Public Safety as a Matter of Public Health
This
story was created as a part of the NDSC Criminal Justice Data Initiative. In the
spring of 2019, the USC Price Center partnered with Microsoft and the USC Safe Communities Institute to launch the NDSC Criminal Justice Data Initiative, a pilot
project to collect, aggregate, and disseminate additional public safety
indicators on the NDSC platform, including arrests, stops by police, and calls
for service from community members. These indicators were determined through
engaging with law enforcement agencies, community residents, and local
non-profits on their data needs and definitions of public safety. Read the full report here.
Public
safety is a vital component of a healthy environment that allows a community to
thrive. Studies have shown that perceptions of public safety have far-reaching impacts
on community health through their influence on the physical and mental
well-being of residents, their social behaviors, and feelings of community
cohesion. In other words, a safe community is a healthy community.
Over
the last decade, the widespread availability of camera phones and movements
such as #BlackLivesMatter--which began in 2013--have elevated issues of violence
and racial discrimination at the hands of law enforcement. These factors have influenced the conversation on public safety by
highlighting how the very institutions mandated to uphold public safety often
leave certain communities feeling less safe and erode public perceptions of
safety in the process.
Defining Public Safety
To
better understand how different people and professions conceive of public
safety, the USC Price Center hosted a series of
listening sessions with law enforcement, community-based organizations,
researchers, and community members. The figure below shows their answers in
word cloud format
Definitions
from law enforcement officers shared common themes, including: protection from
harm, teamwork, and transparency. In contrast, definitions from local
government and nonprofit representatives focused more on topics like health and
wellbeing, community investment, economic opportunity, and the built
environment. Lastly, South Los Angeles residents reflected on their communal
experience with police and the criminal justice system and shared themes such
as the criminalization of poverty, racial profiling, and the desire for
investments in community programs rather than police. The varied definitions
provided by different participants underscore the many factors that influence
people’s conceptions of public safety. While definitions of public safety
differed largely amongst groups, all agreed that public safety includes
intangible elements such as community belonging, connectedness, and
opportunities to thrive and be free.
Geographic Disparities in Police Stops
Studies
have shown that
marginalized populations are unequally affected by law enforcement patrolling
and police contact. Data analyzed through the NDSC Criminal Justice Data Initiative provides
evidence of the disproportionate impacts of LAPD’s policing on communities of
color, especially in South Los Angeles.
South
Los Angeles is home to just over 777,000 people. A historically Black
neighborhood, today, 28% of the population identifies as Black and 66% of the
population identifies as Latino according to 2018 American Community Survey
estimates. These percentages are much greater than overall LA County averages,
where 8% of the population identifies as Black and 48% identify as Latino.
Further, the history of South Los Angeles, which includes significant community
uprisings in protest of police mistreatment in the 1960s and 1990s, has
informed community attitudes towards law enforcement. These longstanding tense
relations between residents and the LAPD inform the perspectives of respondents
from South LA, who emphasized the harmful psychological impacts of the
criminalization of poverty and racial profiling, and the need for investments
in alternative programs to increase neighborhood safety during listening
sessions.
Our
analysis found that vehicle and pedestrian stop rates by the police are much
higher in South Los Angeles when compared to the rest of the city. As depicted
in the graph below, there were steady declines in police stops for both South
LA and the rest of the city up until 2015. After 2015, there was a sharp
increase in stops in South LA, while the rates remained fairly steady across the
rest of the city.
While residents in South Los Angeles have higher rates of stops than other parts of the city, people of color across all neighborhoods - especially people who identify as Black - are stopped at higher rates by the police than other groups. Across the city, Black Angelenos are stopped and arrested three times as often as their White and Latino counterparts. The chart on the left shows stop and arrest rates by race/ethnicity, averaging data from years 2011 to 2018 and accounting for the relative size of each racial/ethnic group.
Public Safety as a Social Determinant of Health
Racial
and place-based disparities in policing not only affect communities' perceptions
of public safety, but also play a significant role in their overall health and well-being.
There is growing evidence that
high-profile incidents of police violence as well as racial profiling have negative consequences on the physical and
mental health of Black people and
on Black communities.
Several studies have shown how inappropriate stops by law enforcement and racial profiling are linked to adverse mental health outcomes, including anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Moreover, studies on neighborhood-level frisks and use of force have similarly found that those policing strategies lead to elevated levels of distress among men living in those neighborhoods. This is troublesome given the affects stress has on health. Feelings of fear, anxiety, anger, etc. produce cardiovascular, neurological and other bodily responses that put strain on body organs, negatively affecting health and increasing mortality.
In
addition to the negative impacts it produces, racial profiling by law
enforcement can also affect individuals’ and communities’ ability to achieve
positive physical health outcomes. One study found
that in neighborhoods of color where law enforcement used high rates of force,
there was increased risk for diabetes and obesity among community members. This
study also found that for people of color, living in majority-white neighborhoods
with large racial gaps in police tactics was strongly associated with high
blood pressure, diabetes and obesity.
As
these studies suggest, racial profiling by police and unequal law enforcement
tactics have large impacts for public health. It can not only directly cause
death and injury, but also has emotional and physiological ripple effects on
individuals and communities that can lead to adverse health outcomes.
Given
this reality, there are a number of political efforts underway to reimagine
community public safety. Re-Imagine
L.A, a coalition of advocates and community organizations, have
placed a ballot initiative called Measure J on the November 2020 ballot that
would designate a portion of the LA County budget to be used for alternatives
to policing and incarceration. If passed, Measure J would amend the county’s
charter to require at least 10% of locally-controlled revenues to be spent on
community investment such as mental health services, youth development
programs, and affordable housing.
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Accessed January 18, 2019.