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| 31 Disciplining Youth and Families in the Flatlands Back in the days, our parents used to take care of us Look at ‘em now, they even fuckin’ scared of us Callin’ the city for help because they can’t maintain Damn, shit done changed. —Notorious B.I.G. In February 2001, one of the Elmhurst Neighborhood Crime Prevention Councils (NCPC) met in a classroom at a local middle school. Bill Clay, the dapper African American NCPC president, invited two uniformed community policing officers, a tall, broad-shouldered white officer and a heavyset Asian officer, to sit up at the front of the room with him, “on the hot seat.” The officers explained that they had been doing a lot of violence suppression in response to the recent rise in homicides, “flooding” particular areas with as many as twenty-five officers and “stopping everyone we can.” They were targeting parolees and conducting undercover buy-bust operations at drug hot spots. Mr. Clay then told the officers to take out their pens and asked for community concerns: “Who’s got the first problem?” Mrs. Gilbert, Mr. Lawlor, Mr. and Mrs. Riles, Mrs. Taylor, and her granddaughter sat around tables with fifteen other people facing the front of the room where pictures for Black History Month surrounded the blackboard. Older African American homeowners formed a clear majority of members in the NCPC, but they were joined by a couple of white senior citizens, younger African American homeowners, one older Latino homeowner, an Arab business owner, and the school vice-principal and a code compliance officer, both African American. This NCPC was typical of most in Elmhurst. A small number of people came monthly, but more would turn out for meetings with the police chief or city manager. This NCPC could reach as many as two hundred residents through its homeowners’ associations, block captains , informal phone trees, and relationships among neighbors. 32 | Disciplining Youth and Families in the Flatlands Residents began to describe problems with drug dealing at specific addresses, sometimes using drug dealers’ nicknames and offering details about where drugs were hidden and when drugs were sold. Mrs. Gilbert complained that she had to move her granddaughter’s bedroom to the other side of the house so she wouldn’t hear drug dealers’ conversations from next door. “All the dealers in East Oakland are at that address.” Mrs. Taylor disagreed ; she still had a lot of dealers on her block. James Richards, a black man in his midforties, was discussing persistent drug dealing at a local liquor store when Deputy Chief Bryant walked into the room. “They’re like cockroaches , the mess, the noise level is outrageous,” he said. Turning to the deputy chief, he added, “I’m talking about across from your mother’s home.” A broad-shouldered African American man with gentle eyes, Deputy Chief Bryant responded that he knew the problem well. He had grown up in this neighborhood before moving to the Oakland hills. He still attended church, visited his mother, and mentored young people in the neighborhood. Bryant described his vision for how to address Oakland’s persistent problems with crime and violence. “We can’t resolve the problem by locking people up, and we have locked up a lot of folks in Oakland. OPD [Oakland Police Department] is good at that. In California we have tripled the prison population and darn near bankrupted this state by trying to lock people up.” He asked for volunteers to go door to door to promote a pledge of nonviolence, to hand out literature on anger management resources, and to recruit new members for community policing. The deputy chief hoped this new program would recreate the Elmhurst neighborhood of his childhood. People will begin to talk to each other once again. . . . In 1968 when I was at Elmhurst Middle School, if I did something wrong, my father knew when I got home. We knew each other. We have gotten away from that. Tell me what my kid’s doing. This is about reaching out and building community from the ground up. The strength of the community comes from you folks. What we need is you. Mrs. Riles, a black woman in her late seventies, spoke up. “The problem is that parents are afraid to chastise their children and teach them properly” because the kids might call the police on them. Deputy Chief Bryant insisted that the police only arrested parents in cases of serious abuse. “That’s just an excuse that...

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