WHERE: Engineering Room 189, San Jose State University
STIC organizer Aurora Lopez (M.P.H.) will speak on a panel at San Jose State University’s Department of Justice Studies and discuss the impacts of gang injunctions and other criminalizing policies on Oakland. The panel is organized around Dr. Katherine Beckett’s new book Banished: The New Social Control in Urban America, which explores how new policing tactics “dramatically enhance the power of the police to monitor and arrest thousands of city dwellers.” The book studies Seattle, where authors “demonstrate that, although the practice allows police and public officials to appear responsive to concerns about urban disorder, it is a highly questionable policy: it is expensive, does not reduce crime, and does not address the underlying conditions that generate urban poverty.” Also on the panel is a San Jose State faculty member and former OPD Chief Batts, whose destructive legacy in Oakland includes two lingering gang injunctions that have not reduced crime or harm and continue to drain the city’s coffers.
FLYER: Beckett May 10
In February 2010, Former OPD Chief Batts supported gang injunctions as a policing tactic that would curb crime by targeting neighborhoods and banishing individuals. The former City Attorney also used the language of banishment, saying that people were encouraged to leave and never return. Their destructive legacy has cost the city over a million dollars in legal fees for two temporary injunctions in Oakland that the City Council has admitted are ineffective and too expensive. However, the City Council and the City Attorney refuse to null the injunctions. Both Batts and Russo resigned from Oakland city posts as the injunctions remained contentious topics and rallied continuous opposition to City Council.
Come support Aurora as she represents STIC in a first-time discussion with former OPD Chief Batts!
