Residents of color in gentrified neighborhoods are often policed or arrested for doing normal things because their white neighbors would call law enforcement on them. This has been covered in the news many times and studied repeatedly. However, a new study confirms how white residents can still cause harm to their brown and black neighbors even without going straight to the cops.
A new study titled “New Neighbors and the Over-Policing of Communities of Color” reveals that neighborhoods with low-income minority demographics, and a wave of white residents moving in, have experienced an increase in calls to the city’s 311 hotline.
The 311 hotline is meant to field non-emergency “quality-of-life” complaints from residents, such as a report of an unsafe pothole or a broken street sign. The study published by anti-poverty group Community Service Society analyzed more than 108,000 NYPD-referred complaints through the 311 hotline in 2017. Almost 87 percent of these complaints were noise complaints. The report also confirmed that police responded to these complaints at least 92.5 percent of the time.
Cover photo courtesy of Manny Moss.







