Coffee Shops and Street Stops: Policing Practices in Gentrifying Neighborhoods

Abstract

This article presents an empirical analysis of the postindustrial policing hypothesis, which argues that as cities pursue growth strategies designed to appeal to members of the so-called “creative classes,” they increasingly adopt punitive policing strategies, such as order maintenance policing. While several studies offer some evidence for the hypothesis, no study has yet tested the most direct spatial implication of this hypothesis within cities: that areas of a city undergoing gentrification or revitalization will evince higher levels of postindustrial policing. In a series of spatial Durbin models that utilize newly available data sets from New York City, this article demonstrates a strong positive association between gentrification and postindustrial policing. The article also finds that citizen demand for postindustrial policing is only weakly associated with its spatial distribution. These results and their potential implications are discussed in the conclusion.