Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine
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This paper explores theoretical, spatial, and mediatized pathways through which policing poses harms to the health of marginalized communities in the urban USA, including analysis of two recent and widely publicized incidents of officer-involved killings in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York. We examine the influence of the "broken windows" model in both policing and public health, revealing alternate institutional strategies for responding to urban disorder in the interests of the health and safety of the city. ⋯ We show how police killings reveal an underlying and racialized association between disorder and deviance that becomes institutionalized and embodied through spatial and symbolic pathways. If public health workers and advocates are to play a role in responding to the call of the Black Lives Matter movement, it is important to understand the interpretations and translations of urban social life that circulate on the streets, in the media, in public policy, and in institutional practice.
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Studies show that policing, when violent, and community fragmentation have a negative impact on health outcomes. This current study investigates the connection of policing and community fragmentation and public health. ⋯ Analysis of the perceptions of these factors suggests that violent policing increases community fragmentation and is a public health threat. Approaches to address this public health threat are discussed.
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Racist police brutality has been systemic in Prince George's County, Maryland. The victims include African Americans, the mentally challenged, and immigrant populations, creating a complex and uneven public health impact. Three threads characterize the social movements and intervention since 1970. ⋯ Since the termination of DOJ oversight, disturbing developments suggest the need for continued and sustained activism. Since 2010, county police officers have fatally shot 21 people, several in questionable circumstances. At the same time, the Prince George's Police Department has received more tactical military weaponry than any other jurisdiction in the state of Maryland under the 1033 program of the National Defense Authorization Act.
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This paper examines an alternative solution for collecting reliable police shooting data. One alternative is the collection of police shooting data from hospital trauma units, specifically hospital-based violence intervention programs. These programs are situated in Level I trauma units in many major cities in USA. ⋯ Researchers working in hospital emergency departments are prohibited from recruited individuals under arrests. The trauma staff, particularly ED physicians and nurses, are in a strategic position to collect this kind of data. Thus, this paper examines how trauma units can serve as an alternative in the reliable collection of police shooting data.
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The health effects of police surveillance practices for the community at-large are unknown. Using microlevel health data from the 2009-2012 New York City Community Health Survey (NYC-CHS) nested within mesolevel data from the 2009-2012 NYC Stop, Question, and Frisk (NYC-SQF) dataset, this study evaluates contextual and ethnoracially variant associations between invasive aspects of pedestrian stops and multiple dimensions of poor health. Results reveal that living in neighborhoods where pedestrian stops are more likely to become invasive is associated with worse health. ⋯ However, the health effects of pedestrian stops vary by ethnoracial group in complex ways. For instance, minorities who live in neighborhoods with a wider ethno racial disparity in police behavior have poorer health outcomes in most respects, but blacks have lower odds of diabetes when they live in neighborhoods where they face a higher risk that a stop will involve use of force by police than do whites. The findings suggest that the consequences of the institutionalization of the carceral state are far-reaching.