North Hollywood Surveillanceanother example of how really small crimes, such as defacement (they show paint on a plastic garbage can), are used to promote radical policing measures that infringe your everyday lives. what is worse, graffiti or big brother? why are we so accepting of this crap? the broken windows theory is breaking our notion of what community policing is. Growing up, I used to think of police in a similar light to firemen or postmen — you know, part of the community. I definitely don’t see police like that anymore. Look at the two robocops in the background behind the woman in the massive red thing. (Did Tiger turn red into a power colour?) 
You never hear about the people who kill graffiti writers, the cops that beat them or even the writers who emerge as huge artists (local shout). All you ever hear is how graffiti writers are killing your children and giving Nukes to Iran — black and white, classic bombing colours but never any grey. Pay attention to how people portray your community in the news versus how your community really is. Is it accurate? My community, for instance, is portrayed as the shoot’em up district of Calgary even though it’s quite safe. Why the disconnect? Is someone working hard on a campaign? Are my rights being news’d? Don’t let some weird sense of political correctness stop you from voicing your opinion over the phone, by email or with a billboard — you’re allowed. This video is the perfect example of how our whole perspective is out of whack. In north hollywood they blame it on gang violence and graffiti. In the UK they blame it on litter bugs. In Canada they blame it on the bars or just being a big city. Anyhow, I’m just saying that the cops driving down the street in their bulletproof van, dressed all in black sporting kevlar sunglasses, laptopping every license plate on the street doesn’t make me feel safer and it’s certainly not how I’d choose to have my community policed. Cameras don’t make me feel safer either — they just make me feel like I’m being spied on and that seems like overkill when you start with a premise of “we’re doing this because of graffiti.” And nobody LIKES a spy, just like nobody likes a RAT. It seems that police responses have been particularly cumbersome on society as a whole and tend to ignore the social root where most of these broken window crimes develop. Hopefully Calgary can remember that there are other ways of thinking about policing, but I just can’t see it happening. Anyhow, I could go on all day about problems with policing and community building, but no one likes a critic, so maybe sometime I’ll approach it more positively. This all started because I wanted a place to put these links for future reference. links: Wikipedia – Calgary Police News Articles: |
