Mercado 1

Ashley Mercado

First the mayor wants your opinion on what you believe the source of the
Pallvi Babbar conflict is between the community and the police department. To help you get
an understanding of the source of conflict you should interview people in the
community, use personal experience and newspaper articles. Second she
Criminology 102 wants your opinion on what you think can be done to improve relations
between the two groups. Your assignments for this project include two
10 November 2018 summaries, a rough draft of your essay, and an essay including reflection.

Criminology Research Essay Rough Draft

If anyone were to take a look at the New York City community as a whole, it’s easy to

discern that within the various locations of the five boroughs there are a number that many

citizens are told to avoid. The main factors that affect a neighborhood’s welfare are the wealth of

the people that live there, the presentation of the homes and their conditions, and, perhaps most

importantly, the amount of crime that occurs there. When peering into the society of these

“lesser” neighborhoods it’s no surprise that there is enormous tension between the community

and law enforcement due to the increased amount of criminal activity and police intervention that

causes the two to constantly quarrel.

Crime and poverty have gone hand-in-hand for centuries, and it’s because of this that

there have always been issues between minority communities and law enforcement. Even today,

according to Jonathan Oberman and Kendea Johnson (authors of the academic journal The Never

Ending Take: Racism and Inequality in the Era of Broken Windows), in 2013 about 48% of those

arrested in NYC presented in criminal courts were African Americans, 33% being Hispanic. This

led Oberman and Johnson to think that the NYPD targets minorities, seeing as the 12% of white
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people arrested belong to the larger demographic in comparison to their black and Hispanic

counterparts (1078). But a common question that arises is, “Why minorities?”

It’s no surprise that there are increased police patrols in minority neighborhoods, as many

of us growing up in the city have come across. In these neighborhoods there’s a drastic increase

in crime. Growing up in the Bronx surrounded by Hispanic and black people, I’ve seen my fair

share of crime and witnessed the strain in police-community relations. Often I think back to

when my mother gave my older brother a $20 dollar bill to take to the corner store for food, just

to see him get robbed by an African American man in plain daylight. Seeing that minorities

make up the “broken down” and/or less appealing neighborhoods in the city, it’s easy to connect

the dots when taking the Strain Theory into account.

When I think about a less than wealthy family, I gravitate towards the thoughts of where I

grew up in the Bronx. I seldom imagine a picturesque white family in the shoes of my own,

struggling to get by. I remember my cousins committing crime just to get money for food for

their younger siblings, my uncle selling drugs to keep his house; these were normal things

because it’s their version of what they saw as “the right thing”, sometimes being the only thing

they could do. Cultural Deviance Theory would account for the presence of the general idea of

something like this being “okay”. New York City resident Eric Rodriguez says “I remember

when my family was really struggling when I was younger and my mom had to pick up odd jobs.

Thinking back to it now, a lot of those jobs involved her messing around with bad people in

gangs. They would do all sorts of things that I probably shouldn’t speak about. But we didn’t

really see anything wrong with it until we saw how ‘normal people’ acted, then I was like ‘damn,

maybe those stereotypes were right about us’.”

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When it comes to economic strain, it could lead people to do all kinds of unethical things

just so they can scrape on by. Looking at how crime is today, it no longer shocks me that

minorities are committing them. They are often placed at the bottom of society where there’s a

constant struggle to make ends meet, and unfortunately some turn to other means in order to live.

Strain Theory takes into account various factors that could possibly account for the reason people

commit crime. That being said, it is the theory that roughly states that crime is a result of the

lower class have less access to legitimate means to obtain achievements based off of societal

expectations be them wealth or education, thus resulting in frustration and anger that is focused

onto crime to relieve said emotions.

General Essay Outline

Introduction Explaining the Issue (Tensions between minority communities and police)

I wanted to
know how -Summary of the issue (Poverty and Crime)
many
sources we -Give examples of why poverty may be linked to crime
would really
need with
-Personal Experience and 1 article evidence (TBD)
this paper
(Though I
think you -Explain Strain Theory
answered
that -Give opinion on rifts between police and the community they protect.
question for
me in class
last week) -Allude to possible results of the rifts such as Racism in the Police Departments

-Explain affects on public perception due to increasing racism allegations

-My opinion on the issue of, why it is important

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-Solutions, such as more public assistance to these communities so there is less crime committed,

improving the community structure in high crime areas and improving community appearance i.e. no more “broken

windows”; police integration article

-Conclusion; restate thesis, summarize issue and possible solution, end with possible results nationwide

regarding success of uniting police and community

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Works Cited

Oberman, Jonathan, and Kendea Johnson. “The Never Ending Tale: Racism and Inequality in the

Era of Broken Windows.” Cardozo Law Review, vol. 37, no. 3, Feb. 2016, pp. 1075–

1091. EBSCOhost, qbcc.ezproxy.cuny.edu:2048/login?

url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=a9h&AN=113472781&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed 16

November 2018.