73–4, 76–7, 80, 85n30, 85n32; investigation 3, 10, 15, 35, 59–63, 74, 79, 104–9, 110–12, 120, 131, 238; negligence and arson-by-neglect 45, 58–9, 99–100, 113, 131, 240; and parcel clearance 98–9, 115; as a Part I index crime 49, 61–2, 111, 240; prosecutions and Racketeer Influenced and Organized Crime Statute (RICO) 62, 115; rates and frequency in U.S. 9, 46–51, 55, 69–72, 76–9, 80–2, 85n42, 96, 111, 124, 237; and real estate speculation 56–7, 59, 97–9, 113–14, 132; in St. Louis 10, 56; in single resident occupancy hotels (SROs) 52, 96–7, 99, 115, 121, 130, 132, 207; in South Bronx 9–10, 46, 49, 54–7, 67; spite-revenge motives 60, 80, 96–7, 113; task forces 15–16, 62, 70, 79, 111–13, 122, 131–2, 240; as a white collar crime 2, 11, 35, 55–9, 60, 62–4, 78, 83n12, 97–9, 113, 116–18, 122, 131, 238–9; see also fire Arthur Andersen Consulting 125 Bachrach, Peter 27–9; see also nondecision-making

248   Index Baltimore, City of: Abell Foundation 200; and American Civil Liberties Union 203, 209; arrest and incarceration statistics 197; Baltimore BELIEVE 221n24; Baltimore Citizens Planning and Housing Association (CPHA) 199–200; Baltimore Police Department (BPD) 194–6, 199, 200, 202–3, 221n25; Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems (BSAS) 194, 201, 221n9; Community Action Agencies and Programs 28–9; Community Law Center (CLC) 199–200; community policing in 194–204; Community Support for Recovery (CSR) 199–200, 204; Comprehensive Communities Program (CCP) 17, 197–9, 200, 203–4, 220, 221n14, 221n17, 221n21; Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design 199; drug use in 192–3, 195, 197, 201–4; “Get Out of the Game” initiative 202; HIV/AIDS in 196; Johns Hopkins University study on voluntary treatment 201; Maryland “Hotspots” 200, 204; Maryland Police Corps 200; Mayor’s Coordinating Council on Criminal Justice (MCCCJ) 198, 200, 203, 221n15; and NAACP 203; needleexchange in 17, 193–4, 196, 218, 240, 243; and The Netherlands 193, 195; Officer Will Narango 194, 204; Police Athletic League (PAL); 17, 197, 199, 201, 203–4; Public Health Department 193–4; quality of life initiatives in 197–8, 201, 203; Recovery in Community (RIC) 200, 204; treatment on request in 194, 196, 201, 204 Baltimore Sun, The 198, 200, 221n26 Baratz, Morton 28–9; see also nondecision-making Barracato, John 66, 84n22; see also Aetna Life and Casualty Beckett, Katherine 219 Beilenson, Peter 169n22, 194, 196, 201–2, 205, 221n11, 221n13; see also Baltimore, City of Beletsky, Leo 218 Bennett, William 160; see also Office of National Drug Control Policy –­ ONDCP Bentham. Jeremy 145, 168n5 bias: and dimensions of power 27–31, 234–9; and distributional equity 38; in government and the state 2, 14–15, 27–31, 37–40, 162–4, 233–5; within fire

service organizations 2, 36, 40, 79, 234, 238–9; within law enforcement organizations 2, 30, 36, 39, 40, 62–3, 119, 161–4, 216, 234–7; “myth of altruism” 39; normative orders 14, 15, 35–40, 104, 124, 192, 233, 240–1 Black Lives Matter 216, 236 Boggs Act 157 Boston: fires and arson in 10–11, 55–7, 63, 67; Fenway neighborhood 10–11, 56–7, 60, 65; history of policing in 143–5; Lieutenant James Defuria 10, 60; Symphony Tenants Organizing Project 9–10, 15, 57, 64, 70 Boudreau, John F. 50, 83n11, 84n28; see also United States Law Enforcement Administration Brady, James 57–8; see also Boston Braithwaite, John 180, 220n1 broken windows policing: and disorderly behavior and incivilities 138–9, 148, 180; and “quality of life” measures 139–40, 162–3, 177, 198, 201, 203, 207–9, 214–15, 235–6; and Special Weapons and Tactical (SWAT) Teams 140, 177; and “stop and frisk” policies 139, 215, 236; theories behind 54, 139–40, 154, 217; and “zero-tolerance” 139, 177, 201–2, 215, 235; see also community policing Brown, Claude 157 Brown, Lee 166 Brown, Willie 205, 209–10; see also San Francisco, City of Buckley, William F. 164 Buffalo, NY 79, 237 California State Assembly see fire insurance, hearings on California State Department of Public Health 204 California Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act –­ SACPA (Proposition 36) 212–14, 218; see also San Francisco, City and County of Caulkins, Jonathan 165, 181 CBS News see “The Fire Next Door” Center for Fire Statistics (CTIF) 80, 85n43 Chetkovitch, Carol see Oakland Fire Department; gender Chicago, IL: Chicago Police Department 140, 216, 219; Community Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) 140, 219; Police Accountability Task Force 216

Index   249 Chicago School: and urban anomie 54 Christopher Commission Report 138–9 citizenship rights, definitions of 4–6 civil actions: code enforcement 114, 116, 118–19, 187, 239; and community policing 187, 192, 199 Clark, Kevin 202; see also Baltimore, City of clearance rates: arson 60, 70, 80, 97, 112–13, 131; and criminal investigations 12, 61, 84n14, 138, 151; national figures 60, 70, 112–13 Cleveland, OH 79, 237 Clinton Crime Bill see Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 Cloward, Richard 7 cocaine 156–7, 160, 168n7, 185, 191, 204 code violations: civil enforcement actions 16, 114, 116, 118–19, 187, 239; and cooperative enforcement strategies 67, 118; and criminal penalties 114, 118, 197, 199, 239; in Hyde 10, 99–100, 114, 116, 118, 119, 121, 130, 133n16; and neighborhood deterioration 53–4, 90; predicting arson and fire risk 48–9, 53, 55, 58, 64–5, 69, 71, 82, 96, 99, 109, 114, 121; see also arson early warning systems; fire prevention Colquhoun, Patrick 168n5 community policing: in Baltimore 194–5, 197–9, 200, 202–4, 215; broken windows models 13, 139, 142, 154, 162, 168, 177–8, 180, 215, 217, 234–6; and “COMPSTAT” 168n2; and “COPS” (federal Community Oriented Policing Services) Office 177; and drug control policies 2, 13, 17, 156–8, 166–8, 178, 180–92, 194–5, 203; foot patrol 138, 140, 178, 198, 204, 220; and “grimefighting” 138, 141, 180, 198; historical foundations of 3, 141–56; in Norfolk 185–92, 215, 242; nuisance abatement 141, 178, 180, 187–8, 191, 198, 200, 207, 215; pre-arrest/booking interventions 183, 191, 198, 241; and problem-oriented policing strategies 34, 138, 141, 168n2, 180; “reintegrative” approaches 13, 15, 19, 20n11, 178, 180–1, 183–6, 191–2, 197–8, 200, 202–4, 208, 214–20, 220n1, 235, 236–7, 240–2; in San Francisco 13, 17, 19, 205–7, 209, 210–15, 219–20, 240; and social service outreach 13, 17, 140–1,

155, 166–8, 179, 208, 220, 236, 240; see also broken windows policing; reintegrative community policing Comprehensive Communities Program (CCP) 17, 197–9, 200, 203–4, 220, 221n14, 221n17, 221n21; see also Baltimore, City of COMPSTAT see community policing Condon, Emmett 66, 84n23 Corrigan, Frank III 78 Cote, Arthur 103 Cotton, Paul 169n23 Crank, John 35, 139 Crawley, George 185–6, 192, 221n7; see also Norfolk, City of: Police-Assisted Community Enforcement Crenson, Matthew 29, 30; see also nonissues Crime in the United States: publication of 83n10, 168n1; see also FBI; Uniform Crime Reports crisis intervention teams (CITs) 13, 141, 182, 218, 242 CTIF see Center for Fire Statistics Currie, Elliott 169n23 Davis, Mike: and fires in Los Angeles 67, 127, 238 Delibert, Art 58, 99, 100 Denault, Genevieve see United States Law Enforcement Administration Des Jarlais, Don 180 Detroit: fires and arson in 1, 10, 56, 75, 78–9, 237, 240; property abandonment 78, 85n39, 237, 240, 244n2 decommodification: and the fire service 7, 93; and policing 143; and the welfare state 5–6 dimensions of power, theories of 14–15, 27–30, 117, 234–5; see also Lukes, Steven Dinkins, David 166, 179 Dixon, David 184 Downie, Leonard: on urban disinvestment and blockbusting 55–6 Driver v. Hinnant (1966) 158 drug: addiction and misuse 1, 13, 19n1, 139, 142, 156–9, 161–2, 165, 167, 168n7, 169n16, 181, 184, 200–1, 219, 239, 243; courts 165, 169n22, 190, 199, 201, 204, 209, 213, 243; definitions of 1, 156–9; detoxification and treatment programs 2, 13–14, 141, 147, 153, 155, 158, 165, 178, 181–2, 184, 190–1, 194,

250   Index drug continued 205–6, 208, 212, 216, 243; harm reduction policies and initiatives 8, 13, 16–18, 20n9, 165–6, 167, 169n23, 178, 181, 183–5, 193, 195, 205, 206, 217–18, 240–1, 243; offense rates by race 161; patterns of use by demographic group 157–8, 159–60, 184, 193, 197, 204 drug control policies and programs: and alcohol use 150–1, 160, 164; in Australia 166–7, 169n25, 184; in Baltimore 164, 178, 193–7, 200–2, 204, 206, 216, 218, 221n11, 221n24, 240, 243; in Canada 167, 184; demand reduction 165, 183; in Europe 142, 166–7, 183, 195, 217; harm reduction and public health approaches 8, 13, 16–17, 18, 20n9, 165–7, 169n23, 178, 181, 183–5, 193, 195–7, 205–6, 217–18, 240–1, 243; historical views on, in the U.S. 156–61, 164–8, 180–5, 195, 239; and methadone maintenance 159–60, 165–6, 181, 190, 194, 206, 212; in New Haven 13, 167, 184; in Norfolk 185, 188, 199, 242; in San Francisco 156–7, 204–6, 209–14, 219–20; and socialpubic order regimes and policies 183–4, 217, 241; supply reduction and interdiction 160, 162, 165; treatment diversion and outreach 17, 141, 155, 160, 166–8, 169n23, 169n24, 181, 183–4, 190–1, 195–6, 200, 204, 206, 210, 212, 217, 218, 219, 220, 235–7, 241; in the United Kingdom 166–7, 169n24, 183; see also drug; drug enforcement; policing; war on drugs drug enforcement: arrest and incarceration statistics 1, 158–9, 161–2, 169n16, 184, 193, 197, 210, 213–14; cautioning and “arrest-referral schemes” 166–7, 169n24, 169n25; drug abuse violations, statistics on 161–2; drug-free zones 163; and non-violent offender 161, 239; possession and use offenses 183, 209, 211–14, 217; see also drug control policies and programs; policing; war on drugs Dupont, Robert see Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP) Easter v. District of Columbia (1966) 158, 181 Esping-Andersen, Gøsta 4–6, 20n6, 168n4

FAIR Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR Plans) see fire insurance Faragher, William see United States Law Enforcement Administration Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI): the “G-Man” 151; and impacts on the training of local police 62, 151, 156; National Police Academy 151; Part I index crimes 49, 61, 83n10, 111, 146; policing public enemies 151; and publication of Crime in the United States 83n10, 168n1; Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) 47, 83n3, 84n14, 133n9, 151, 168n6, 168n7, 221n22 Federal Bureau of Narcotics 157, 159 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 46, 49, 81; see also United States Fire Administration fire: in Boston 10–11, 55–7, 63, 67; in the Bronx 9, 46, 49, 55–7, 67; building and structural incidents 1, 8, 46, 48–51, 70–2, 75–7, 80, 85n43, 94, 111, 115, 122; code violations 2, 10, 12, 55, 65–7, 99–100, 114, 116, 121, 127–8, 238–9; departments 2–4, 6–7, 31, 34–5, 46, 50, 60, 65–7, 82, 93, 100, 101–2, 105–7, 123, 238; in Detroit 1, 10, 56, 75, 78–9, 237, 240; financial cost 9, 46, 48; and gay and lesbian populations 10, 55, 96, 98, 112; global incident frequencies and rates 46, 80; greater and false alarms 95, 114, 133n7, 133n12; in high-rise buildings 66, 123; in Hyde 15–16, 52, 93–100, 110–13, 115–22, 132n5, 242; incident frequencies and rates by fire/ property type 48, 70, 71, 72, 76, 94, 85n43; incident frequencies and rates by socio-economic variables 52, 78, 80–1; incident frequencies and rates in the United States 47; incident frequencies and rates, urban versus non-urban 48; international incident rates 46, 80; investigation 3, 79, 105, 109, 122, 131, 238; in Los Angeles 67, 127, 238; in New Jersey 48–9; in New York City 9, 10–11, 46, 49, 55, 56, 67, 68, 131; outside/other 70, 71, 76, 84n25, 94; residential and non-residential 71–2; in single-room occupancy hotels (SROs); 52, 96–7, 99, 115, 121, 130, 132, 207; and social inequality 2, 45, 48–50, 81; as a social problem 15, 45, 48–82, 93–100, 132, 234, 237, 240–1; sources of ignition 50, 60, 72, 73, 74, 75; in

Index   251 urban settings 2–3, 8–10, 11–12, 16, 46–51, 53–7, 59, 60, 64–5, 68, 70–1, 76–7, 100–3, 113, 131, 237, 240; in vacant and abandoned properties 52–5, 71, 76, 78–9, 84n25, 99; vehicle 49, 70, 76, 80, 84n25, 85n34, 85n43, 94; see also arson fire cause: accidental 50, 55, 58, 60–1, 63, 76–7, 85n37, 95, 111, 114, 116, 121; adjusted versus raw incident figures 72, 76; alternative sources of ignition (ASI) 72, 73, 74, 75; in buildings and structures 48, 52, 57–8, 66, 67, 71, 96, 99–100, 102; built-to-burn factors 50–1, 52, 59, 96, 131–2; cooking 1, 59, 72, 73, 74, 75, 78, 85n32, 110–11; electrical 61, 72, 73, 74, 80, 132; frequencies and patterns in the U.S. 72, 73, 74, 75; heating 48, 58, 72, 73, 74, 75, 80; incendiary and suspicious 50–1, 61, 72, 73, 74, 75–8, 114; intentional 72, 73, 74, 74–7, 85n30, 85n32; investigations 59–60, 62, 110–12; and property abandonment and disinvestment 49, 55–9, 80–1, 99–100; and real estate speculation 55–9, 97–9, 113–14; smoking 61, 72, 73, 74, 75, 81; and urban anomie 54–5, 57, 78; unknown 50–1, 61, 63, 72, 73, 74, 75–6, 84–5n28; see also arson; fire fire fatalities: frequency and incidents in the U.S. 9, 45–6, 48, 66, 69, 75, 77–8, 84n24; by race 81, 238; and socioeconomic status 67, 81, 238 Fire-for-Hire 49; see also ABC News fire insurance: Aetna Life and Casualty 66, 68; bad faith lawsuits 68; California State Assembly hearings on 103–4; Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) Plans 11, 58, 64, 68–70, 121; and fireman’s balls 100; firemarks 100; industry 52, 59, 67, 69, 100–4, 120, 122; and Insurance Services Office 104; and mutual aid societies 100; redlining 49, 64, 69, 83n9; surplus line carriers 11, 58, 69; underwriting and risk assessment 11, 58, 64, 69, 102, 120; U.S. General Accounting Office 58; and volunteer fire companies 100–1; see also National Board of Fire Underwriters fire investigation: determining cause and origin 59–60, 62, 110–11, 112; in Hyde 16, 104–9, 110–12, 117, 120, 122, 131, 133n14; organizational impediments to

59, 62, 64, 111–12; in the United States 3–4, 15, 59, 60–2, 237; see also arson; fire “Fire Next Door, The” 9, 49, 55 fire prevention: and civil enforcement actions 68, 114, 116, 118–19, 239; civilianization of fire inspection units 124, 128–31, 241; enforcement of state and municipal codes 11–12, 16, 49, 55, 65–7, 82, 96, 103–4, 114, 118–19, 122–3, 125, 128–9, 131–2, 143, 238–9, 241; fire protection engineers (FPEs) 52, 126, 129, 238; in high-rise properties 66, 123, 125–9, 238; historical perspectives on 2, 9–12, 34, 37, 46–8, 59, 64–7, 100, 103, 106–10, 118–20, 122–4, 128–9, 131, 241–2; in Hyde 93, 104–10, 118–24, 126, 127–9, 131–2, 238, 241; inspections and inspectors 4, 34, 37, 105–10, 114, 119, 122–30, 242; and the insurance industry 59, 64, 67–9, 101–4, 120, 121; life-safety systems 123, 125, 128–9, 237–8; smoke alarms 67, 69, 81, 82; sprinklers 52, 66, 69, 99, 102, 123, 127, 238; see also arson; fire fire-risk, competing narratives on 50–9 fire service: historical dimensions of 3, 35, 100–3; in the United States 11, 9–12, 35, 46–7, 59–61, 66, 100–4, 108, 237–8, 242; and the welfare state 4, 6, 9–12, 39–40, 14–15, 101–4, 118, 233, 243 firefighters: and occupational sub-cultures 105, 109–10, 240; fatalities 9, 69, 84n24; gendered dimensions 36, 109–10, 129, 130 firehouses 55, 65, 79, 82, 100–2, 106–10, 124 firemarks see insurance Flint, MI City of 38, 79, 237 Flood, Joe 49, 55, 67 Forums on Fire and Arson Prevention Partnerships 66, 84n19; see also Arson Prevention and Action Coalition Foucault, Michel 8, 15, 216, 235; see also governmentality Frazier, Thomas 194–7, 199, 202–4; see also Baltimore, City of Gardiner, Christine 162, 213 Garland, David: and “penal-welfare” state 7, 8, 156 Gary, Indiana see Crenson, Matthew gender: in firefighting 36, 109–10, 129, 130; in policing 150

252   Index gentrification: and evictions and fire 10, 11, 56, 57, 63, 70, 79, 98–9, 120, 131–2, 237; and “revanchist” city 234; “upscale arson” 57 Goetz, Barry 16, 40, 52, 62–3 Goldstein, Joseph see New York City, Stop and Frisk practices Gouldner, Alvin: on organizational indulgency patterns 109 governmentality: and bio-political measures 217, 220, 235; as fourth dimension of power 30–1, 235; and institutional selectivity 15, 30–1, 40; and Michel Foucault 15, 30, 216, 235; and political technologies of power 40, 178, 235, 237, 243 Gramsci, Antonio 234 Gray, Freddie 140, 169n21, 202–3, 204, 215, 216 Greene, Jack 168n8 Guarino-Ghezzi, Susan 180

International Association of Firefighters, The (IAAF) 124

Hamm, Leonard 202; see also Baltimore, City of harm reduction see drug; drug control polices and enforcement Harrison Act 156–7 Hellawell, Keith 183 Herbert, Steven 20n12, 32–3, 36–7, 162–3, 216 Hewitt, Martin 145, 235 high-rise buildings: fire suppression in 66, 123; see also fire; fire prevention Hoover, President Herbert 150 Huey, Laura 211–12, 218

Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) 50, 61–2, 112, 154 Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) 13, 184, 203–4, 216, 217, 219–20, 222n38, 237, 240, 242 LeDuff, Charlie 78; see also Detroit Lentini, John 79, 108, 111 Leo, Richard 33, 152 Levy, Frank 38 Lima, Alfred 49 Lipsky, Michael 4, 39 Los Angeles: Christopher Commission 137, 138–9; code enforcement in 67, 127, 238; fires in 67, 127, 238; Police Department 12, 137, 152; Rodney King beating 137; uprisings in 2, 137; see also Davis, Mike Loveland Technologies 78 Lukes, Steven 14, 29, 234; see also dimensions of power Lynch, Mona 213–14

incendiary and suspicious fires see arson; fire Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department 137 Ingram, Helen 8, 218 Innovative Neighborhood Oriented Policing Program (INOP) 181, 186, 220; see also Norfolk, City of institutional selectivity: core–periphery distinction in Hyde 104–9, 111, 126; and dimensions of power 233–9; in education 39; and governmentality 15, 30–1, 40; normative orders 32–3, 37–40, 233; and theories of the state 14, 15, 30, 39 Insurance Information Institute 85n38 Insurance Services Office see fire insurance

Jacobson, Michael 58, 79 Johnson, President Lyndon B. 152–3 Jordan, Frank Mayor 208–9; see also San Francisco, City of Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment 154 Kasinitz, Phillip 58 Katz, Jack 63 Kelling, George 54–5, 139, 154, 221n14 Kerner Commission 2, 19n2, 153–5, 236 King, Rodney see Los Angeles Klinenberg, Eric 140, 216 Klockars, Carl 168n8 Kraska, Peter 140 Kubler, Daniel 183, 217, 241 Kwan, Quon see United States Law Enforcement Assistance Administration

McNamara, Joseph 164, 194 Maher, Lisa 184 Manning, Peter 145 Mapp v. Ohio (1961) 33, 152 Marcuse, Peter 6, 233 Marijuana Tax Act 157 Marshall, T.H. 5, 6, 233; see also citizenship rights Mastrofski, Stephen 140, 168n9, 178

Index   253 Meltsner, Arnold 38–9 Memphis, TN 182 MGM Grand Hotel Fire 66, 123 Miranda v. Arizona (1966) 33, 152 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick 54, 84n13 Nadelmann, Ethan 164 naloxone 14, 184, 205, 243 National Advisory Council on Urban Disorders see Kerner Commission National Arson Prevention and Action Coalition (NAPAC) 65–6 National Board of Fire Underwriters (NFBU) 101–2, 103, 104, 123; see also fire insurance deficiency points; grading surveys National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control: and publication of America Burning (1973) 8–9, 11, 46, 48, 59, 100 National Fire Academy 47, 62, 112, 131; see also U.S. Fire Administration National Fire Incident Report System (NFIRS) 47, 72, 73–7, 79–80, 83n4–83n5, 84n25, 85n30, 85n32, 85n34, 85n36; see also U.S. Fire Administration National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 16, 46–7, 49, 75, 77, 81, 83n1, 83n4–83n5, 84n25, 85n32, 85n34, 85n37, 102, 103 National Fire Protection Control Act: and creation of National Fire Protection and Control Administration 46; see also United States Fire Administration National Prohibition 150 New Haven, CT 13, 62, 167, 184 neo-liberal state, the 3, 82, 234, 239; and collaborative community partnerships 241–2 New York City: Board of Police Commissioners 149; heroin use in 157–8, 159; history of policing in 139–40, 143, 144, 149, 166, 179, 201; La Bodega de la Familia 184; Lexow Committee 149; Narcotics Council of the Welfare Council 157; Safe Streets/ Safe Cities Initiative 166, 179; stop and frisk practices 139, 168n3, 215, 236; racial uprisings in 9; Tammany Hall 149; see also broken windows policing; policing Nixon, Richard President 8, 46, 54, 159, 160 nondecision-making 28, 29

non-issues 11, 29, 30, 40, 115, 132, 134n18 Norfolk, City of: civic leagues in 186–90, 192; Community Drug Control Master Plan 185, 221n7; community policing in 185–92; Community Services Board 186, 190–1; detoxification services in 191; drug use in 186, 189–90; and Innovative Neighborhood-Oriented Policing Program (INOP) 186; Mayor’s Task Force on Drugs 185, 221n7; Police Assisted Community Enforcement (PACE) 17, 185–92, 220; Social Services 186, 188–91; U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention 186 normative orders: of fire and police departments 32–7, 39, 241; and institutions and organizations 27, 32, 35, 37, 39, 233, 240; and institutional selectivity 32–3, 37–40, 233; and the law 32–3, 35; and micro-foundations 33 Norris, Ed 201–2, 221n23, 221n25; see also Baltimore, City of Oakland Fire Department 107 Offe, Claus: and non-events 30; selection mechanisms 14, 30, 39, 233; state bias 14–15, 30 Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) 160 O’Malley, Martin 201–4, 221n24 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 see President’s Crime Commission Report Open Society Institute 200, 222n40; see also Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Orange County, CA see Christine Gardiner para-miltarism: in police and fire departments 34, 35, 65, 104–5, 140, 149, 216, 236, 238 Peel, Sir Robert 143, 168n5 People’s Firehouse 65, 70, 84n21, 240; see also Fred Ringler Pfohl, Steven 132n6 Piven, Frances F. 7–8 policing: use of arrest referral schemes and “cautions” 166, 169n24–169n5; civil enforcement measures 158, 187, 191–2, 199, 215; constable-watch system 142–3; crime-fighting orientation 13, 15,

254   Index policing continued 19, 31–2, 35, 141, 146, 150–2, 154, 155–6, 179, 202, 214, 215, 216, 234, 236, 241; “good government” reforms 149, 155; and militarization 13, 236; in the Nineteenth Century 7–8, 142–9; off-limits orders 164; order maintenance and peacekeeping 17–19, 140–2, 146–8, 154–6, 163, 177, 179, 180, 183–4, 187–8, 191, 198, 200, 203–16, 218, 234, 236, 241; and police–social worker teams 155; and “pooping and snooping” 163; pretext stops 163, 169n20; and probable cause 163; the professionalization movement 12, 35–6, 138, 149–52, 154, 155–6; quality of life and zero-tolerance measures 139–40, 145, 162–3, 177, 197–8, 201, 203, 207–9, 214–15, 235–6; and reasonable suspicion 163, 188; and “skid-rows” 147, 184, 208; social service agency approaches 140–2, 155, 156, 179–80; stop-and-frisk or “Terry Frisk” policies 139, 163, 168n3, 215, 236; subcultural dynamics 32–3, 36–7, 152, 216, 235; “thief-catchers” 142; training methods and programs 35, 36, 148–51, 154, 179, 180, 186, 188–9, 211, 219, 221n14; and the welfare state 2–3, 4–8, 12–14, 39–40, 140–1, 143–6, 179, 233, 235, 243; and “zones of permissible action” 162 Pontell, Henry 34–5 post-booking interventions 183, 204, 213, 218, 243 post-industrial transformation: and arson 98–9, 237–8; community policing 207; and fire-risk 98–9; and gentrification 98, 125, 207, 237; high-rise properties 125; in Hyde 98, 125 pre-arrest/booking diversion 13, 19, 166–7, 181–5, 189, 191, 195, 198, 202–4, 206, 217–18, 240, 241, 243; see also Angel Program; community policing; Law Enforcement Assisted; reintegrative community policing President’s Crime Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration: and publication of Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (1967) 153 pre-trial interventions see post-booking problem-oriented policing see community policing Progressive Movement, the 149, 155; see

also policing “good government” reform; policing and the welfare state Property Insurance Loss Register 69; see also American Insurance Association public health perspectives on drug control see drug; drug enforcement public nuisance violations 141, 178, 180, 186–92, 198–200, 203–4, 207, 215; see also broken windows policing public records see arson, early warning systems public safety agencies: definitions of 3–4; as institutional “myth and ceremony” 31–2; as institutions 31–2; normative orders 32–7, 39, 241; and subcultures 32–3, 36–7, 105, 109–10, 152, 216, 235, 240; task environments 33–4 Pyromania 57 quality of life measures and programs (community policing) Racketeer Influenced and Organized Crime Statute (RICO) see arson, prosecutions under reasonable suspicion see policing red-light districts: and drug use and sales 97, 158; and fire 97, 115 red-lining: banks 64, 83n9; and fires 49; insurance 69 reintegrative community policing: in Baltimore 195, 198, 202–4; and crisis intervention teams 182–3, 218; and detoxification diversion and programs 178, 181, 182, 184, 191; and drug treatment outreach 179, 181, 184; and harm reduction measures 178, 181, 183–5; in Lansing, MI 179, 185; in New York City 179, 184; in Norfolk 186, 191–2; in North Carolina 179–89, 181; pre-arrest/booking measures 181–5; in San Francisco 208, 214–5; in Seattle 185, 216; and social service outreach 178, 179, 180, 187, 190, 191, 192; see also Angel Program; community policing; crisis intervention teams (CITs) Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) Reuter, Peter 165, 181 Richardson, James F. 144, 168n5 Ringler, Fred 65, 84n21; see also People’s Firehouse Robinson Versus California (1962) 158, 169n13, 181

Index   255 Roosevelt, Theodore 149 Roth, Jeffrey 221n14 Runyon, Damon 158 San Francisco, City of: and American Civil Liberties Union 209; Board of Supervisors 205; buy and bust operations in 213–14; California Health and Safety Code Section 11–5-50, 211; California Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act – SACPA (Proposition 36) 212–14, 218; Campaign Against Drug Abuse (CADA) 17–18, 210–15, 217, 219, 220, 240; chronic inebriate “hold for court” policy (San Francisco Cares) 209, 222n34; Coalition on Homelessness 209, 222n33; community policing in 206–10; Community Substance Abuse Services (CSAS) 205, 212; Department of Public Health (SFDPH) 205–6, 211, 214; drug control efforts in 156–7, 167–8, 205–14, 218, 240; drug use in 204–5, 207, 209, 211; harm reduction in 205–6; homeless populations 206–9, 212, 222n33; and High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) 210–11; HIV/AIDS in 205; Lieutenant Robert Hernandez 210–12; McMillan Center 206, 211; Mission District 17, 79, 212; Mobilized Assistance Patrol (MAP) 206; needleexchange in 205; Operation Matrix 208–9, 211, 214; quality of life initiatives 207–9, 214; San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) 206–10, 212, 214; Tenderloin/South of Market district 158, 207–8, 210, 213; Tenderloin Task Force 18, 208; Treatment Access Program (TAP) 18, 206, 211–12; Treatment on Demand (TOD) Planning Council 206, 209, 212–14; treatment on demand (TOD) programs 205–6, 209–11, 213–14 San Francisco Examiner 209 Schattschneider, E.E.: and the “mobilization of bias” 28, 29 Schmoke, Kurt 164, 169n22, 193–5, 199, 200–1, 203–4; see also Baltimore, City of Schneider, Ann 8, 218 Schrager, Laura Shill 83n12 Scondras, David 9–11, 57, 84n18; see also Symphony Tenants Organizing Project

Scott, W. Richard 133n11 Seattle, WA 62, 184, 216–17, 220n3, 237, 242; see also Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) selection mechanisms see Claus Offe Shapiro, Susan 63 Short, James F., Jr. 83n12 Siegfried, John J. 78 Simon, David 202 Skolnick, Jerome 36, 157 Smith, Neil 234–5; see also gentrification; “revanchist” city smokeaters 106 South Bronx 9, 49, 54, 56 Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP) 159–60; see also war on drugs Spooner, Catherine 217, 219 Sutherland, Edwin 83n12, 119 Symphony Tenants Organizing Project (STOP) see Boston Tebeau, Mark 101, 109, 133n13; see also fire insurance Terry v. Ohio (1968) 163 therapeutic jurisprudence see drug, courts Tierney, Kathleen 45 Thompson, James D. 32, 133n10 Toledo, OH 79, 237 Tonry, Michael J. 161, 169n17 Townsend, Kathleen Kennedy 201, 221n20; see also Norfolk, City of Training Day 36 Trojanowicz, Robert 185 Underwriters Laboratories 52, 102 Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) 47, 84n14, 133n9, 168n6–168n7, 221n22; see also FBI United Kingdom: Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs 167, 169n25; drug policing in 169n24–169n5; Merseyside Harm Reduction Model 167; National Health Service 167; Tackling Drugs Together 166 United States Congress 9, 29, 57–8, 157, 221n11, 221n13, 239 United States Consumer Products Safety Commission 52 United States Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) 16, 62, 112 United States Department of Justice 13, 47, 141, 151, 159, 181, 197, 216

256   Index United States Fire Administration (USFA): and arson task forces 62; National Fire Incident and Reporting System (NFIRS) 47, 72–7, 79, 83n4–83n5, 84n26, 85n30, 85n32, 85n34, 85n36; and publication of Fire in the United States 47, 72, 83n3, 83n5, 84n25 United States General Accounting Office 58; see also fire insurance, Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) United States Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA): and arson incident data 50, 62, 112; arson information management systems (AIMS) 62, 112, 117; arson task force funding 112 United States Senate 49, 60, 84n18 United States Sentencing Project 162, 169n15; see also drug enforcement, arrest and incarceration statistics Urban Educational Systems, Boston see Arson Early Warning System USFA see United States Fire Administration Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 177 Virginian-Pilot 187, 189 Vollmer, August 35, 149–50, 155–6, 178–9 volunteer fire companies: in Boston 101, 144; in Cincinnati 101; rioting and 101, 144; in San Francisco 101; see also fire insurance Walker, Samuel 148 Walti, Sonja 183, 217, 241 war on drugs, the: and Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 160; and Anti-Drug Abuse

Act of 1988 160; arrests and enforcement measures 159, 160–4, 168, 184, 194, 196, 214; drug-free zones 163; and mass incarceration 237; supply reduction and interdiction policies 160, 162, 165; see also drug; drug control policies and programs; drug enforcement welfare state, the: definitions 4–5; and the fire service 4, 6, 9–12, 39–40, 14–15, 101–4, 118, 233, 243; modernization perspectives on 7, 20n8, 143–4; and policing 2–3, 4–8, 12–14, 39–40, 140–1, 143–6, 179, 233, 235, 243; theories of 4–9, 14, 15, 233–4 Westley, William 152 white collar crime: and arson 2, 11, 35, 55–9, 60, 62–4, 78, 83n12, 97–9, 113, 116–18, 122, 131, 238–9; building and fire code violations 10, 53, 65, 67, 99, 114; investigations of 34–5, 39–40, 60, 62, 63–4, 70, 116–18, 119; versus common crimes 63, 116, 122, 131; see also arson Whren v. United States (1996) 169n20 Wickersham Commission: and publication of Lawlessness in Law Enforcement 150 Wilensky, Harold 4 Wilkins, Roger 168n11 Wilson, J.Q. 32, 146, 154 Wilson, William J. 81 Wire, The (HBO) 192–3, 195, 202 Young, Douglas 184 zero-tolerance policing see broken windows policing