The strategies and the realities of policing as practiced on the streets of New York City have changed dramatically in the last twenty years. Aggressive programs aimed at taking guns and drugs off the streets were among the main goals of these new anti-crime strategies. At at time when crime is at its lowest level in thirty years, arrests for low-level offences are higher than ever before. There is little evidence to suggest that drug markets have been eliminated or even substantially reduced. This ethnographic research explores the impact of these new policing strategies on the quality of life in the neighborhoods of New York City and argues that an understanding of the complex relationships between drug markets and crime must move beyond simply coparing the numbers of arrests genberated by different policing sterategies to an understanding of the role played by drugs in the wider political eceonomy.
crime; drug distribution; drug trafficking; drugs; narcotics; New York (City); policing strategies; urban ethnography; zero tolerance