{"id":402916,"date":"2019-04-11T19:34:18","date_gmt":"2019-04-11T18:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/policing-worsens-public-safety-for-puerto-ricos-most-vulnerable\/"},"modified":"2019-04-11T19:34:18","modified_gmt":"2019-04-11T18:34:18","slug":"policing-worsens-public-safety-for-puerto-ricos-most-vulnerable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/policing-worsens-public-safety-for-puerto-ricos-most-vulnerable\/","title":{"rendered":"Policing Worsens Public Safety for Puerto Rico&#8217;s Most Vulnerable"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<aside class=\"series-card row\">\n<div class=\"series-image small-4 columns\">\n<a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/series\/progressive-picks\/\"><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"113\" src=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/16444708675_9bda07918c_k-200x113.jpg\" class=\"attachment-hd_thumbnail size-hd_thumbnail\" alt=\"Progressive Picks\" srcset=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/16444708675_9bda07918c_k-200x113.jpg 200w, https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/16444708675_9bda07918c_k-400x225.jpg 400w, https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/16444708675_9bda07918c_k-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\"\/><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<aside class=\"introtext\">In <em>Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico<\/em>, author Marisol LeBr\u00f3n describes how policing in Puerto Rico deepens racial and economic inequalities that stem from failed development and ongoing colonial domination by the United States. Her new book also upholds the voices of the marginalized who suffer most from punitive governance and shows how they are resisting. In this excerpt, LeBr\u00f3n explains her approach to understanding the role of the Puerto Rico Police Department (PRPD) in the archipelago.<\/aside>\n<p>When existing political economic structures are faltering or being called in question, political elites have strategically mobilized fears about crime and violence to increase their reach and consolidate power. Stuart Hall and his colleagues outlined this process in the foundational text<em> Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order<\/em>, in which they noted that when society seems to be \u201cslipping into a certain crisis,\u201d panic over crime and violence can \u201cserve as the articulator of the crisis, as its ideological conductor.\u201d Panic about crime allows for the existing social order, and the unequal power dynamics that it produces, to be stabilized or strengthened throwing the \u201cslow build-up to a \u2018soft\u2019 law-and-order society.\u201d Under the guide of public safety, political elites are able to promote repressive policies that would normally receive tremendous pushback from various sectors of society. The Puerto Rican state strengthened its security apparatus and promoted a punitive common sense that treated violent crime as the central problem confronting the archipelago in order to elide the role of colonial capitalism in producing the insecurity experienced by many Puerto Ricans.<\/p>\n<p>Accepting the colonial lie of Puerto Rico\u2019s \u201cnonviability,\u201d the Puerto Rican government did not challenge the model of continued incorporation within the United States. Rather, left with the ruins of a failed development model and few options to&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/policing-worsens-public-safety-for-puerto-ricos-most-vulnerable\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico, author Marisol LeBr\u00f3n describes how policing in Puerto Rico deepens racial and economic inequalities that stem from failed development and ongoing colonial domination by the United States. Her new book also upholds the voices of the marginalized who suffer most from punitive governance [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":371328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-402916","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}