U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

Research Forum

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

OFF ICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS

BJA NI J OJJDP BJS OVC

Looking at Crime

From the Street Level
U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

810 Seventh Street N.W.

Washington, DC 20531

Janet Reno

Attorney General

Raymond C. Fisher

Associate Attorney General

Laurie Robinson

Assistant Attorney General

Noël Brennan

Deputy Assistant Attorney General

Jeremy Travis

Director, National Institute of Justice

For grant and funding information contact:

Department of Justice Response Center

800–421–6770

Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice

World Wide Web Site World Wide Web Site

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij
Looking at Crime From the Street

Level: Plenary Papers of the 1999

Conference on Criminal Justice

Research and Evaluation—

Enhancing Policy and Practice

Through Research, Volume 1

Sponsored by

OFFICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS BUREAUS

National Institute of Justice

Bureau of Justice Assistance

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

Office for Victims of Crime

OFFICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS OFFICES

Corrections Program Office

Drug Courts Program Office

Executive Office for Weed and Seed

Violence Against Women Office

November 1999

NCJ 178260

Sudhir Venkatesh

Richard Curtis

Charles H. Ramsey
Opinions or points of view expressed in this document are those of the

author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies

of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Jeremy Travis

Director

John Thomas

Program Monitor

The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of

Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance,

the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and

Delinquency Prevention, and the Office for Victims of Crime.

The Professional Conference Series of the National Institute of Justice supports

a variety of live researcher-practitioner exchanges, such as conferences,

workshops, and planning and development meetings, and provides similar support to the criminal justice field. Foremost among these forums is the Annual

Conference on Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation. The Research Forum

publication series was designed to share information from this and other forums

with a larger audience.
iii

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Foreword

This year’s annual conference on criminal justice research and evaluation is a milestone of sorts. Some 30 years ago, the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice noted with

alacrity that the revolution of scientific discovery had “largely bypassed

the problems of crime and crime control.” The method of objective

analysis that had been used with stunning success to raise living standards, help people live healthier lives, and explore the heavens had

unaccountably failed to be applied to one of the era’s most pressing

problems. To the great good fortune of succeeding generations, the

Commission in its wisdom recommended creation of a Federal research

agency dedicated to the scientific study of crime and criminal justice,

with the aim of informing and aiding the work of practitioners.

The National Institute of Justice, the agency established by Congress

to carry out that mission, has for the past three decades been seeing

the returns on that investment multiply. Criminology has become a respected field of scholarly inquiry, and we have built an impressive body

of knowledge that has helped us better understand criminal behavior

and the justice system. More important, the results of scholarly inquiries have been and are being applied to the day-to-day operations of law

enforcement, corrections, the courts, and other elements of the justice

system.

In the conference, which revisited the Commission with the theme

“Enhancing Policy and Practice Through Research,” we saw how the

investment continues to yield returns. The plenary sessions in particular

emphasized praxis—research put to the service of real-world situations.

Because of the distinctiveness of this year’s plenary panels, we decided

to publish them in three separate volumes: viewing crime from the

street level, addressing school violence through research-based policy

developed through an interdisciplinary approach, and understanding

the involvement of women and girls in the criminal justice system.

Sudhir Venkatesh and Richard Curtis bring the ethnographer’s perspective to the analysis of street crime, analyzing, respectively, the financial

activity of gangs and recent trends in drug dealing. Their method, distinct from that of conventional quantitative social science, calls for intensive observation over long periods and involves the quest for what is
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iv

specific to single places and times and what is generalizable. The

close-up, street-level observations of study subjects offer singular

insights for practitioners who deal with these individuals as offenders. In this panel, we also benefited from the perspective of

Charles Ramsey, Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department,

Washington, D.C. His indication that drug trafficking and gang crime

persist in his jurisdiction despite the overall drop in crime offers

proof of the ethnographer’s caution against facile generalization.

This year marks the first time the program offices of the Office

of Justice Programs (OJP)—the Corrections Program Office, the

Drug Courts Program Office, the Executive Office for Weed and

Seed, and the Violence Against Women Office—have joined the

OJP bureaus as conference sponsors. Because these offices work

so closely with the practitioner community, I feel their sponsorship is an added expression of their commitment to research.

I think they would endorse Chief Ramsey’s succinct assessment

of the role of research in affecting crime levels in the years to

come as bringing to light findings useful for fashioning real-world

solutions. “The best way to predict the future,” the Chief said, “is

to help create it.”

Those who wish to read more can find abstracts of the conference

sessions on the World Wide Web at http://www.ilj.org.

Jeremy Travis

Director

National Institute of Justice
v

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Contents

Foreword ..................................................................................... iii

The Financial Activity of a Modern American Street Gang

Sudhir Venkatesh ...................................................................... 1

The Ethnographic Approach to Studying Drug Crime

Richard Curtis ......................................................................... 13

A Police Chief’s View: A Response

Charles H. Ramsey.................................................................. 23
1

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The Financial Activity of

a Modern American

Street Gang

Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia University

The street gang has been a part of the social life of American cities for

more than 150 years. In the mid-1970s, through a dramatic transformation known as corporatization, street gangs became systematically

involved in underground income-generating activities such as drug

distribution and extortion.1

 The effects of corporate gang activity, including increased violence and decreased safety of public spaces, are

unmistakable and have received significant attention in the popular and

social scientific communities. However, only a handful of studies on

the financial activities of the corporate street gang have been conducted.2

 Although their findings are valuable, these studies have provided minimal quantitative information on the financial dealings of

the gang or the earnings of its individual members.

The ethnographic approach

Quantitatively oriented researchers generally have experienced great

difficulty in procuring information about the financial activities of

gangs and other underground entrepreneurs. The time necessary to gain

the trust of informants and to protect one’s role as a researcher makes

a “quick-and-dirty” survey interview difficult to carry out. In this context, participant-observation techniques—sometimes called ethnography—have served as a powerful social scientific tool in researching

marginal groups. Classic ethnographic objects of study have included

street gangs, victims of crime and natural disaster, and the homeless.

Ethnographers use close-up observations of, and lengthy discussions

with, gang members to provide answers that statistical surveys cannot

capture. Ethnographic studies may be distinguished by their interest in

the meaning of a given lifestyle for the participants—for example, why

individuals join gangs has been an issue of great concern.
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2

The Financial Activity of a Modern American Street Gang

Participant-observation techniques—

sometimes called ethnography—have served

as a powerful social scientific tool in

researching marginal groups.

By “hanging out” with people for extended periods of time, ethnographers have been able to acquire information on gang activity outside

not only the public eye but also the gaze of many researchers. It is not

surprising, therefore, that much of the conceptual and theoretical insight into gang activity is produced by ethnographic studies. Information produced by qualitatively oriented ethnographers also has been

valuable for survey researchers in constructing questionnaires and

interview protocols.

The particular value of ethnography in street gang studies resonates

with the larger use of ethnography in the social sciences. Ethnography

has been useful in giving “voice to the voiceless”—in making information publicly known about people, groups, and social processes that are

ignored, marginalized, or silenced by the state and media. Ethnography

also has served as a means to provide a more complex, richer portrait

than can be produced using only quantitative data.

The qualitative information produced by ethnographers is no panacea,

however. It is the view of one person (the ethnographer) and is, therefore, subject to his or her biases. Because of time and monetary constraints, ethnographers can study only a small group of people; thus,

they are often forced to draw conclusions about gangs in general based

on their knowledge of one or two gangs.

Thus, ethnographic information has not been particularly well integrated into social science policy—how can national policy be based on

the observations of only one person observing one or two gangs in only

one context?

“Quantitative ethnography”

In this study of the financial activity of a street gang, ethnographic

research techniques were used to obtain quantitative information.

Specifically, numerical data on the economic practices of a street gang
3

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Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia University

(including wage and nonwage expenditures) were gathered through

the use of participant-observation techniques. The project captured not

only qualitative information on gang members’ views, daily activity

patterns, household relations, and other variables but also information

on how much they earned, how their earnings changed as they “aged”

in the gang, and other quantitative data.

Ethnography was helpful in gathering two data sets that may assist

in the policy arena. In developing the first data set, the ethnographer

contacted a former gang member who had access to the financial

records maintained by a single gang for a 4-year period between

1988 and 1995 (to protect confidentiality, the exact dates cannot be

revealed). These “books” recorded the price and quantity of drugs sold;

other sources of revenue; and gang expenditures for wages, weapons,

funerals, and other items. The gang leader had updated the data

monthly to manage the gang’s financial activities.

In developing the second data set, the ethnographer worked with a

macroeconomist to conduct longitudinal tracking of nearly one dozen

gangs in a large city. Data on wages and expenditures were periodically

collected from many different drug dealers in the city. This ongoing

observation of gangs was intended to produce a taxonomy of the

various organizational structures in which drug trafficking takes place

(and to identify the most lucrative and successful) and a model of how

gang members age throughout their tenure in the gang. Questions

answered included when and why members left the gang and how

much they earned over the course of their involvement.

Findings: Gang revenues and expenditures

Results indicated that ethnography can be a productive technique

to study criminal processes. It can provide extremely valuable

observations of difficult-to-reach social groups and also can be used

with survey and interview protocols to yield quantitative information.

The financial books kept by a large, now-defunct street gang reveal that

the gang sustained a lucrative operation. The gang, consisting of several hundred members, included a leadership class (typically, a leader

and 3 officers); a “foot soldier” class (ranging from 25 to 100 members

aged 16 to 25 years) that sold drugs; and “rank and file” members (usually 200 persons younger than high school age) who were not allowed

to conduct entrepreneurial activities. More than 70 percent of the
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4

The Financial Activity of a Modern American Street Gang

gang’s total annual revenue of approximately $280,000 was generated

from the sale of crack cocaine. Dues provided some additional gang

revenue (approximately 25 percent), and extortion directed at local

businesses and entrepreneurs represented a small fraction of revenues

(about 5 percent). The gang operated in a neighborhood of roughly four

city blocks (eight blocks to a mile).

Costs were subdivided into nonwage and wage expenses. The single

greatest nonwage expenditure was the purchase of wholesale powder

cocaine. Tribute payments by the leader to the central gang leadership

holding authority over the gang represented the local gang’s second

greatest nonwage expenditure, accounting for nearly $50,000 annually

(more than 15 percent of the total revenue).

In return for this payment, local gang members received protection

on the streets and, more critically, in prison; some help in finding and

maintaining supplier networks; and the opportunity to rise in the organization and extract tribute from other local gangs. Another nonwage

gang expense was payment to mercenary fighters (known as warriors),

who performed some of the most dangerous tasks (such as drive-by

shootings and guarding key drug-selling locations during gang wars).

These warriors, typically former gang members with reputations for

bravery and violence, were held on retainer by the gang. Funerals and

payments to families of the deceased were a nontrivial expense for the

gang. When a gang member was killed, the gang paid funeral expenses

and typically provided compensation to the slain member’s family. The

total average cost to the gang was $5,000 per funeral, a large amount

compared with the annual wage payment to the typical foot soldier

(averaging less than $2,000 per year).

Wage costs were divided into two categories: expenditures for officers

and those for foot soldiers. The gang leader retained between $4,200

and $10,900 per month, for an annual wage of $50,000 (year 1) to

$130,000 (year 4). Officers (for example, the runner, enforcer, or treasurer) earned roughly $1,000 per month working full time, and most

did not work in legitimate jobs simultaneously. The typical foot soldier

was paid about $200 per month and worked approximately 20 hours

per week, implying an hourly wage well below the Federal minimum.

But foot soldiers also were allowed to sell marijuana and heroin outside

the gang structure—the gang sold only crack cocaine. Calculations

indicated that the average foot soldier’s hourly wage ranged from

$5.90 to $11.10 during the 4-year period.
5

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Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia University

Gang members who were active for the

entire 4-year period had roughly a

25-percent chance of dying.

On the surface, the wage range available to foot soldiers was substantially greater than the minimum wage available to these poorly educated inner-city youths through legitimate employment. However, as

shown in the table below, risk calculations based on the gang’s own

tally of injuries, deaths, and arrests, combined with ethnographic observations, indicate, not surprisingly, that street-level drug distribution is

an extremely risky business. The annual death rate among the gang’s

foot soldiers was 4.2 percent—more than 40 times the national average

for African-American males in the 16- to 25-year-old age group. On

average, a drug seller could expect 0.59 wounds (virtually all from bullets) and 1.43 arrests each year. The most alarming statistic is that gang

members who were active for the entire 4-year period had roughly a

25-percent chance of dying. Furthermore, there was an average of more

than two nonfatal injuries (mostly gunshot injuries) per member and

nearly six arrests for the 4-year period.

By comparison, homicide victimization rates for black males aged

14 to 17 in the United States are roughly 1 in 1,000 per year, or about

100 times lower than observed in this sample. Even among rank-andfile members of this gang (for example, those affiliated with the gang

Adverse Events Experienced by Gang Members*

Annualized Rate

Number in Sample per Member

Violent death 3 0.042

Nonfatal wound or injury 42 0.590

Arrests 102 1.433

*Data on adverse events were gathered during ethnographic study of the gang and correspond to the 26 months for which financial data were available (financial data were not

available for each month of the entire 4-year period). Annualized rates are based only on the

experiences of gang officers and foot soldiers (excluding rank-and-file members who did not

actively participate in the drug trade). On average, there were approximately 30 foot soldiers

at any given time during the study period.
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6

The Financial Activity of a Modern American Street Gang

but not actively engaged in the drug trade), homicide rates are only

1 in 200 annually in this sample.

Because most gang members never realize significant material gain, an economic-based explanation

[for gang membership] is not sufficient in itself.

The nonofficer stratum within the corporate gang endures risky work

conditions for the opportunity to move up in the gang’s hierarchy and

to earn a more significant salary. In economics, this situation is referred

to as a “tournament”—an opportunity structure similar in some respects to that of medical residents or associates in law firms. However,

even when factoring in the probability of moving up in the gang organization, the expected wage of the average gang member during his

tenure in the gang is only $7 per hour. This wage does not seem high

enough to counter the tremendous risks of injury, arrest, and death

inherent in the drug trade.

What motivates gang participation?

Given the findings that the majority of individuals in the gang are

poorly compensated and face grave risks, the clear question is, Why

would gang members choose to participate in such activities? Those

studying corporate gang activity tend to explain gang involvement by

emphasizing either economic attractions or symbolic factors. In the

economic model, gang members are entrepreneurs who rely on the

gang for material benefits because they are unwilling to accept the

mainstream opportunities available to them or because they have not

encountered much success in the legitimate labor force. In this study,

most gang members never realize significant material gain, so an

economic-based explanation is not sufficient in itself. Symbolic theories emphasize the role of ideologies such as “family” that afford gang

members a basis for personal and collective identity in social ecologies

of impoverishment and minimal mainstream resources. Gang members

do find in corporate gang activity a measure of peer group support and

a sense of belonging to a larger community; however, these symbolic

benefits alone also seem to be incapable of sustaining motivation in
7

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Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia University

gang-based entrepreneurialism over an extended time period, perhaps

because gang members eventually find social support from peers who

are not affiliated with gangs.

Indeed, the life-course appears to be the best perspective from which to

understand the interaction of symbolic and economic incentives. Ethnographic observations of several gangs over an extended period of time

indicate an aging-out pattern. For example, at the most basic level,

the successful corporate gang will provide for all of its members an

immediate wage and a direct sense of community and identity. The

significance of these two benefits changes, however, as the individual

member ages. In his role as an entering foot soldier, the member has

few financial commitments, and so gang involvement makes possible

fairly continuous consumption and provides an alternative to menial

work in the service sector, along with the fellowship of one’s peers.

The younger foot soldier is motivated to stay in the gang by the prospect of a potentially lucrative salary as an officer. However, for the

older, more experienced drug trader, one with perhaps a growing number of financial and familial commitments, the immediate economic

wage is no longer sufficient; similarly, while the benefits of the peer

group continue to exist, opportunities for high income and promotion

in the gang diminish. It is at this point that most of the gang members

in this sample abdicated their involvement in the gang’s entrepreneurial

activities and chose instead to direct their energies to the mainstream

labor market. While many continued to participate in the gang’s social

activities, the symbolic attraction of dramatic future material rewards

appeared to lose its motivating capacity.

Faced with continuous turnover, the gang brings aboard new recruits

who are sustained by the objectively very slim—but symbolically

very powerful—belief that they will achieve substantial earnings while

working for the gang. In this manner, the individuals composing the

gang are continually changing while the overall structure of the gang

remains constant. Nearly every other corporate, metropolitan area variant examined is characterized by this basic structure—there exist both

a young cohort motivated by the remote possibility of substantial earnings and an older adult contingent that grows disillusioned with the

gang as an adequate employment prospect but relies on the gang for

supplemental income (until a full-time legitimate job at a competitive

wage is found) and for peer group support. Preliminary study results

suggest that both younger and older gang members are motivated by
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8

The Financial Activity of a Modern American Street Gang

material attractions as well as the benefits of membership in a company

of like-minded peers. Further research is clearly necessary, however, to

understand the precise role of symbolic and economic motivations.

Both younger and older gang members are

motivated by material attractions as well as

the benefits of membership in a company

of like-minded peers.

Data authenticity, validity, and usefulness

Never before have such detailed financial data from a street gang been

available for scholarly inspection. The existence of such data raises

important questions regarding authenticity and validity. On the question

of authenticity, there is no reason to doubt that these records actually

reflect data that the gang compiled on a monthly basis. During the ethnographic phase of data collection, the researchers learned of several

gangs that were monitoring their financial activities. The researchers

were not given access to these data until after the gangs had dissolved

and word was received that the records could be made available. The

general knowledge among those in the city’s law enforcement and

social service communities that some street gangs record their financial

activities, and that many leaders have documented on paper their personal portfolios, provides additional confidence in the data set (indeed,

a recent trial of a police officer accused of assisting gang drug operations used a gang’s books as part of its evidence).

The question of validity is more problematic. The study data were

compiled by hand and stored in notebooks or on scraps of paper. Those

responsible for keeping the data had no formal training in accounting.

Several possible biases in the data necessitate viewing the results obtained as a lower bound on the profitability of the gang. First, although

used primarily for tracking day-to-day gang operations, the data were

also intended to serve as a means by which the gang leader could credibly report to his superiors about profitability or lack of profitability.
9

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Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia University

Ethnographic methods open doors for

subsequent policy-relevant research that

could be exploited by social scientists.

This second use of the data raises the possibility that the scale of the

operation as a whole was consciously understated—the less money the

gang earned, the smaller the monetary tribute that had to be given each

month to the leader’s superior officer. Also, the gang leader had great

flexibility to make “off-the-books” arrangements, such as allowing individual members to sell goods on their own for a small fee payable to

the gang, or allowing other local entrepreneurs to sell illicit goods for a

similar fee. Finally, the gang also permitted its own members or others

in the community to sell marijuana, heroin, or amphetamines in exchange for payment of a monthly “tax.” Neither the leader’s independent activities nor the sales of these other drugs are reflected in the

data. However, both of these revenue sources are likely to be minor

when compared with the sale of crack cocaine.

Despite concerns regarding authenticity and validity, ethnographic

methods open doors for subsequent policy-relevant research that could

be used by social scientists. The receipt of a gang’s financial records is

one benefit. However, this study’s model of the life-course aging process was also a product of ethnographic observation of several gangs

throughout the city. Ethnography was used as an initial screening device to gain information about the range of different organizational

structures that gangs adopt. Once this “universe” of gang organizational

types was formed, it was possible to form a smaller sample and to interview gang members and track their wages/expenditures over an extended period. The outcome was the empirical data on drug trafficking

that are representative of gangs throughout the city—not just one region or one organizational type. Moreover, the breadth of ethnographic

participation yielded insights into the developmental trajectory of gang

members (that is, how they age and at what points particular forms of

intervention might be useful).

Although more research of this type is needed, this study offers a preliminary basis from which to analyze the motivations for individual

participation in the corporate gang. In light of tremendously skewed
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10

The Financial Activity of a Modern American Street Gang

wage distribution, a life-course perspective was employed to account

for the economic and symbolic incentives of individual corporate gang

involvement. Throughout their tenure, gang members move in and out

of the service sector and so rely on the gang for both an immediate

(but pecuniary) wage and for support and friendship. However, over

the course of their involvement in the gang, as members realize that

their opportunity to move higher in the gang hierarchy is diminishing,

the possibility of lucrative earnings loses its attractive potential and

members grow disillusioned with the gang as a viable sphere of economic mobility. Thus, most young adult members withdraw from

full-time involvement in the gang’s economic activities and become

primarily social members.

The fact that gang wages are so low and most

gang members work at least sporadically in the

legitimate sector suggests that public policies

designed to encourage greater labor market

participation and discourage gang

involvement may be successful.

Recommendations: Jobs are key

The fact that gang wages are so low and most gang members work at

least sporadically in the legitimate sector suggests that public policies

designed to encourage greater labor market participation and discourage gang involvement may be successful. To be optimally effective,

such policies must recognize the differing motivations for participation

among younger drug sellers and those in their adult years. Policies that

attempt simply to replace gang-based drug dealing with jobs in the service sector will not be as successful in limiting gang recruitment and

countering the dream of underground economic mobility. Indeed, for

young members, in addition to peer affirmation, it is the illusion of

riches and rewards that is an overwhelming attraction of the corporate

gang. For them, the gang must be countered with another meaningful

ideal of social mobility and self-efficacy.
11

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Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia University

As members age, peer group support and identity continue to be important motives for remaining in the gang, but the gang also becomes an

employer of last resort, furnishing income in contexts where other opportunities may be limited. For this group, direct job creation may have

a more lasting impact in offering a real exit mechanism by which older

members can end their involvement in drug economies.

Notes

1. Taylor, Carl S., Dangerous Society, East Lansing, MI: Michigan State

Press, 1990.

2. Padilla, Felix, The Gang as an American Enterprise, New Brunswick, NJ:

Rutgers University Press, 1992; Bourgois, Philippe, In Search of Respect,

Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1989; and Jankowski, Martin

S., Islands in the Street, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991.
13

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The Ethnographic Approach

to Studying Drug Crime

Richard Curtis, Ph.D., John Jay College of Criminal Justice

I am an ethnographer specializing in the study of illegal drugs, primarily

in New York City neighborhoods, and I will address “crime from the

street level.” Those who might think I could talk with more authority

about crime from the victim’s rather than the offender’s perspective

could not be more wrong. In fact, after more than 20 years of intensive

and extensive street-level research in New York City’s most dangerous

neighborhoods, I have never been harmed or have even really feared

for my physical safety—except occasionally because of nervous police

officers who are surprised to find me in what they consider to be hostile

territory, like crack houses or shooting galleries. For the past 10 years

I’ve lived in Brownsville, Brooklyn—Mike Tyson’s boyhood neighborhood and the one-time homicide capital of New York City—where my

two daughters attend public school and where I’ve become quite involved

in community affairs. My reasons for living in Brownsville are complex.

They include my commitment to improving the inner city and my belief

that if I want to “talk the talk,” I need to “walk the walk.” I have never

regretted my decision.

What does an ethnographer do?

Ethnographers do many different things. For example, a recent New

York Times article described how corporations are increasingly turning

to ethnographers to better understand how people use their products so

that they can devise improvements. The work of an ethnographer—data

collection—involves observing individuals over prolonged periods of

time and interviewing them about topics of interest. Ethnographers

typically study relatively small groups of people, and although we hope

that such intensive scrutiny might lead to generalizations that can be

applied to other groups across time and space, that is not always the

case. What an ethnographer learns about drug dealing in Harlem or

Brooklyn may or may not have relevance to policymakers and public

officials outside New York City, except that trends beginning in New

York sometimes spread elsewhere.
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14

The Ethnographic Approach to Studying Drug Crime

One might simply say that ethnographers study people’s everyday

lives. While I do study people’s everyday lives, the people I study are

involved in illegal activities—typically, selling or using drugs.

The work of an ethnographer—data

collection—involves observing individuals

over prolonged periods of time and

interviewing them about topics of interest.

Individuals unfamiliar with the streets or the populations I study often

want to know how I actually do the work. First, I am always straightforward about what I am doing with the people I would like to know

better. I try never to deceive anyone or misrepresent myself. Sometimes, I initially simplify the story because people often become suspicious when a complicated research agenda is presented at the beginning of a relationship. In those cases, I usually tell people that I am

writing a book about drugs and would appreciate their help and opinions. Later, if they are interested, I explain the purpose of the study in

greater detail.

Second, I carry no protection while doing research; I rely on the relationships that I develop to ensure my safety. I do not own a gun or

carry a knife or any other kind of protection device, and people are

generally aware of this. This actually works to my advantage because

research subjects are often so concerned about my well-being while

I am working in “neighborhood minefields” that they feel obliged to

accompany me to ensure my safe passage. On more than one occasion,

local “tough guys” who felt it necessary to play bodyguard because

they thought I was a walking target for stickup artists were shocked and

appalled at how readily I entered crack houses and shooting galleries

that even they had been afraid to enter. When they discovered that everyone inside knew me, they were even more surprised. While I do not

mean to minimize the dangers involved in this line of work—and there

are some if you do not know what you are doing—I have always felt

extraordinarily protected by those around me.

Finally, I try to leave the work in the street when I return home at night.

Although I make no secret of my address and telephone number (I am
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Richard Curtis, Ph.D., John Jay College of Criminal Justice

listed in the telephone book), people generally respect my privacy. In

emergencies, they know they can call me.

Lessons from the street level

I wish to convey some idea of how my research subjects think about

crime and offending. It was very difficult to decide what to relate that

might be useful or lead people to think about things from a different

perspective. The first problem that occurred to me when I started to

consider the topic was that there is no single “criminal perspective”

on crime. Since my particular areas of interest have been drug distribution and use, I count among my acquaintances—and sometimes my

friends—hundreds of drug dealers and users. The opinions and attitudes of drug dealers and users vary as much as anyone else’s, although

there are some broad trends (which I will discuss later). In this paper

I will share several lessons I have learned from the street level.

Don’t make assumptions about what people believe

I have learned—and continue to relearn with disturbing frequency—

that it is not wise to make assumptions about people and then act on

those assumptions. For example, I used to think that because police and

drug dealers are adversaries they naturally dislike each other. Certainly,

I have heard drug dealers rail about how aggressive policing has affected their business and how particular police officers seem to single

them out for harsh (and, in their eyes, unjustified) treatment. I have also

heard police officers complain about the “scourge” of drug dealing and

talk about dealers and users as though they are subhuman. My conversation with the owner of a midsized crack business in Brooklyn illustrates another aspect of this issue.

I had been eager to meet this individual, but I knew he was anxious

about being “set up” by the police. I thought I might ease his fears

about me by commiserating with him—by telling him about my own

problems with a pair of officers in his precinct who had a history of

abusive behavior. As I described my difficulties with these two officers,

trying hard to establish my pedigree—my legitimacy—a funny grin

came over his face. I finally stopped and asked what he found so amusing. He told me that one of the officers I had mentioned was a member

of the paint ball team that he leads. I scratched my head and asked,

“Now, let me get this right, Monday through Friday you shoot bullets

at each other, but on Saturday and Sunday you shoot paint balls?!”
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The Ethnographic Approach to Studying Drug Crime

“That’s right,” he said. He didn’t seem to have any problem with the

concept, but it took me a little while to digest what he had said and

understand its implications.

A general lesson was learned here: Don’t make assumptions about

what people believe. Assumptions can get you into trouble. A more

specific lesson was also learned: Residents of inner-city neighborhoods

that have been heavily policed have sophisticated attitudes and complex feelings toward law enforcement. The more I thought about what

he told me, the more it made sense—sort of.

In some ways, law enforcement officers and drug dealers are two sides

of the same coin, and it should not be so surprising that they know each

other so intimately. In many ways, selling drugs—or pursuing those

who do—represents the major employment opportunity for youths

from these neighborhoods. I know many dealers who have aspired to

be law enforcement officers and many police officers who have

“checkered” backgrounds.

Rates and types of crime vary by neighborhood

The challenge of ethnography is to find out what is specific to one

place and time and what has more general implications. The only way

this can be accomplished is by undertaking comparative studies over a

prolonged period of time.

The largest, most violent street-level drug

distribution organizations studied were

located in neighborhoods where

community cohesion was the weakest.

A main point of one of my earliest comparative studies was the idea that

the rates and types of crime vary by neighborhood. The results of this

study, published in the late 1980s in Getting Paid, by Mercer Sullivan,

indicated that crime varies by neighborhood for perhaps two main reasons.1

 First, there are different opportunities for crime depending on

where an individual lives. For example, in neighborhoods adjacent to

industrial areas, factory break-ins are common; in neighborhoods with
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Richard Curtis, Ph.D., John Jay College of Criminal Justice

few commercial areas but dominated by highrise apartment buildings,

robberies and crimes like chain- or purse-snatching are more common.

The second reason crime varies is “collective efficacy”—that is, neighborhoods are more or less able to exert influence over those who commit crimes. The idea is that crime will likely be lower in neighborhoods

where there is “mutual trust among neighbors combined with willingness to intervene on behalf of the common good, specifically to supervise children and maintain public order.”2

Only by placing the behavior of offenders

within the context of a community can we

decipher whether their acts are consistent

with that environment or aberrations

that require deeper scrutiny.

It was no coincidence that the largest, most violent street-level drug

distribution organizations studied were located in neighborhoods where

community cohesion was the weakest. Just as the types of crime varied

by neighborhood, the attitudes of offenders also varied greatly, depending on where they lived. Offenders also live in communities, and even

if one believes they are biologically or psychologically predisposed to

crime or antisocial behavior, their outlooks and orientations toward

life are forged and honed in the context of families and neighborhood

groups. Only by placing the behavior of offenders within the context of

a community can we decipher whether their acts are consistent with

that environment or aberrations that require deeper scrutiny.

Crime rates vary over time

The fact that crime rates also vary over time is, in my opinion, one of the

most interesting aspects of my research. Even the most casual observer

will likely have heard at the end of the 1990s that serious crime is down

in almost every major American city. The drop in crime has astounded

and delighted the pundits, the policymakers, and the general public, although no one seems to know exactly why it has happened. One reason

it has been so surprising is that it seems to contradict a fundamental assumption upon which much of the adult world rests: that youngsters have
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The Ethnographic Approach to Studying Drug Crime

no respect for their elders. If you buy into this idea, then each successive

generation has to be a little worse than the one preceding it. (My mother,

who each morning walked 14 miles to school barefoot in the snow, is

sure this is the case.) The academic proponents of this idea—most notably, John J. DiIulio and William J. Bennett—take the idea to its logical

conclusion and tell us that our “criminogenic” inner cities are producing

“amoral” kids who will grow up to be “superpredators.” They seem to

feel that our undoing, like that of the Roman Empire, will not come from

external enemies but, rather, from a rotten core. The drop in crime has to

be shocking for these doomsday prophets because the steepest drops came

in precisely the areas that they had considered almost unsalvageable—

minority neighborhoods in the inner cities.

Where drug dealers in the 1980s advertised their

success through the purchase of consumer display

items, dealers in the middle to late 1990s have

preferred an understated style, making them, in

many respects, indistinguishable from their peers.

While public officials and governmental agencies scramble to take

credit for this unexpected, improbable, and fortuitous turn of events,

few observers have bothered to solicit the opinions of the offenders

themselves about why they seem to be committing fewer crimes.

Again, it is worth noting that offenders do not form their opinions and

attitudes in a vacuum—they do so in the context of families, peer

groups, and communities, and all of these clearly evolve over time.

In the neighborhoods where I work, the beginnings of the shift in the

prevailing current on the streets were first noticed in 1988. It was then,

while I was working for the Vera Institute of Justice evaluating the

effectiveness of the New York City Police Department’s Tactical Narcotics Team, that I first noticed young crack dealers exhorting their

crack-selling peers to avoid consuming the product. At first, I thought

this was motivated simply by a profit motive, and clearly that was part

of the story, but the larger picture was more significant and, eventually,

the ethos first developed and espoused by these youths extended outward and was picked up and refined by groups of youths who had little

to do with selling drugs.
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Richard Curtis, Ph.D., John Jay College of Criminal Justice

For lack of a better description, I will call this new identity “anti-drug

dealer chic.” This new identity was an explicit repudiation of the

excesses of the crack era. Youngsters no longer aspired to be big-time

drug dealers. Even some drug dealers no longer wanted to be identified

as such. Gone was the “Mr. T” look characterized by wearing gaudy

jewelry. Where drug dealers in the 1980s advertised their success

through the purchase of consumer display items, dealers in the middle

to late 1990s have preferred an understated style, making them, in

many respects, indistinguishable from their peers.

It is not simply outward appearances that have changed among the new

generation of drug dealers. In their view, their predecessors made two

glaring errors: (1) they used the product they sold, resulting in a tragic

loss of self-control whose spillover hurt their families, neighbors, and

communities; and (2) they didn’t know how to handle “success.” Lacking

a sensible approach to business, they brought chaos, unprecedented levels of violence, and an army of drug warriors to their neighborhoods.

The dealers of the late 1990s are, in many ways,

“control freaks”

In their personal habits, the new generation of dealers believe in

keeping a tight rein on the use of mind-altering substances. For many,

marijuana is the only substance consumed because it allows users to

“keep their wits about them” regardless of how much they smoke. Even

alcohol, once aggressively marketed in minority neighborhoods in

40-ounce bottles of malt liquor, is shunned by many youths who dislike

its stultifying effect. Crack or heroin use is strictly taboo—so much so

that in two studies I am currently conducting we are experiencing great

difficulty in locating young people who use these substances. Although

sniffing cocaine is tolerated, users are not lionized by their peers as

they were in the 1980s; indeed, they are praised for their ability to

show restraint at the end of the night when the compulsion to buy

more is strongest.

Strictly regulating the intake of substances that go into one’s body

is only one facet of the control that the current generation of young

people seek to impose on their daily lives. While the 1980s were characterized by out-of-control drug markets that featured gratuitous and

often undirected violence as a hallmark, the reconfigured drug markets

of the late 1990s are comparatively docile, discreet, and orderly. They

are also much smaller and offer far fewer financial rewards to those
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The Ethnographic Approach to Studying Drug Crime

who become involved in them. For this generation, selling drugs is

much more like a job flipping burgers than it is the pursuit of fame,

infamy, or fortune. For many young men, the current unattractiveness

of drug selling is compounded by the widespread repudiation of that

lifestyle by young women who frequently and consistently reinforce

the message that they will not date drug dealers. Believe me when I tell

you that appealing directly to the libido is a powerful motivating force

for young men!

While the 1980s were characterized by out-ofcontrol drug markets that featured gratuitous and

often undirected violence as a hallmark, the

reconfigured drug markets of the late 1990s are

comparatively docile, discreet, and orderly.

In many respects, these changes in the attitudes and actions of drug

dealers and users are astounding, but they are even more remarkable

because they arose from the grassroots without any support or intervention from governmental sources. If only we could bottle what has happened. What is most alarming to me is that the significance of these

fundamental shifts has been almost totally misread or ignored by those

with the power to do something about it. Rather than capitalizing on

the tendencies toward moderation that the current generation of young

people so clearly demonstrate, we continue to act as though we are at

the height of the crack epidemic, beefing up drug squads and incarcerating people at unprecedented rates for increasingly petty drug-related

charges. If ever there were a recipe for disaster, surely this is it.

Learning from the lessons of the past

I would like to share a few observations about how we have waged the

war on drugs. A consensus that the tally sheet is awash in red ink seems

to be growing and, surely, the cost of the war in dollars and cents is

more than most of us had bargained for. The social costs also seem to

be extraordinarily high. In New York, there has been a push to soften

the punitive Rockefeller drug laws, and several other States have

already taken steps in that direction.
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Richard Curtis, Ph.D., John Jay College of Criminal Justice

The expected outcomes of certain actions are

always greatly outnumbered by the unintended

consequences. Sometimes the unintended results of

such actions are beneficial, but mostly they are not.

From the experience of having worked extensively in neighborhoods

that have been the primary battlegrounds in this war, I have seen that

the expected outcomes of certain actions are always greatly outnumbered by the unintended consequences. Sometimes the unintended

results of those actions are beneficial, but mostly they are not.

The plight of middle-aged ex-prisoners is just one example. During

the past 2 years, we have noticed that many of the men who had been

locked up in the late 1980s and early 1990s have been released from

prison. We could reasonably expect that their transition back to their

neighborhoods would be fraught with difficulties, especially for minority

men whose opportunities are limited, but their problems have been even

more severe than could have been anticipated. For instance, finding that

their peers who were fortunate enough to have escaped the drug wars

relatively unscathed have moved on, many returnees revisit their old

haunts, seeking to reconnect with the past. Coming back to an altered

urban terrain, many of these middle-aged men attach themselves to

street-corner groups whose members are as young as 13 or 14. Forced to

jockey for position in the pecking order of these groups, middle-aged

ex-prisoners frequently find themselves challenged by young men eager

to build a reputation in the street. When these guys say that young people

today don’t respect their elders, they have the stitches and broken bones

to prove it. While some people would have little sympathy for the plight

of these men, their presence on the street is likely to have a significant

impact on the children, teenagers, and young adults who bear witness to

the inversion of age and respect, both of which are, in a “normal” world,

supposed to grow together over time.

What we did in 1989 is still reverberating in 1999, and that echo is

likely to last a lot longer. What we do today will likely have an impact

well into the next century. It is my hope that, as we reformulate drug

policy based on the lessons of the past, we do so not only with shortterm goals in mind but also with the knowledge that such interventions
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The Ethnographic Approach to Studying Drug Crime

are likely to have long-lasting repercussions that may far outweigh

their momentary gains.

Notes

1. Sullivan, M.L., Getting Paid: Economy, Culture, and Youth Crime in the

Inner City, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989.

2. Sampson, R.J., S.W. Raudenbush, and F. Earls, “Neighborhoods and

Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy,” Science 277

(August 15, 1997): 1–7.
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A Police Chief’s View:

A Response

Charles H. Ramsey

Chief, Metropolitan Police Department, Washington, D.C.

To the question of what proportion of crime can be accounted for by

gang activity, I would reply that it is difficult to really get a good

handle on how much is actually committed by gang members or drug

dealers. Often, when crimes are committed, we don’t really know the

motivation behind the crime. A significant amount, however, is committed as a result of our drug trafficking problems here in the District

of Columbia as well as gang activity in the District.

Gang crime and drug crime persist

I wish these gang-bangers in New York or in whatever sites you were

studying would come to D.C., because those in D.C. apparently haven’t yet

gotten the message that this kind of activity is on the decline. We’ve had a

decline in crime overall here, but we’ve still got a tremendous amount of

violent activity by members of street gangs here in the District.

My perspective on what these young people are thinking and doing

when they first join gangs is that, for one thing, they are unemployable.

They are frequently high school dropouts; they have no skills. Where

are they going in life? Crime itself becomes a job for many of them because they don’t see any alternative. They climb the “pyramid” of the

criminal enterprise by eliminating the competition. So they’re able to

maneuver and do things based on just the rule of the street. And that’s

still very, very appealing to a lot of these kids.

When I was in Chicago recently, I went to the theme park Great

America with my son. We saw two young men walking down the midway wearing T-shirts that read “Living the Life of a Thug.” That was

the message on the T-shirt! There was the big “thug” on the front, and

the men wore caps with a gravestone design on them with the saying

“Rest in Peace” and that kind of thing. Now, they apparently did not

get the message that this is no longer glamorous, because they seemed

quite proud of what they were doing. When you’re dealing with that

kind of mentality, it’s difficult to really break through.
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A Police Chief’s View: A Response

I think the value of research like we have heard presented here, though,

is that from it there are some prevention and intervention strategies for

some of the “borderline” kids—some of the ones who haven’t yet quite

crossed the line into crime. But with many of them, when you ask how

do they get out of the cycle of selling drugs so they can get a job (as

if it’s possible for them to get a job with IBM or some similar firm),

I think we need to face the reality that we’ve got a lot of very profound

social problems that are putting people into positions in which they

have no alternatives. People are going to eat. You’re going to provide

for your family. You’re going to provide for yourself. If you can’t do it

legitimately, you’re going to do it in a criminal way. That’s the situation

we find ourselves in, in my opinion.

What explains the drop in crime?

If, as the speakers have said, the large drug-dealing organizations are out

of business or have been dismantled, the question is why. Could it be

because all of them suddenly just realized that selling drugs was wrong—

that it’s destroying their families, it’s destroying their friends, it’s destroying their lives—so they decided to just get out of the business? Or

is it because they were arrested, they were put in jail, and now the whole

structure has been disrupted? And if so, as a result, do you now have

lower level entrepreneurs who haven’t yet become sophisticated enough

to have the kind of connections that some of the other ones do? They’ll

grow into it, but they haven’t gotten there yet. Is that the reason?

I don’t quite understand. In one sense, we’re saying that this is happening because people have finally learned about the dangers of drugs and,

doggone it, they’re changing their lives. But another reason given is

that some of them—many of the larger organizations—have been dismantled. That’s now given as the reason. I have trouble keeping up with

why we’re seeing the situation we have now if, in fact, there is a decline in drug trafficking across the country, or at least in New York.

When the speakers say the use of crack cocaine has declined and there

has been a shift to marijuana use, they seem to be saying it’s the lesser

of two evils. I’ve worked in narcotics for many years, and what I’ve

seen is that if there is increasing heroin use, there usually is a decline

in cocaine use. If you have an increase in cocaine use, then you have a

decline in heroin use. Marijuana is always there. A lot of the traffickers

found out that they did a lot less time in prison trafficking in marijuana,

and they were able to make an extraordinary amount of money traffick-
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Charles H. Ramsey, Chief, Metropolitan Police Department, Washington, D.C.

ing in marijuana with much less risk. Many of these major trafficking

organizations, including the ones that were running heroin and cocaine,

began running marijuana.

Once, when we made a seizure, what I thought was 200 kilos of cocaine was 200 kilos of marijuana packaged exactly like cocaine. It was

about 10 to 15 years ago when we started seeing more and more and

more and more of it. So the drug of choice just seems to shift from

one to the other. There is a need in our society for people to somehow

escape—either through alcohol, through marijuana, through cocaine,

or through some synthetic drug that will take its place. I don’t know

if people are wising up or if it’s that some other drug is replaced for

a while and then it shifts back.

What is happening on the streets that’s helping to bring crime rates

down is, for one thing, the strong economy. And I agree that there are

alternatives to involvement in crime. A lot of people who get involved

in criminal activity do so because there are no other options. If there is

a stronger economy or something else that gives them an option, many

of them will take it. I think you can’t overlook that. I also think you

have to look at policing strategies, involvement of the community,

and all that sort of thing as reasons for the decline in crime.

Reaching young people

It’s a very complex issue. I don’t think people understand fully why the

crime rate goes up, and they don’t understand fully why it goes down.

I know one thing: I will not take credit for crime declines, because

then I’ve got to take the blame when crime goes up! It’s a two-edged

sword—eventually, the rate will go up. We’ve all been around long

enough to know there are cycles. I think it’s the year 2009 or 2010

when the teenage population is going to increase by almost 9 percent.

History tells us that could present a problem. But if we start working

with those young kids now and do something now to provide

opportunities for them, then many of them will not choose the path

of crime. Some will, but most will not.

We have to act now. And that’s where research plays a very valuable

role. Because of research we know these kinds of things. The best way

to predict the future is to help create it. If you know that, then you must

start now taking steps to reach those kids so they aren’t at the crossroads in 2010, and we’re all still sitting here having this discussion

about the rising crime rates rather than the declining crime rates.
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A Police Chief’s View: A Response

Decriminalization is not the answer

As to suggestions to relax the drug laws, you know what my reaction is

going to be. I just don’t believe in doing that. I think we just have to be

a little smarter. I think the biggest breakdown in our so-called War on

Drugs has been that we have not provided money for treatment and prevention. We’ve always put money on the enforcement end—as if incarcerating our way out of our problem is going to be the solution. I think

it was back in the 1960s and 1970s when we first started talking about

the dangers of cigarette smoking, and we basically changed an entire

culture—away from smoking cigarettes. Now you’re starting to see it

come back again because we felt we had the problem licked and so

we stopped the campaign. Now you are starting to see younger and

younger people smoking. But you can do it again if you really pay

attention to prevention and intervention strategies and, in the case of

drugs, of course, treatment.

You’ve got to get people off drugs. Making drugs more available by

relaxing the laws is going to have an impact on whom? Minority communities are where it would be the most devastating. Do you think that

they’re going to open a clinic in Georgetown and let you go there to

buy all the crack cocaine or heroin you want? No. It’s going to be in

Southeast D.C. if it’s anywhere. That’s exactly what’s going to happen

if we relax the drug laws. The communities hit by drugs now are going

to be the same ones hit if we try to legalize it. I personally think that

legalization is just not an option.

Avoiding truancy by instilling hope

Truancy is a serious problem, but I don’t think anybody really wants to

take ownership of it. When you talk to one group, they will say it’s the

police who should be picking these kids up. Another group will say it’s

the schools that are responsible. I don’t know where the parents figure

into it. It’s always some government institution—not the parents—

that’s said to be responsible. It’s very important that you keep these

children in school. I agree with the statement that most kids drop out

around 9th or 10th grade. At a high school in Chicago on the west side

where I worked for about 17 years, we’d get a freshmen class of 500

kids, but 4 years later we’d graduate maybe 120. What happened to the

others? Many dropped out, and usually it was when they were in 9th

and 10th grade.
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Charles H. Ramsey, Chief, Metropolitan Police Department, Washington, D.C.

No one was there—no counselors, no one—to help them adjust to this

new school environment. Nobody was there, when they first started

skipping class, to take them and bring them in and talk to the parents

and do that sort of thing. We seem to treat truancy as just a minor offense, but we don’t recognize that it leads to other kinds of behavior

in the long term. That uneducated kid is the one who’s going to have

to turn to a life of crime because what else can he do?

However, during the time I worked at that high school, I also saw kids

who came out of horrible circumstances who really did very well in

school. They went on to college and they did a lot of positive things.

You wondered how they did it. In each and every case, they had something that was a kind of hope for them, whether it was athletics, a

positive role model, a mentor, or the church. For these kids there was

always something that served as a symbol of hope when they were surrounded by things that were very, very negative. In cases where there

are children whose environment is negative, they’ve got to have something to hold onto. There are very many kids who do have this, and in

a lot of cases, it’s just their parents.

Special populations at risk

As to an increase in women’s or young girls’ involvement in gang activity, I’ve not seen anything that would really lead me to believe there

has been such an increase. But there has been an increase in media

coverage of it. Here in D.C., the media jumped on a couple of cases

and made a big story about girls in gangs. There have always been a

few girls who have been involved, but I’ve not seen anything significant. When something like that captures the attention of the media and

they start to talk about it, it conveys the impression that there’s been a

dramatic increase. There may, indeed, be somewhat of an increase; I’m

not saying there is none. But the increase hasn’t been so noticeable that

everybody in the department is talking about it and that we’re doing

anything special to really try to get a handle on it.

There have been female gangs in Chicago, for example, where a few

were affiliated directly with specific gangs. I know the Latin Kings, the

Disciples—all the bigger gangs—had female factions. Many of them

date gang members, and they may hold drugs, or they may hold guns

and do those kinds of things. That is nothing new. To the question of

whether there has been an increase in female gang activity, I would say
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A Police Chief’s View: A Response

I’ve not seen a rise, although it is a serious problem. I don’t know if

they’re included in research studies, but they’re out there.

In terms of changing demographics, I haven’t seen anything in D.C. that

would indicate the pattern that’s been suggested (the movement of some

people from Central America into gang activity). We have Latino gangs

here and we have African-American gangs. I don’t know whether the

first generation of immigrants coming to D.C. consists to a large extent

of people from Central America. That first generation is going to be one

thing, and then their children may begin to develop some of the same

kinds of problems that have plagued African-Americans and some of the

Latinos who have been here for a while. You may see that in the future.

It’s certainly something that would be interesting to keep an eye on.

Community policing and the decline in crime

I think that, in the short term, we will continue to see some decline in

crime. Maybe we won’t see double-digit decreases, but we are likely to see

some further decline. I don’t think we’ve really “hit bottom” yet. But I also

think that until we decide to deal with some of the more systemic problems

in our society and really repair the educational system and things like that,

we’re going to be looking into crystal balls trying to guess at this. We already know what the ingredients for crime are, and yet we’re not doing

a whole lot in response. In fact, I think this decline in the crime rate has

given us a false sense of security that somehow we’ve had some kind of

major breakthrough, and we haven’t. We’ve just been lucky.

I think that if community policing had not come along when it did, it

probably would have fallen flat on its face. We were fortunate enough

that it came at a time when crime rates were falling. The reality is that

police chiefs live in a pressure cooker. I’m here to tell you that if you’re

talking about establishing community policing and your mayor is saying

there’s a rise in homicides, you will know very quickly who’s going to

win that argument—it won’t be community policing. So, again, in the

timing of community policing, we were very, very fortunate.

But what community policing did was make us start thinking about

crime differently. It started making individuals take some responsibility

for dealing with crime. If we stay on that track and really start to work

on some of the profound social issues that are causing the dichotomy

of have’s and have-not’s to be here to begin with, I think it will have

a long-term impact on crime.
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National Criminal Justice Reference Service

P.O. Box 6000

Rockville, MD 20849–6000

800–851–3420

e-mail: askncjrs@ncjrs.org

To obtain an electronic version of this document, access the NIJ Web site

(http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij).

If you have questions, call or e-mail NCJRS.