Complaint-Oriented_Policing_Regulating_H.pdf - 872671...

American Sociological Review
1–32
© American Sociological
Association 2019
DOI: 10.1177/0003122419872671
journals.sagepub.com/home/asr
It’s 6am and officers Rodriguez and Shar-
key are beginning their morning shift from
San Francisco’s Mission Police Station.
“Alright, let’s see where we’re off to this
morning,” Rodriguez says, switching on the
patrol car’s dashboard. The screen wedged
between the passenger and driver’s seat
lights up a list of 36 calls listing the time, a
numeric code delineating the type of call,
and a street address. “Hey, not so bad! It’s
still early though.” Of the calls on the
screen, twenty-one are coded 915, or what is
officially called “homeless complaints.” If
the 911 dispatcher receiving the call con-
cludes that the reported violation covers one
of the city’s 24 anti-homeless laws and does
not involve a more serious crime, or a nui-
sance violation involving a housed person,
they dispatch the call as a homeless
complaint.
Officers Rodriguez and Sharkey respond to
the calls in the order received. Driving to the
first call, a mere five minutes from the sta-
tion, we pass eleven tents and several more
bodies laid out on cardboard, piles of blan-
kets, and the hard-damp concrete, all violat-
ing the exact same ordinance we’re chasing
after, “illegal lodging.” We pull up to a
872671
ASR XX X 10.1177/0003122419872671American Sociological ReviewHerring
research-article 2019
a University of California-Berkeley
Corresponding Author:
Chris Herring, University of California-Berkeley,
410 Barrows Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720
Email: [email protected]
Complaint-Oriented Policing:
Regulating Homelessness in
Public Space
Chris Herring a
Abstract
Over the past 30 years, cities across the United States have adopted quality-of-life ordinances
aimed at policing social marginality. Scholars have documented zero-tolerance policing and
emerging tactics of therapeutic policing in these efforts, but little attention has been paid to
911 calls and forms of third-party policing in governing public space and the poor. Drawing
on an analysis of 3.9 million 911 and 311 call records and participant observation alongside
police officers, social workers, and homeless men and women residing on the streets of
San Francisco, this article elaborates a model of “complaint-oriented policing” to explain
additional causes and consequences of policing visible poverty. Situating the police within a
broader bureaucratic field of poverty governance, I demonstrate how policing aimed at the poor
can be initiated by callers, organizations, and government agencies, and how police officers
manage these complaints in collaboration and conflict with health, welfare, and sanitation
agencies. Expanding the conception of the criminalization of poverty, which is often centered
on incarceration or arrest, the study reveals previously unforeseen consequences of move-
along orders, citations, and threats that dispossess the poor of property, create barriers to
services and jobs, and increase vulnerability to violence and crime.