Applied Law Enforcement | How to Fix the Skids | Instructor: Al “R.C.” Arsenault | | By: Stanley Lam | 4/5/2010 |
An academic essay written by Stanley Lam for the Applied Law Enforcement class regarding his thoughts and opinions on how to fix the skids located in the Downtown Eastside. |
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How to Fix the Skids
By: Stanley Lam
This paper will be regarding the topic on “How to Fix the Skids” for Applied Law Enforcement class instructed by Al “R.C.” Arsenault. “Skid row” or “the skids” is located on the 100-block of East Hastings Street in Vancouver, British Columbia; right between Chinatown and Gastown. The Downtown Eastside is also where the safe drug injection site
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Many drug addicts do not have jobs or any legal means of generating income; they resolve to criminal activities such as theft, robbery, or aggressive panhandling. Due to the addictive nature of drugs, the user will be compelled to want more and more in order to continue feeling “normal”. It is what fuels their addiction and as a result, a lack of motivation to do anything other than obtaining more drugs. The drug addict’s family suffers from the effects of the drug addiction as well through emotional stress and psychological decay. Drug addicts also encourage illegal drug trafficking by helping fund criminal organizations. In fact, drug addicts are the reason why the billion dollar drug industry is as lucrative as it is. Without drug addicts, drug traffickers would have no customers or buyers to help generate income. Huge amounts of tax revenue is going towards the war on drugs which includes money going into police departments, border agencies, harm reduction programs, and anti-drug campaigns. The tax money being used to fight drugs could be used to better our education or health systems; instead it is being used to fund harm reduction programs such as Insite.
Insite is the first legally supervised injection site in North America operated by the Vancouver Coastal Health and the Portland Hotel Society, located at 139 East Hastings Street. As a result of a harm reduction policy geared towards helping the area's drug addicted
This study tested the impact of increased foot patrol on crime in Newark between February 1978 and January 1979. The program included several requirements stipulated by its use of Safe and Clean Neighborhoods Program funds. Foot patrol officers were required to remain in uniform and on foot, except when traveling to and from their posts, or when assisting a motor patrol officer in an emergency or arrest situation. All officers were required to be visible on
Wilson and Kelling’s key idea is that disorder and the absence of controls leads to crime. Their solution is to crack down on any disorder using a twofold strategy. First an environmental improvement strategy that any broken window must be repaired immediately, otherwise more will follow and the neighbourhood will be on the slide. Secondly the police must adopt a zero tolerance policing strategy. Instead of merely reacting to crime, the must proactively tackle even the slightest sign of disorder, even if it is not criminal. This
The idea of policing has become misinterpreted over the years. People think of policing as what they see in the entertainment world. Without realizing that, the entertainment world serves the purpose of entertaining and
3. Suppose you are the mayor of Chicago and you’ve just read all the facts of Hernando’s murder of Sarah Gould. In a memo to your chief of police, what suggestions might you make to improve the structure of the city’s law enforcement to help prevent this sort of crime from happening again? I would suggest an increase in police patrols of the South Side to include an outreach program to include the citizens of the area to help instill in that community a sense of pride and moral obligation to fellow citizens. Unfortunately, the problems on the South Side of Chicago persist today and if the citizens of that area do not work as a whole together, along with law enforcement, to try and reduce the violence
Policing in the United States has changed dramatically since it was first brought to the thirteen colonies from England. However, some of the issues faced then are being faced in policing today. There are also new trends that are prevalent, and these trends will continue to have lasting effects on the future of policing. Even though new trends improve policing overall, they can also cause more serious issues. It is crucial to continue making changes topolicing because it allows law enforcement officers to keep up with the rest of society, including the knowledge of new crime trends. This paper will
Insite provides the community members with a safe place to inject their drug. They provide people with injection equipment’s such as syringes, cookers, filters, water, etc (Insite Supervised Injection, Services section, 2011, para. 3). At the site, there are many trained nurses to help facilitate the process of injection into the patient. “More than 400 overdoses have occurred at the facility, but nobody has ever died there from one” (Geddes, 2010, para. 7). With that being said, over 1,200 people died between 1990 and 200 because of
Submitted to the Coordinating Group of: _X Crime and Justice __ Education __ Social Welfare __ Other Plans to co-register: _X No __ Yes __ Cochrane __ Other __ Maybe TITLE OF THE REVIEW Broken Windows Policing to Reduce Crime in Neighborhoods BACKGROUND Briefly describe and define the problem Crime policy scholars, primarily James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, and practitioners, such as Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton, have argued for years that when police pay attention to minor offenses—such as aggressive panhandling, prostitution, and graffiti—they can reduce fear, strengthen communities, and prevent serious crime (Bratton
In their study, Wilson and Kelling projected that “police departments change their focus. Instead of channeling most resources into solving major crimes, they should instead try to clean up the streets and maintain order such as keeping people from smoking pot in public and cracking down on subway fare beater. Secondly, the police officers need to be more proactive in preventing crime. The police officers need to get out and do the hard work of foot patrolling and community policing” (Kelling& Wilson,1982). However, the broken windows style of policing only affected the minority and poor residents of the area because law enforcements ordering residents to repair the broken windows, graffiti artists were ordered to scrub the walls clean of those buildings, and drunks where kick of the street without given no help.
In 1982, James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling presented an article that called for a change in police tactics to enhance neighborhood safety entitled simply “Broken Windows”. This article was hailed as the godsend that everyone was waiting for because at the time crime rates were extremely high and murder had peaked just two years prior to the release of this article. Wilson and Kelling declare that a return to “order-maintenance” police function is the key to providing safe neighborhoods (Kelling and Wilson 104). This is achieved through foot patrol officers that enact regulations for their patrol areas which keep individuals in their place and “strengthen the informal social control mechanisms of natural communities” (Kelling and Wilson
In an ally, doorway, or behind a telephone pole, people crouch to inject their deadly dose of cocaine, heroin, and other drugs, oblivious to the daytime traffic on a nearby street. This is the day to day life of the drug users in downtown Vancouver; do you think there is nothing that can be done? Well, there is. Safe injections sites are a clean, safe, supervised environment where drug users can inject their own drugs off the streets, and connect to addiction, health and community services. InSite is the first and only supervised injection site in North America (InSite for Community Safety). InSite is located at 139 East Hastings Street, in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. More safe injection sites will greatly reduce overdose
Police Agencies in modern society are a part of the American fabric to serve and protect the American public. The United States currently have more than 15,000 police agencies, (Walker & Katz, 2011). Police Departments across the United States face similar critical issues policing. All police officers face dangers in the job of policing the dangers can emanate from internal and external origins. Police officers have continued to evolve to serve communities by finding better less than lethal alternatives to weapons used. In addition, police departments have continued to keep up with
According to Bittner (1967), police agencies employ a method of containment to manage skid-row areas. They use their discretion to determine which laws should be rigidly enforced, in turn allowing for a certain amount of criminal activities to continue to occur within that specific community (Bittner, 1967). The officer may turn his back to some instances of prostitution or drug use, however will keep a careful watch on the situation so as not to allow the criminal activities to migrate to other areas of the community (Bittner, 1967). Officers specifically assigned to skid-row areas, will develop relationships with the individuals in their communities. They will begin to know the individuals in the community; their criminal habits; their associates; and their routines (Bittner, 1967). This working relationship, coupled with the officers’ use of discretion in enforcing certain laws, will often lead to a quid pro quo type of relationship (Brown, 1981). The individuals may give the officer
Community policing styles in “broken window” areas has become essential over the past decade. Broken window areas, are not just a bunch of houses with shattered windows. In criminal justice terms, an area that has broken windows is an area that has generally lost social control and has become a dangerous area to live. Many of these broken window areas generally lack social order, have high crime rates, and crime starts going unpunished and unnoticed. So how do police departments fix high crime rates in these areas? What styles of policing are most efficient in deterring crime? Some officers of the law believe that foot patrol policing is the best style of policing, while others believe that patrol cars are the answer to prevent crime in these areas. Police departments and officers alike; have come up with multiple strategies to deter and prevent crime, and with a new era of technology, police departments have new resources and strategies at there disposal.
Many citizens have become annoyed with the crime in their neighborhoods. They have organized block watches, citizen patrols, along with neighborhood cleanups, and started harassing slumlords that allow drug dealers to use their properties. (Brown Art. 122). Among many of the crime fighting tools, the involvement of
Drug addiction have been a problem for many countries. People lose their family, going into prison and even losing their life because of drug addiction. Countries like the United States have been working very hard on trying to prevent drug from importing to their countries illegally and they also open programs that prevent and treat people from using illegal drugs. Base on the Office of National Drug Control Policy the United States have spent 15billion dollar on drug prevention and treatment programs. However, I think that spending 15 billion dollar on the drug war will not prevent lesser and lesser people from selling drugs or using drugs. I believe that the condition of the economy and the economic order is the ultimate cause for the drug addiction and drug wars.