Policing and the Weaponization of Public Health in Anti-Homeless Policies
Topics: Geography and Urban Health
, Urban Geography
, Socialist and Critical Geographies
Keywords: public health, policing, homelessness, public policy, los angeles
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 59
Authors:
Annette Koh, California Polytechnic University, Pomona
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Abstract
In this paper, I develop the concept of punitive public health, or the weaponization of public health against the public. The most common targets are unhoused residents; in the name of public health, we have seen city sanitation departments destroy unhoused people’s belongings, parks are fenced off in the name of the public interest, and police departments are funded as homeless service providers (Stuart, 2016).
Public health and policing have historically operated in tandem as enforcers of a private property ‘growth machine’ regime, from the Los Angeles Police Department’s starring role in the Safer Cities Initiative in Skid Row to the sheriff evictions of Chavez Ravine residents in 1959 (Dozier, 2019; Vitale, 2010). Safety and sanitation, goals proffered by advocates for business improvement districts, implicitly and explicitly exclude unhoused residents as members of the legitimate public (Sims, 2016).
Two recent examples in Los Angeles illustrate its trajectory: first, the mass eviction of unhoused residents from Echo Park; second, the revisions to L.A. ordinance 41.18 that expand prohibitions on sitting, lying or sleeping in public in the name of access and safety. Here, punitive public health serves to legitimize anti-Black and anti-poor policing, and can be seen to in fact produce ill health, for example through increased vulnerability and exposure to disease in shelters and jails. The paper concludes with a discussion of how unhoused activists and their allies are reframing public health and safety as liberatory rather than regulatory projects.
Policing and the Weaponization of Public Health in Anti-Homeless Policies
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Virtual Paper Abstract
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