How Segregation Enables Over-Policing of Communities of Color

“An hour ride on most NYC subway lines should be enough to see how New York City, for all its diversity, is an economically and racially segregated city. A few stops along that same ride can also illustrate how policing in communities varies depending on the neighborhood. Take the D train from 59th-Columbus Circle to The Bronx Defenders’ office in the South Bronx and this will be evident. The correlation is no coincidence. Over-policing and housing segregation are two sides of the same coin—the two systems are embedded in each other, making it impossible to dismantle one without fundamentally changing the other…”

Op-ed by Runa Rajagopal, Director of the Civil Action Practice at The Bronx Defenders, for City Limits. Read it here.