Zero Tolerance Policing and Arabic-Speaking Young People

Abstract and Introduction from a thesis by Michael Hartley Kennedy submitted 2000

© 2001 Michael Hartley Kennedy

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Abstract

In this study I have conducted an extended literature review on the effect that the new ‘highly visible... accessible, rapidly deployed’ and ultimately ‘uncompromising’ policing strategies (New South Wales Police Service 2000, p.3)—that is, zero tolerance policing—have had on disadvantaged communities. In particular I want to consider the effect such policies have had on young people from the Arabic speaking community. In adopting a liberal-feminist standpoint as a methodology I have attempted to place myself in the position of examining the data and at the same time give all stakeholders a voice in this very important policing debate.

Far from producing Commissioner Peter Ryan’s vision of a ‘Police Service that is... ethical, courteous, well trained and highly professional’ (New South Wales Police Service 2000, p.3), this thesis demonstrates that zero tolerance policing as an organisational strategy is counter-productive. It is maintained by a hierarchical management structure in the form of data-driven performance management or crudely put, ‘value for money’ policing. Statistically based monitoring does little to ‘reward good work and take corrective action on poor performers’ (New South Wales Police Service 2000, p.3) as its measurement criteria consider only arrest rates and the ‘highly visible’ results that produce good media stories. I have also discovered that zero tolerance policing strategies are organisationally discriminatory and racist towards disadvantaged and minority communities, in this case principally the Lebanese community and the concepts measured solely in quantitative terms.

A close examination of the literature reveals that operational police are seldom if ever given a voice and that, in many instances, researchers evaluate data solely from within their own ideological framework. As a consequence, the spotlight is seldom upon the criminal justice establishment and its executives or the inadequacies of a capitalist system.

After examining a broad range of international data I have argued that the discriminatory aspects of zero tolerance policing are felt by service providers and users alike and that researchers tend to support the professional status quo of elitist criminal justice systems by demanding accountability for zero tolerance strategies from the bottom of organisational structures, thus participating in a culture of blame.

I conclude with a call for more research into zero tolerance policing strategies using a framework that listens to all stakeholders and gives them all a voice.

 

INTRODUCTION

The journey of my thesis about the effect of zero tolerance policing strategies on disadvantaged and minority groups, particularly Arabic-speaking young people in the Canterbury-Bankstown area, should, perhaps, begin with a headline from the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘The officer who fired the fatal shot that killed Edison Berrio [an unarmed young person], 22, of Woolloomooloo, had only just returned to duty after an alleged near fatal encounter with another man’ (Kennedy, L. 2000)

In retracing the changing strategies of policing and social policy design that have led to violent incidents such as this within minority and disadvantaged communities, I must travel back twenty years and reflect on the period when I was working as a detective in the Canterbury-Bankstown area of Sydney. For from 1981 until 1996 I often came into contact with members of the Arabic-speaking Lebanese community and their extended families and the first connection was often with the Lebanese young people themselves.

Regardless of how trivial or serious police investigations were to be, the initial exchange in this community always began with a welcome into the family home. Whatever the reason for entering a household one of the first decisions to be made always related to food and drink and whether I would, perhaps could, drink Arabic coffee. On the 2^nd  March 1988 at about 6am, at least a dozen colleagues and I searched the rural residence of a prominent Canterbury-Bankstown based Lebanese family. On our arrival the residents and many extended family visitors were in bed and yet, when police began searching the premises and recording information, they were served with coffee and tea like all the other family members who had been awakened from their sleep. Eventually a very large breakfast was prepared and the police were expected, and happily complied, to join the family in this meal. As is the case with most Middle Eastern families, almost all conversations took place in front of the whole family, whilst usually an adult, not necessarily a male, was maintaining the role of a mediator.

In this setting voices became raised and emotional outbursts took place. However more often than not there was an obvious level of co-operation and respect for anyone in a position of authority. Importantly, a moral mandate was always extended to the police, the only proviso being that the officers be culturally aware. This meant that officers should display a reasonable level of tolerance and respect in relation to any legal due process, which involved formal interviews or the loss of liberty (Kennedy 1988).

Many of the Arabic-speaking Lebanese community in the Canterbury-Bankstown area live close to other extended family members and are dependent upon government welfare services (Canterbury City Council 1993; 1998). These families suffer social and economic stress, due to poor English language skills, limited education, high unemployment levels and poor labour market opportunities for unskilled and young Arabic-speaking people (Batrouney 1995, ch.9; Humphrey 1998, p. 54). Weatherburn, Lind and Ku (1997) have shown that poverty, unemployment and disadvantage are all part of the social and economic stress, which directly impacts upon unlawful and delinquent activity.

In order to critically analyse the impact that ‘uncompromising’ (New South Wales Police Service 2000, p.3) zero tolerance policing (see, Chapter 1) has had upon minority and disadvantaged groups, it is important to grasp the meaning of why police exist in a capitalist society. The social contract between a society and its police is a liberal-democratic concept in which the rights of the individual have to be considered along with the utilitarian, democratic belief of the most good for the most people (Banks 1999, p. 9). This uncertain, and as will be shown, in practice discriminatory, theory was the basis upon which the modern police force was introduced as an institutional arm of the state. The mechanism, through which most communities extended a mandate or moral authority to police, involved the provision that tolerance and informal discretion should used by the police whilst conducting their business (Milte & Weber 1977).

Unfortunately, tolerance and informal discretion were not in evidence on the 3 and 4 August 2000, when members of New South Wales police blocked off whole streets in the Canterbury-Bankstown area in order to search the premises of some members of the Lebanese community for drugs and firearms (Kennedy 1988). This exercise, which required the use of more than two hundred police, the tactical response group, negotiators, police dogs and the police helicopter (Gee 2000; Miranda 2000a), is a clear indication of zero tolerance policing strategies used in New South Wales since 1996 (The Torch 21 August. 1996, editorial), and formally introduced by way of the New York zero tolerance model, Operations and Crime Reviews (OCR) in 1998 (Davis and Coleman 2000). These have seriously eroded the moral authority extended to police by the predominantly Lebanese, Arabic-speaking community. The burgeoning resentment towards zero tolerance policing is also becoming evident in other areas of Sydney where the population is primarily from minority, ethnic or disadvantaged communities (ABC 2000; Maher, Dixon, Swift, and Nguyen 1997).

Zero tolerance policing and the use of data driven performance management strategies have made law enforcement an opaque, competitive and politicised business; a business in which tolerance, discretion and informal cautions, because they are unable to be quantitatively assessed, are becoming a thing of the past. Competency is scientifically measured in terms of empirical crime statistics and arrest rates (New South Wales Police Service 1999) which are seen to give a measure of ‘individual productivity’ and produce ‘cost effective policing’ (New South Wales Police Service 2000, p.3). In fact, this highly competitive industry based on ‘new ideas, business principles and work practices’  (New South Wales Police Service 2000, p.3) has created a division in some disadvantaged communities. Resembling a war between opposing armies, police and young people from minority and disadvantaged groups see each other as the enemy. The fact that it is often seen in this way is exemplified in a media report about a police internal affairs investigation into the relationships between young female police and young Lebanese males from the Canterbury-Bankstown area in which the article is headlined: ‘Constables sleep with enemy’ (Miranda 2000b).

After shooting dead an unarmed young person, who was a heroin addict in a stolen vehicle, a young plain-clothes police officer was reported as saying, ‘I thought I was going to get hit [shot].’ (Gibbs 2000; Kennedy 2000). A coroner’s inquest under the New South Wales Coroner's Act (1980) could have examined zero tolerance policing strategies, the data-led performance management system Operations and Crime Reviews, the downsizing of police welfare and assistance at a time when 700 of the state's 14,500 police are on long-term sick report; and why a constable who had recently been on stress leave owing to an assault in which his firearm was taken from him, was performing duties in such a high risk area. Investigating police were directed by a member of the police executive to charge the constable with murder (Gibbs 2000; Kennedy 2000, 2000a, 2000b; Kennedy and Gibbs 2000), ensuring that the coroner's inquest is likely to be only a formal exercise, as legal obligations of sub judice will allow the criminal justice establishment of senior bureaucrats, lawyers and police and their media and marketing network to remain conveniently silent on these crucial issues.

For many years now there has been international comment about the fact that young people from ethnic and minority communities present soft targets for zero tolerance policing (ABC 2000; Booth 2000; Green 1999; Hopkins Burke 1998; Humphries 2000; Maher, Dixon, Swift, and Nguyen 1997; Noble, Poynting, Tabar 1999a; Palmer 1997; Penberthy, Melki and Trute 2000; Poynting 1999; Reiner 1992; Shapiro 1997; Skolnick 1999). Even James Q. Wilson, the sociologist who introduced ‘The Broken Windows’ theory (Wilson & Kelling 1982) which has been a major contributor to the idea of zero tolerance policing, admits that when policing focuses on rules and regulation, rather than using individual discretion, the outcomes for disadvantaged and ethnic communities are generally discriminatory and racist policing (Wilson 1968).

This New South Wales experience of policing minority youth, which includes data-led evaluations; the unaccountability of criminal justice and police executives; and the scapegoating of inexperienced junior police for racism, discrimination and the shooting of unarmed people from minority groups, is in many ways a duplication of the New York zero tolerance police experience (Chivers 2000; Choa-Eoan 2000; Flynn 2000; Green 1998, p.175; Herbert 2000; New York Times, 10 December.1999, editorial; Rashbaum & Chivers 2000; Riley 2000). 

© 2001 Michael Hartley Kennedy