Crime In Puerto Rico Essay

Alternatives to Policing his raises the question: if the police are themselves perpetrators and enablers of harm in people’s lives, particularly those who find themselves on the margins due to race, class, citizenship status, gender, sexuality, and spatial location, then what is to be done to address the very real forms of violence that exist in our communities and the insecurity and fear that they breed?

Alternatives to Policing his raises the question: if the police are themselves perpetrators and enablers of harm in people’s lives, particularly those who find themselves on the margins due to race, class, citizenship status, gender, sexuality, and spatial location, then what is to be done to address the very real forms of violence that exist in our communities and the insecurity and fear that they breed?The answer, I believe, is that we must work to find alternatives to policing as we attempt to address the crises facing our communities.This has been a consistent pattern among Puerto Rico’s elected officials whether PPD or the Partido Nuevo Progresista (New Progressive Party, PNP).

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This crisis in policing, in turn, contributes to violence, crime, and fear for many Puerto Ricans.

One could argue, however, that despite dwindling numbers, the police are just as present in the everyday lives of a variety of citizens and non-citizens and are present primarily as a repressive force.

In February, the police killed Anthony Maldonado Avilés, a 32-year old man from Jayuya who was acting erratically and brandishing a machete.

On March 11, police shot Jorge Cordero Colón, a mental health patient from Maricao as he was in the midst of crisis.

In that sense, declarations of a security crisis notwithstanding, not much seems to have changed between the police and the people following Hurricane María.

Pushing against the crisis discourse being promoted by the state, I would argue, building from the crucial work of activists on the ground in Puerto Rico, that policing isn’t in crisis.

Even as a dwindling police force in Puerto Rico raises concerns over increasing violence, marginalized communities better served by alternative methods of violence and crime reduction are still vulnerable to state violence.

n the year and a half after the passage of Hurricane María, much has been written about Puerto Ricans’ feelings of insecurity and concern over rising rates of crime.

Feminist activists have pointed our attention to numerous examples of the ways that the police facilitate and enact violence against women; from the fact that police don’t take women seriously when they report experiencing violence, to the fact that the PRPD is home to a staggering number of domestic abusers and sexual harassers, to the fact the police recently pepper sprayed, pushed, and hit feminists peacefully protesting outside of the Fortaleza.

This is the actual security crisis affecting women and gender non-conforming people in Puerto Rico who often cannot count on the “protection” of the police when they experience violence, and for whom the violence they experience may come at the very hands of a police officer.