Police Presence Research Articles

Crash analysis at intersections in the CBD: A survival analysis model

Enhancing the safety level of urban roads especially in CBDs is paramount. Due to a large number of intersections in what is usually a grid road system in the CBDs, we investigate crashes occurring in and around an intersection. The question of interest in this study is: does the nature of crashes at intersections differ from those of the roads at midblock? Stated more precisely, considering the intersection as a reference point, does the distance to the reference point (i.e. midblock locations on the roads) correlate with different types of crashes compared to that of the intersection? A right answer can lead traffic engineers and safety auditors to propose different safety measures at intersections and the midblock locations. As a pilot study, we collected the last 9years crash data of the CBD of Melbourne, Australia. For the first time, we employ Survival Analysis models -including Exponential, Weibull, and Log-logistic- to investigate a space-dependent phenomenon (i.e. accidents at proximity to the intersection). Of the outcome, highlights are: (i) police presence at busy intersections during busy night outs and weekends highly improves the pedestrian safety (ii) raised crossings at midblock locations lower likelihood of crashes of pedestrians as well as cars, (iii) lighting conditions at intersections must be watched and kept at a high level. (iv) Severity, likelihood, and location have no known association with the level of congestion. In other words, safety is first, always and everywhere. The results can be of interest to traffic authorities and policy makers in reinforcing traffic calming measures in the cities. The codes developed in this study are made available to the research community to be used in further studies.

Perceptions of gender-based violence around public toilets in Mumbai slums

ABSTRACTThe lack of adequate public toilets and associated gender-based violence around their use is a matter of concern in many developing countries and has recently come to the forefront of the political agenda and media discourse in India. Previous research suggests the absence of lighting, inadequate provision of basic sanitation, poor design and siting of toilets, and lack of police presence in slums as facilitators for violence against women. However, the evidence is often anecdotal and usually unsystematic. The exact extent of crimes against women in these circumstances is unknown because unsurprisingly women in slums rarely report crimes to the police, either due to fear or lack of access. The research reported in this paper gauges women’s perception and experience of crime and violence around different types of public toilets in two slums areas in Mumbai, India. A survey of 142 households indicated that although women’s fear of crime was higher than their actual experience, the perception of insecurity was not uniform for all toilet types and locations. Findings also indicated that there was at least minimal provision of toilet facilities, basic security features, water, and electric supply in the research sites. Furthermore, greater police presence and previous contact with the police in one slum area led for greater confidence in reporting offences to the police as compared to the other. Overall, better provision of lighting and regular police patrols were considered by a majority of those surveyed to reduce fear of crime around toilets.

American crime drops: Investigating the breaks, dips and drops in temporal homicide

ObjectivesWhile a great deal of attention has been given to the 1990s crime drop, less is known about the more recent decline in homicide rates that occurred in several large U.S. cities. This paper aims to explore whether these represent two distinct drops via statistical evidence of structural breaks in longitudinal homicide trends and explore potentially differing explanations for the two declines. Methods: Using homicide data on a large sample of U.S. cities from 1990 to 2011, we test for structural breaks in temporal homicide rates. Combining census data and a time series approach, we also examine the role structural features, demographic shifts, and crime control strategies played in the changes in homicide rates over time. Results: Statistical evidence demonstrates two structural breaks in homicide trends, with one trend reflecting the 1990s crime drop (1994–2002) and another trend capturing a second decline (2007–2011). Time series analysis confirms previous research findings about the contributions of structural conditions (e.g., disadvantage) and crime control strategies (e.g., police force size) to the crime drop of the 1990s, but these factors cannot account for the more recent drop with the exception of police presence. Conclusions: Although both structural conditions and crime control strategies are critical to the longitudinal trends in homicide rates over the entire span from 1990 to 2011, different factors account for these two distinct temporal trends.

Non-state space: the strategic ejection of dangerous and high maintenance urban space

ABSTRACTNon-state space: the strategic ejection of dangerous and high maintenance urban space. Territory, Politics, Governance. Some commentators have characterized so-called ‘no-go’ areas as sites in which the exercise of authority is prevented. Here we suggest that many such spaces are produced by state, policing and citizen repertoires that aim to minimize the costs and risks of engaging, supporting and servicing such spaces and their populations. In this article, we locate strategies of public spending, policing and political action that offer a governing logic in which neighbourhoods are essentially subtracted from the constitution of the city. During such designations, the assurances of citizenship, vitality of civic institutions and presence of policing may be partially or wholly suspended. We present a framework for the identification of such strategies in which these forms of social, political and spatial exiting are described as being autotomic in nature – spaces that are ejected in order to avoid losses or further damage to the body politic of the city in ways akin to the response of certain animals that protect themselves from predation by shedding a limb or body part. This term adds force and depth to assessments of the ways both temporary and more sustained exits by policing, management and state servicing are designed in order to avoid responsibility over or engagement with spaces deemed a threat in order to maintain the integrity of the remaining, included city.

Polisi Syariah: Keamanan untuk Siapa?

This paper is about community policing under Islamic Shari’a and its position in human security. Thispaper is intended to explain the characteristics and security paradigm in case Wilayatul Hisbah (Shari’aPolice) in the province of Aceh. This paper connects the Shari’a police presence to human security, as wellas how the characteristics of the security actors associated with maintaining order in the society of Aceh(community policing) are. As a result, the security paradigm in Aceh province is defi ned as the localityvalue, contradictory to those off ered in the human security - to be adopted in a democratic transition regimeas in Indonesia.

Los determinantes económicos de la delincuencia: Santiago de Chile 2001-2009

En este artículo se analiza el fenómeno de la delincuencia en Santiago de Chile a lo largo de la última década. En primer lugar, se realiza un análisis descriptivo –composición y tendencias en el nivel de criminalidad, percepción social de la delincuencia y situación de Chile en el mundo– y, a continuación, se efectúa un análisis empírico en el que las categorías de homicidio y robo con fuerza son explicadas a partir de una batería de variables socioeconómicas. Los homicidios son mayoritariamente cometidos por hombres en las comunas más densamente pobladas y en aquellas con mayor déficit educacional. Por el contrario, la gran mayoría de los robos se produce en las comunas ricas, donde la mayor presencia policial no permite compensar la incidencia de condicionantes estructurales como la desigualdad de ingresos.

An exploration of the relationship between police presence, crime and firms in developing countries

Economic theory predicts that a rise in police presence will reduce criminal activity. However several studies in this field have found mixed results. This study adds to the literature by exploring the relationship between the size of the police force and crime experienced by firms. Using survey data for about 12,000 firms in a cross‐section of 27 developing countries it is found that increasing the size of the police force is negatively associated with crime experienced by firms. Results are confirmed using a panel of firms for a subset of countries for which data are available. It is also found that this negative relationship is stronger under certain macroeconomic circumstances.

Marx, Marxism and Human Rights

We live in strange, almost unbelievable, and certainly scary time. In a scene right out of the 1931 film Frankenstein, 70,000 Poles brandishing torches marched in protest of immigrants in Poland. Demonstrations like this are repeated in Germany, France, and much of Western Europe as rightwing (some say fascist) parties witness increasing support in local and even national elections. One Republican US presidential aspirant urges the use of torture and advocates the killing of families of known (and perhaps suspected) terrorists. Another claims the only way to control terror is to increase police presence and vigorously patrol Muslim communities in the US (never mind that there are no calls to do the same in right-wing Christian areas – a scan of murders will show that in the US since 9/11 more people were killed by anti-abortionists and anti-government activists than by Islamic extremists). France has considered revoking the citizenship of terrorists, broadly defined, while US politicians ponder the degree to which we might deport people and block all immigration from Muslim nations. Add to that, and much to the horror of most compassionate observers, millions of people displaced by the madness in Syria, Iraq and most of the Middle East and North Africa live in limbo as they must flee the warfare and destruction in their own lands but are shunned by countries in a position to take them in and offer safety and support. The United States, a country founded on the backs of immigrants, perhaps literally (and on the genocide of native peoples and African slaves), is increasingly sounding like a country trying to protect some sort of national identity (whatever that may be) through restrictions on immigration. Citizens of a country, where most don’t have to go back more than two or three generations in their own family histories to find immigrant tales of struggle and success, now pretend that they must protect the US from ... what? In short, people in this country are defending rights and privileges they never had in the first place. The world is facing a crisis over human rights, whether it is about the treatment of minorities and women everywhere, about the plight of child laborers and the growing business of human (and mainly female) trafficking, about the access to clean and safe drinking water (see Fasenfest and Pride, 2016, for events in the US), or about problems facing people dispossessed of their homes, whether occupied by foreign forces (like Palestinians) or dealing with forces in opposition to their governments (for example, areas controlled by Boko Haram in Nigeria). Human rights include the right to work, to be free to express cultural differences, equality before the law, the right to selfdetermination, access to education, access to safe food and water, expectations of social security and many more rights, as outlined or implied in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet these seemingly basic standards are not being met, and so people suffer. 645720 CRS0010.1177/0896920516645720Critical SociologyEditorial research-article2016

Supportive housing and surveillance

Urban centres in the US, Britain and Canada have responded to identified visible ‘social problems’ such addiction, mental health and homelessness by providing some supportive housing for the urban poor and marginalized. While some critics have questioned what supportive housing specifically entails in terms of the built environment, what remains under explored, though a growing area of concern, is the relationship between surveillance and supportive housing for urban residents identified as having addiction and mental health problems – a gap addressed in this paper. Drawing upon qualitative ethnographic observational data we examine some of the measures of control and coercion that are encroaching into social housing primarily established for poor and marginalized people with addiction and mental health problems in the urban centre of Vancouver, Canada. We witnessed three modes of regulation and control, that vary widely, among the residencies observed: physical surveillance technologies; site-specific modes of coercion; police presence and staff surveillance, which all together impact the everyday lives of residents living in low-income and supportive housing. We argue that supportive housing has the potential to provide its intended commitment – safe and secure affordable housing. However, owing to an (over)emphasis on ‘security’, the supportive housing we observed were also sites of social control.

Leveling the playing field: the story of the Syracuse 8

Leveling the Playing Field tells the story of the African American members of the 1969u70 Syracuse University football team who petitioned for racial equality on their team. The petition had four demands: access to the same academic tutoring made available to their white teammates; better medical care for all team members; starting assignments based on merit rather than race; and a discernible effort to racially integrate the coaching staff, which had been all white since 1898. The playersAE charges of racial disparity were fiercely contested by many of the white players on the team, and the debate spilled into the newspapers and drew protests from around the country. Mistakenly called the oSyracuse 8o by media reports in the 1970s, the nine players who signed the petition did not receive a response allowing or even acknowledging their demands. They boycotted the spring 1970 practice and Coach Ben Schwartzwalder, a deeply beloved figure on campus and a Hall of Fame football coach nearing retirement banned seven of the players from the team. As tensions escalated white players staged a day-long walkout in support of the coaching staff, and an enhanced police presence was required at home games. Extensive interviews with each player offer a first-hand account of their decision to stand their ground while knowing it would jeopardize their professional football career. They discuss with candor the ways in which the boycott profoundly changed the course of their lives. In Leveling the Playing Field, Marc chronicles this contentious moment in Syracuse UniversityAEs history and tells the story through the eyes of the players who demanded change for themselves and for those who would follow them.

“Soft” policing at hot spots—do police community support officers work? A randomized controlled trial

To determine whether crime-reduction effects of increased police patrols in hot spots are dependent on the “hard” threat of immediate physical arrest, or whether “soft” patrols by civilian (but uniformed) police staff with few arrest powers and no weapons can also reduce crime. We also sought to assess whether the number of discrete patrol visits to a hot spot was more or less important than the total minutes of police presence across all visits, and whether effects based on counts of crime would be consistent with effects on a Crime Harm Index outcome. We randomly assigned 72 hot spots into 34 treatment units and 38 controls. Treatment consisted of increases in foot patrol by uniformed, unarmed, Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) who carry no weapons and hold few arrest powers beyond those of ordinary citizens. GPS-trackers on every PCSO and Constable in the city yielded precise measurements of all patrol time in all hot spots. Standardized mean differences (Cohen’s d), OLS regression model, and Weighted Displacement Quotient are used to assess main effects, to model the interaction effect of GPS data with treatment, and to measure the diffusion-of-benefits of the intervention, respectively. Outcomes included counts of incidents as well as the Cambridge Crime Harm Index. As intended, patrol visits and minutes by Police Constables were equal across the treatment and control groups. The sole difference in policing between the treatments groups was in visits to the hot spots by PCSOs, in both the mean daily frequency of discrete visits (T = 4.65, C = 2.66; p ≤ .001) and total minutes across all visits (T = 37.41, C = 15.92; p ≤ .001), approximately two more ten-minute visits per day in treatment than in control. Main effect estimates suggest 39 % less crime by difference-in-difference analysis of reported crimes compared to control conditions, and 20 % reductions in emergency calls-for-service compared to controls. Crime in surrounding areas showed a diffusion of benefits rather than displacement for treatment hot spots compared to controls. A “Reiss’s Reward” effect was observed, with more proactive patrols predicting less crime across treatment hot spots, while more reactive PCSO time predicted more crime across control hot spots. Crime Harm Index estimates of the seriousness value of crime prevented ranged from 85 to 360 potential days of imprisonment in each treatment group hot spot (relative to controls) by a mean difference of 21 more minutes of PCSO patrol per day, for a potential return on investment of up to 26 to 1. A crime reduction effect of extra patrols in hot spots is not conditional on “hard” police power. Even small differences in foot patrols showing the “soft power” of unarmed paraprofessionals, holding constant vehicular patrols by Police Constables, were causally linked to both lower counts of crimes and a substantially lower crime harm index score. Correlational evidence within the treatment group suggests that greater frequency of discrete PCSO visits may yield more crime reduction benefit than greater duration of those visits, but RCTs are needed for better evidence on this crucial issue.

LO082: EMS response to police use of force events: periods of personal and professional risk in prehospital care

Introduction: This study provides an estimate of the number of EMS calls related to police use of force events that involve struggling, intoxicated and/or emotionally distressed patients. We hypothesized there would be under-reporting of EMS risk by paramedic agencies due to lack of standardized reporting of police events by EMS services and lack of a common linked case number between prehospital agencies in Canada. Methods: Data were collected during a multi-site, prospective, consecutive cohort study of police use of force in 4 Canadian cities using standardized data forms. Use of force was defined a priori and the application of handcuffs was not considered a force modality. Inclusion criteria: all subjects ≥ 18 years of age involved in a use of force police-public encounter. We defined risk to EMS as the presence of police- and/or paramedic- assessments of violent or struggling subjects on the scene. Three separate data forms (police-report of use of force, EMS encounter, and Emergency Department (ED) visit) were linked in the study by unique ID. When police-reported EMS was activated, investigators hand searched the EMS service reports at the relevant agencies for matching call sheets. Results: From Jan 2010 to Dec 2012, we studied 3310 consecutive public-police interactions involving use of force above simple joint lock application. Subjects were male (86%) with a mean age of 33 yrs; 85% were assessed by police as emotionally disturbed, intoxicated with drugs and/or alcohol or a combination of those. 45% were violent at the scene. Police-reported EMS attendance in 24% (809/3310) of use of force events, of which only 43% (349/809) of EMS run sheets were available. In events with violent subjects, EMS transported 51% to ED compared to 35% by police transport (chi=79.7, p=0.00). Conclusion: We identified periods of professional and physical risk to paramedics attending police use of force events and found that risk significantly underrepresented in EMS data. Paramedical training would benefit from policy and procedures for response to police calls and the violent patient, the majority of whom are struggling. A common linked case number in prehospital care would enable more specific quantification of the risk for EMS providers involved in police events.

Youth Weight Status and Perceptions of Neighborhood Safety Prompt Community-Level Engagement

Due to the confounding influence of factors which have given rise to the pervasiveness of childhood obesity, spatial epidemiology is becoming a prevalent methodological option for exploring the influence of non-biological factors on unhealthy weight gain in youth. Through the exploration of contributors to obesity across a known geographic area, researchers can better understand the community-level impact of those factors on youth health status. PURPOSE:To explore the relationship between perceptions of neighborhood-level safety and youth health status in a target school zone. METHODS:Objective measures of height and weight were gathered from 112 elementary students (age = 9.8±1.85; 54 female). Home addresses and familial perceptions of safety while engaged in neighborhood-level physical activities were gathered using a previously-validated questionnaire. Safety factors included perceived police presence in areas supporting physical activity and perceived safety for daytime or nighttime physical activities. Hot spot analysis using the Getis-Ord Gi* algorithm was used to identify spatial clusters of high and low BMI and safety zones. OLS regression was used explore associations in high and low spatial clustering between student BMI and familial perceptions of safety. RESULTS:55% of students displayed an unhealthy weight profile (BMI-for-age >85th percentile). Overall, spatial clusters of BMI hot spots were significantly associated with spatial clusters of perceptions of safety (F(4,106)=30.18, p<0.01; R2 = 0.53. Significant negative associations were observed for perceived police presence in areas supporting physical activity (p<0.01) and perceived safety for daytime physical activities (p <0.01); no association was observed for perceived safety for nighttime physical activities (p = 0.43). CONCLUSIONS:Unhealthy weight status in youth was significantly associated with perceptions of safety for engaging in neighborhood-level physical activities. By coupling hot spot analysis with OLS, overlapping spatial patterns of high need for perceived safety and BMI could be examined at the residential level. This approach has the potential to inform decision making among community partners regarding resource allocation to enhance youth health status in neighborhoods displaying utmost need.

Monopolizar la violencia en una frontera colonial. Policías y militares en Patagonia austral (Argentina y Chile, 1870-1930)

This article analyses the State’s monopolization of the violence in the early cycle of southern Patagonia colonization, proposing first, that the local precariousness of Argentinean and Chilean states relied upon the expansive strength of the sheep farming industry for materializing their territorial sovereignty; and, secondly, that the enclosure of the international delimitation in the summer of 1922 resulted from the repression of the workers’ insurgency. Based on a wide research on official and entrepreneurial sources, on Santa Cruz, Magallanes and Tierra del Fuego, as well as on local press, it examines and compares the presence of police and military forces in the extreme South, explaining the similitudes and differences of the strategies of social control.

Militarized Police and Unpermitted Protest

There exists a nexus between militarized police response and unpermitted protest. More specifically, there are three major causes of the militaristic/militarized police response to unpermitted protest conducted by citizens: (a) unpermitted protests present a threat to the police’s ultimate goal of order and control, (b) the militarized response is encouraged by the police leadership, and (c) the individual officers take personal pride and pleasure in equipping the specialized weapons. As a tool of critical analysis of this historical phenomenon, this work will utilize the ROCCIPI (Rule, Opportunity, Capacity, Communication, Interest, Process, Ideology) problem-solving methodology developed by Robert Seidman. The methodology addresses the problems of traditional doctrinal analysis by inquiring beyond the behaviors of the targets of a given rule. The Seidman analysis directs the researcher to identify how changes in the implementing agency’s behavior will affect the choices of the rule’s target. Currently, there exists no effective redress for protestors and demonstrators whose First Amendment rights are violated during encounters of protest with militarized police presence. As a result, there is an overwhelming need for legislation designed to increase police accountability to the citizens and provide for swifter prosecution of police abuses. While tailored for California, this legislation serves as model legislation for implementation in other states. If implemented, this legislation should help restore the power balance between protesting citizens and police agencies that violate their rights.

Police Encounters: Security and Surveillance in Gaza under Egyptian Rule by Ilana Feldman (review)

Ilana Feldman, Police Encounters: Security and Surveillance in under Egyptian Rule. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. 224 pp.An Anthropological ParadoxAlthough the small sliver of land called Gaza, populated approximately 2 million people, is arguably one of the political hot spots most frequently in the media spotlight and increasingly a cause celebre in humanitarian and activist politics, relatively little scholarly attention is given and its history. Ilana Feldman's recent monograph, Police Encounters: Security and Surveillance in under Egyptian Rule, makes significant advance in covering this largely unattended scholarly ground. Building on her earlier influential work, Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule (1917-1967) (2008), this book offers an exceptional chronicle of policing in under Egyptian rule (1948-1967).Feldman's account is both historical and ethnographic. It will likely appeal readers in many fields, including history, anthropology, cultural studies, Near Eastern studies, and political theory. Written in a captivating and engaging style, without this being at the expense of its erudition, the book should also engage a wider audience beyond academia. It may be of particular interest those who are interested in urgent contemporary questions of state politics, refugees, the politics of security, humanitarianism, and in the complexities of the legacies of colonial rule generally, and in the Near East specifically.Feldman brings well over a decade of research experience in and about her analysis, and her training in anthropology and history is evident in her attentiveness the nuance and specificity of Gaza's context. Her investigation is based on interviews with retired police officers and other Gazans, memoirs, press accounts, and other archival sources, including records of the Egyptian Administration's police force and of the United Nations peacekeeping force that deployed in 1957. Early on, Feldman introduces the main focus of the book:It is an apparent paradox of Egyptian rule that security practices such as surveillance, control, and even police violence are among the most and the least positively remembered aspects of this period Gazans...Policing was a space of both constraint and possibility, of control and action. (3)It is this apparent paradox that Feldman addresses, not, as she takes care explain, in order offer a prescription for better policing, but rather as a diagnostic project to better understand the dynamics and effects of policing in Gaza (13).In her focus on policing and security, Feldman both draws on and distinguishes her work from that of criminologist Ian Loader (2006). She departs from his investment in what he calls and policing, which he prescribes over what he suggests is the less democratic practice of shallow and wide policing. Feldman explains that by 'shallow' Loader means that recognition of police effect is limited protecting people from 'crime and disorder' (12). In contrast, policing acknowledges the importance of policing for subjectivities and political belonging (12). Wide policing refers extensive visible display of police presence and entrance of police into a broad range of situations (12). Finally, narrow policing involves 'constrained, reactive, rights-regarding agencies of minimal interference and last resort' (12). one of Feldman's central claims is that policing in under Egyptian rule was both deep and wide, as well as self-consciously ambitious in shaping membership in political and social community.Feldman thus argues that Egyptian policing in was not only repressive, but was also a means of action for Palestinians. This action took place through the formation of relations governed predominantly suspicion, uncertainty, and instability. Within this context, categories such as citizen, refugee, humanity, native, criminal, spy, and informer were unstable but central security practices. …

Interrupting a legacy of hatred: Friches Théâtre Urbain's Lieu Commun

ABSTRACTIn a violent clash between rival gangs from Asnières and Gennevilliers in the banlieue north of Paris, a 15-year-old boy was killed at the metro station Les Courtilles, the last stop on Line 13. Inevitably, revenge attacks occurred. Security was heightened with hundreds of police patrolling the area, but residents and city officials alike understood that increased police presence alone would never be a long-term solution. Realising the need for radically different approaches to halt an escalation of violence, city officials, asked Sarah Harper, Artistic Director of Friches Théâtre Urbain, a street theatre company in Paris, to develop a community-based art-making project that would augment attempts by the youth workers and others to defuse the volatile situation. In Lieu Commun, the multi-faceted project lasting 20 months, Harper developed innovative approaches to collaborative art-making resulting in vibrant public art that repeatedly interrupted the legacy of hatred between Asnières and Gennevilliers. The slow process of collaborative art-making began with symbolic links between the residents of the two towns rather than face-to-face contact, an innovative approach that eased the way for more profound activist cooperation. The co-created public art took the form of elaborate, often mobile, performance installations that began to replace the narrative of conflict that had become customary for Asnières and Gennevilliers with an opposing narrative of cooperation, both depicted in the art product and practiced in the art-making. Community collaboration in the creation of this ephemeral public art played a significant role not only in changing the character of the confrontational and often dangerous public space of the metro station, but also in altering attitudes of both residents and city officials toward the potential for art to foster cooperation and active citizenship.

Using police bicycle patrols to manage social order in bicycle and pedestrian traffic networks

This article examines how bicycle police units perceive their impact on social norms of rule compliance and risk behaviours in bicycle and pedestrian traffic networks. Using qualitative methods, a police bicycle patrol was analysed. Findings indicate that bicycle patrols are promising as an innovative measure to target bicycle and pedestrian traffic enforcement. Police reported that the bicycle patrol allowed increased accessibility and that police presence on bicycles had a positive normative impact on the behaviours of bike riders and pedestrians. The discussion encompasses the way in which bicycle patrol units hold important tacit knowledge of street life that could play a key role in policy making.

The Association of Personality Dimensions, Perceived Stress and Emotion Regulation to Driving Anger among Taxi Drivers in Iran

The purpose of the present study was to determine the associations of personality dimensions, perceived stress and emotion regulation to driving anger among taxi drivers in Iran. Using a convenience sampling procedure, a number of 120 taxi drivers were recruited for the study. Data were collected using a sociodemographic data sheet, the HEXACO personality inventory, the perceived stress scale, the cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire and the driving anger scale. The data were analyzed using Pearson’s correlation coefficients and multiple regression analysis. Findings revealed that 5% to 20% of taxi drivers experience high levels of anger while driving. Most taxi drivers agree that slow driving and traffic obstructions as frustrating and anger-provoking. The drivers reported experiencing stress frequently. The personality dimensions of extroversion, agreeableness and honesty/humility were found to be associated with anger specifically related to the presence of police. Among the cognitive emotion regulation strategies, only catastrophizing and positive refocusing were found to be associated with driving anger from the involvement of police. Perception of stress, extroversion and conscientiousness and positive refocusing together explained 19.1% of the variance associated with anger elicited by driving situations, with the personality traits making the largest contribution. DOI : http://dx.doi.org./10.17576/JSKM-2016-1402-15

Harlem B&amp;E

Harlem B&E Stacy Parker Le Melle (bio) The first time I heard a helicopter over my apartment I wondered, did bin Laden come back to life? The helo hovered over our brownstone near Lenox Avenue and I swore I could feel compression from the spinning blades. Other bodies had to feel this, too, on these blocks of brownstones, churches, and bodegas. Rapper Ice Cube included “no helicopter looking for a murder” as proof of a good South Central LA day. Maybe NYPD tracked a killer, but each flyover affected thousands of people in their homes. Did these war sounds agitate neighbors who’d survived armed conflict? I imagined a veteran terrorized as he waited for the helo to drop its load, or spray death in leaden waves. I returned to my work, but couldn’t shake the fear. In June 2016, a black Brownsville youth, 16, jumped a subway turnstile and was arrested by NYPD. At the precinct the boy escaped. This led to an all-night “man hunt”—including helicopters—for a youth from one of the poorest neighborhoods in Brooklyn. NYPD flexed this muscle over fare evasion of $2.75. Or, more likely, over rejection of their authority. I couldn’t stop thinking of antebellum slave hunters given carte blanche to capture runaways dead or alive. Or Harriet Jacobs’s remembrance from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl of a slave-owner who bludgeoned to death an enslaved man for stealing wine and food. The helo was gone, but I still felt it overhead. I loved Harlem but I felt palpable relief when I shut the front door. My family shared this building with tenants. The glass pane centered in the top half of the door was thin. But the door was a border. A damper on the energies of millions that compressed each other in city life. Many men walked down our tree-lined block from Marcus Garvey Park to Lenox and lingered on stoops and under the corner scaffolding. Most did not live there. One neighbor was friendly but he drank. Sometimes he sat on his stoop. Or next door. Or on the corner. My son ran to him often and the neighbor hugged him and picked him up. I smiled, but eagle-eyed. When he saw me alone he joked: “How is my son?” He watched me as I unlocked my door. Watched me as I locked it. His attention was a power that was neither good nor bad, on its face. He could help me if I’m in trouble. He could be the trouble. When I closed that door, I felt better. Even if the door was half-glass. “Five years ago, you couldn’t have lived here,” said my first roommate in 2007, a white man in his 40s from upstate New York. I shrugged him off. I’d lived in Detroit, Washington DC, Los Angeles, New Orleans—but never in those cities’ most dangerous neighborhoods. Would “old” Harlem and its crime rate have done me in? Maybe. A woman didn’t need [End Page 830] war zones to feel threatened. Women passed grenades everyday. Dead grenades. Pin-out grenades. Maybe just one grenade. That’s all it took for a volatile man to blow a woman apart. I walked down Lenox, down Fifth, across 123rd, up ACP, across 145. Sometimes men harassed, but I rarely felt endangered as I switched sidewalks, direction, avoided a street altogether. Maybe I saw two officers on the corner. Cops patrolled all over Harlem. I had to consider how much police presence suppressed bad behavior. An officer looked my way. I worried about acknowledging him, showing him friendliness that could be misread. Sometimes grenades had badges. Drummers beat their drums hard outside. Sometimes the drum line played for hours at 125th and Lenox. Sometimes the church band behind us made noise I didn’t find joyful. Nowhere to go in this apartment and not hear them. Rows of brownstones like canyons amplified laughs, hollers, the call of a single voice. Once, Harlem historian Michael Henry Adams led a one-man demonstration on the corner. He protested the hate speech on the ATLAH church...