I spent my second week after the Fish Parade going through one hundred paper surveys and coding in people’s responses. It was fascinating to get a rough idea of a person and their thoughts on how to improve their neighborhood just from reading about their age and occupation and some other statistical checkboxes. I was able to draw a picture of the respondee and their family and household in my mind and it was so cool to hear their ideas for the neighborhood. Some responses had detailed plans for policy implementation- such as teaching children financial literacy and cleaning the streets by introducing environmental awareness programs in schools, other responses were brutally honest with just a few words- safety is the most important. More street lights. Less violence. Help for the homeless. Being able to walk down their street without fear was the most important thing to some respondents.
The entries which stuck with me the most responded to the question “What do you hope will change in Hunts Point to make it a better place to live and work?“ with “More safety. More police units.”. I had several similar responses advocating for more public safety officers, more police presence, and increased surveillance. These responses in particular stood out, maybe because studying prison policy and policing as my concentration in Gallatin automatically makes me hypercritical of the connection between public safety and police presence, or maybe I see the call for community investments elsewhere in these surveys. Some of these survey respondents had me thinking about the connection between the call for healthcare and educational services as a priority when also saying safety needs to be addressed first and foremost. However, it is impossible to focus on the extras until basic needs [food access, housing security, safety] are satisfied. All of these are issues identified by the Hunts Point community as things hoping to be resolved by the next set of recommendations to the city. But to reimagine safety as stemming from community coalition is a larger undertaking. I recognized and appreciated the creative approaches to public safety for the people, by the people that were thrown around in subgroup and working group meetings. In response to a story of a gang initiation happening in a public park, participants at a meeting were strategizing how to build a force of non-police affiliated, public safety officers who could volunteer to receive de-escalation training and serve to staff the parks and identified public spaces in most need of a safety officer. Not an armed one with ties to police resources, but rather a figure from the community who was there to facilitate connections with and between their neighbors.
In a community such as Hunts Point where the majority of residents are lower income people of color, when public safety is an issue, I struggle to see the addition of police units as a measure to increase security, and rather that as a danger to the community. The political sphere in America over the past year has paid increasing attention to the issue of discriminatory over-policing and violence, and the attention to alternatives has become more digestible for local governments and communities to consider implementing. My hope is that the vision plan puts forward recommendations that advocate for what survey respondents are asking for: increases in attention to public safety, but also that options stemming from community care and building out infrastructure are addressed at the same level of importance.
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