By Diana Ross, Mid-City CAN
Diana Ross is the collaborative director for the Mid-City Community Advocacy Network. You can reach her at dross@midcitycan.org.
The data in Keegan Kyle’s curfew sweep story, “Hundreds of Kids Arrested on an Unproven Hunch,” raise two troubling issues.
The first is a purely practical one: Why is San Diego spending so much of the police department’s time and dwindling resources on a program that is at best unproven and at worst counterproductive? In this era of diminishing funding for government programs, shouldn’t there be some minimum evidence of effectiveness and accountability before the department launches large-scale programs like the curfew sweep?
The second issue Kyle’s story raises is more troubling. What about the civil rights implications of targeting the parts of San Diego where there is the most poverty and highest number of people of color?