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With Breonna Taylor’s lawyers finding the no-knock raid that killed her was part of a neighborhood redevelopment effort, I thought it might be useful to review the academic literature on policing during gentrification. 1/11 https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/crime/2020/07/05/lawyers-breonna-taylor-case-connected-gentrification-plan/5381352002/
I found between '09 and '15 the NYPD made more low-level arrests in neighborhoods experiencing real estate reinvestment, suggesting the development-directed policing Taylor’s lawyers found can happen across a city, not just in explicit redevelopment zones. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cico.12473
Looking at changes in rents and the in-movement of middle-class people, @Ayo_Laniyonu found NYPD stops also increased during gentrification. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1078087416689728
Police "cleaning up" areas for economic growth often trumpet their efforts loudly. The NYPD and Mayor Koch were eager to attribute the Lower East Side’s gentrification to increased drug arrests, as this 1985 New York Times article (via Neil Smith's New Urban Frontier) shows.
In Wichita, Kansas, Chase Billingham found police, local business owners, and parks & rec dept. aligned to "clear" homeless people from a park at the center of the city's Old Town redevelopment area. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cico.12235
This collaboration across city agencies and business owners has also been found by @cherring_soc in San Francisco. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0003122419872671
As the Taylor case in Louisville makes clear, policing gentrification doesn't only intensify in big cities. Looking nationally, Adam Goldstein and I found cities relying on housing market growth in the lead-up to the Great Recession spent more on police. https://academic.oup.com/sf/article/96/3/1183/4600089
Long-term residents in gentrifying neighborhoods have long noted the ramp up in policing that accompanies reinvestment and gentrifiers.
In his 2006 book, Lance Freeman quotes a Harlem resident: "[I]f you sit on the benches the police will come along and point to the no loitering sign and say you can’t stay here. [This is] because of new people moving in and putting pressure on the police to make things orderly.”
@manissamm found the first Black Lives Matter protests in San Francisco were motivated in part by this opposition to policing gentrification https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1463499617732501
Breonna Taylor is only the latest Black person killed by police in a gentrifying neighborhood. Eric Garner, Alex Nieto, and Saheed Vassell died in similar contexts. Taylor’s death is a reminder the struggles for affordable housing and against hyper policing are intertwined. 11/11
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