For over 20 years, Connie Rice, a leading civil rights attorney twice named one of the top 10 influential lawyers in California, woke up every morning trying to think of a new way to sue Charlie Beck, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department and the first officer assigned to CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlum). With no dialogue between the two parties, suing was the only way to start any type of conversation. The LAPD was notorious for its brutally oppressive force against the black and hispanic community as it followed a monolithic strategy of mass arrest and mass incarceration. They were following the idea of the body politic: “lockup as many blacks as possible”, the common strategy found in most urban centres with large numbers of African Americans as well as in rural areas in terms of whites in the meth economy.

Throughout the late 1970's and up until recently, those who believed themselves to be working towards crime reduction were doing the one thing they were good at, arresting. What Rice calls the “stuck on stupid cycle of mass incarceration” was based on the idea that police could arrest their way out of the reality of gang violence. Over a period of 30 years, this strategy cost over 25 billion dollars, and resulted in a ten fold increase in the number of those involved in criminal street gangs. Its fair to say that second to the monumental failure of the "War on Drugs" has been "the War on Gangs". Although police continued to increase their number of arrests, gang violence did not decrease and the appeal of gangs steadily escalated. The "War on Gangs" denied the reality that society had created a very real social need for street gangs and gang membership, and aiming to destroy the association of young men rather than gang violence was an unrealistic, as well as dangerous goal. Two weeks before his retirement, an officer who had spent his career as a part of CRASH confided in Rice. He recounted how he had recently arrested the grandson of a man whom he had arrested 30 years ago after having graduated from the police academy only two weeks prior. He had also arrested this man's son 10 years later. He said, “We've destroyed three generations of a family in my career and I didn't do a damn thing to make that family better”. Realizing that his career as a part of LA's gang unit had been a failure because it had been unable to change the ecosystem of gangs, he too realized that “we cannot arrest our way out of this”.

But today in LA there is transformative change that is not yet recognized.

What is occurring is a change from a mass incarceration mindset to a public health mindset, one which views violence as a disease which if properly diagnosed can be eradicated. A mindset that views communities plagued with violence as communities that need to be made healthy again as opposed to communities that need to be segregated. This strategy calls for proper analysis through research and the implementation of evidence-based policies. Most importantly, this public health strategy does not count its success based on numbers of arrests.

It is the beginning a mass collaboration between all actors, even between Connie Rice and Charlie Beck, who now work not only side by side, but as partners. This partnership has created a new table where everyone can sit as equals to create a wrap around team where actors are no longer fighting each other but are coming together to combat the real problem: violence, hopelessness, and mass incarceration. No longer are they attacking drugs, because they have come to realize that drugs are not the problem. Instead, says Rice, drugs are a part of a “stupid policy that fails to see addiction as a health issue”. In addition, it is now obvious that most gang violence no longer has to do with drugs. In the past year, of 160 killings due to gang violence, only 10% were drug related. Rather, these deadly confrontations had to do with disrespect, girls and “long time beef”, all of which can be mediated with proper outreach to targeted areas. Current outreach programs utilize individuals who have credibility in the community to intervene by demonstrating manners to solve disputes in peaceful manners and conflict resolution without the use of deadly force.

Overall in LA, this is a re-crafting of policing. Officers will no longer be promoted for their arrests, rather, they will be promoted for avoiding the arrest of young persons, assisting health workers come into contact with families, and their participation in becoming positive building blocks in gang hot zones.

When will your city be next?



Yamina-Sara Chekroun