Some Aspects of the Policeman's Role as it Impinges upon Family Life in a Negro Ghetto

Abstract

James Baldwin wrote of the police in Harlem, They repre sent the force of the white world, and that world's criminal profit and ease, to keep the black man corraled up here in this place.. .(The policeman) moves through Harlem, therefore, like an soldier in a bitterly hostile country; which is precisely what and where he is, and is the reason he walks in two's and threes.1 This conception of the police as occupying soldiers is well documented in the literature.2 It derives in large measure because of the special methods of law enforcement that are employed when dealing with blacks. Deep South, for example, provides a vivid picture of this differential treatment. In many respects it remains up to date and applicable to the urban North although written twenty-eight years ago about a southern city. In Old City lower class blacks were not given adequate police protection because the police winked at distrubances between blacks. . .the police, like whites in general, believe that fighting, drinking, and gambling among Negroes are not crimes so long as they are strictly limited to the Negro group or are kept somewhat under cover.3 Although arrest rates for black and whites were not appreciably different in Old City, the treatment of blacks after arrests was noticably different. It was more likely to involve a working over (generally believed to be beneficial in the moral education of wayward blacks), more often resulted in a conviction,