Overpolicing perpetuates itself by actively causing harm to heavily policed communities. Let me explain one way this happens every single day here in Chicago: (1/12)

Along Halsted Street in Englewood, it’s common to see five or even ten police cars patrolling while passing through a short twenty-block stretch. They roll around pulling people over for minor traffic infractions, or waiting for a call to come in about something bigger. (2/12)

The sheer number of these patrolling police mean that motorists in Englewood get pulled over much more frequently than residents of other parts of the city. If you live at 59th & Union and have family down at 83rd & Sangamon, you're watched every time you make that trip. (3/12)

Say you're headed down Halsted with your cousin in the passenger seat, and at 65th you have to change lanes because the right lane turns into a parking zone. You forget to signal the lane change, and immediately lights flash behind you. You're being pulled over. (4/12)

The officer, who's stopping cars in order to fish for more serious infractions, asks for your IDs. Little do you know, your cousin is in the Chicago Police Department's "gang database", a database that has little bearing on real gang affiliations: (5/12) https://igchicago.org/2021/03/31/follow-up-inquiry-on-the-chicago-police-departments-gang-database/

You don't have to have an arrest record to be in the gang database. The data isn't validated by anything. You can't appeal your inclusion. Children are in it. And because your cousin is in it and you're riding in a car with him, the cop decides to enter you into it, too. (6/12)

And now, from that day forward, if you get pulled over again it's likely that any of your passengers will end up in the database, too. If anybody associated with you happens to want to become a police officer, they'll have a hard time applying successfully because of it. (7/12)

On top of that, these phony presumed gang affiliations feed back into police arguments for more officers in Englewood. At public meetings, CPD will tell neighbors all about all the imagined crime they're preventing by pulling over all these "gang members". (8/12)

And in daily life, the sheer number of police interactions weighs on people. Ask your friends who live in Englewood, Roseland, or other heavily policed neighborhoods how many times they've been pulled over or questioned on the street. Compare that to your own experience. (9/12)

These interactions hold people up on their way to work. They make it hard to justify a walk to the park. They cause missed medical appointments. They wear you down. Even non-abolitionists agree broadly on the harmful psychological toll: (10/12) https://reason.com/2020/09/26/stop-overpolicing/

And even when not actively interacting with the cops, it's clear how many cops view the communities they police. They demonstrate it callously by ignoring every red light and stop sign. By refusing to wear face masks in public. By parking their cars in active bus stops. (11/12)

After the automatic suspicion cast upon you and those around you, the blatant disregard for something as simple as the traffic laws they're supposed to enforce, CPD will always ask for more. This cascades as more policing results in more recorded infractions, in a cycle. (12/12)

Addendum: since not everybody reading this is likely to know Chicago well, I should explicitly mention that race is a big factor here. The neighborhoods that suffer from this phenomenon, and the individuals targeted by police suspicion, are overwhelmingly Black and brown.