Hot spot policing is when police target areas they believe are responsible for the most crime, and unsurprisingly, those areas are often Black. This type of policing’s legacy is intertwined with stop-and-frisk.
But organizers and educators Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie explained why this approach is anti-Black and ineffective in stopping violence.
They first bring up what’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy. Police use their own crime statistics to target a particular area. Then, that area produces more arrests, feeding into more biased crime statistics to justify policing those areas. And even when violence is reduced there, that doesn’t mean it isn’t just displaced to new areas.
But, even without knowing this information, hot spot policing can be dismantled by simple logic.
The criminal legal system has always worked to legitimize what people in power count as crime. And that definition only includes certain types of harm.
Taking from Kaba and Ritchie’s example, why aren’t Wall Street and fraternity houses considered hot spots for financial crimes and sexual assault? Or what about the White House? Exploitative workplaces? Sundown towns? Police departments themselves?
Both this country’s interpretation of crime and its hot spots are subjective opinions, not facts. And though our communities are left with the punishments inflicted by a biased, anti-Black system, this knowledge gives us the power to reflect, imagine, and create differently.