OPINION
Op-Ed: Be Careful What You Ask For The misrepresentation of surveillance as safety.
BY DURRELL MALIK WASHINGTON SR., BRIANNA SUSLOVIC, AND SAMANTHA GUZ ILLUSTRATION BY HALEY TWEEDELL
T
he murder of University of Chicago alumnus Shaoxiong “Dennis” Zheng is a tragic event that will have a lasting impact on the University community and Hyde Park neighborhood. Zheng’s death marks the third university affiliate to have died as a result of gun violence in a ten-month period. The grief and fear associated with these losses is palpable as community members consider strategies to make the campus and surrounding Hyde Park neighborhood safer. One proposal is a public letter signed by over 300 University of Chicago faculty. The letter demands that the University make antiviolence a “TOP priority” by enlarging the University’s private police force’s (UCPD’s) patrol footprint, establishing a University committee to oversee UCPD policies, and engaging “with the
Southside [sic] community to come up with a long-term plan to tackle violence.” The request to enlarge UCPD borders involves increasing surveillance in Hyde Park to ensure “that every block and every street corner is covered in surveillance cameras” and that security guards patrol “every road crossing in the neighborhood.” Despite being framed as an “antiviolence” intervention, the demand for surveillance cameras and increased patrolling fails to recognize the scope of security cameras and cops that are already omnipresent in our neighborhood. The potential for additional tragedy due to well-documented racial bias in policing and surveillance cannot be understated. Though the faculty letter calls on the University to engage with South Side communities, it is not clear how the initiatives they are demanding would
engage with community members who have been victimized both by violent police profiling and by Chicago’s gunviolence epidemic. Any conversations about processes of accountability need to include the communities that have already been negatively impacted by the University’s policing system. The notion that making arrests and sentencing people is the only way to build public trust contradicts the numerous requests by campus and community coalitions who have voiced their lack of trust in UCPD and the University at large. The UCPD is Chicago’s largest private police force, and they already patrol the entirety of Hyde Park as well as portions of surrounding Southside neighborhoods such as Woodlawn and Kenwood, with an extended patrol zone spanning 37th to 64th Streets.
Across Chicago, there are already an estimated 30,000 surveillance cameras connected to the command center of the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications. Footage from existing surveillance cameras aided in locating a suspect in the murder of Zheng within three days. However, the conversation about community safety must contend with the reality that this large and well-funded police presence has not prevented harm. As University of Chicago students, social workers, and Hyde Park residents, we are concerned about faculty and students’ requests for additional policing and surveillance in the neighborhoods surrounding campus, for several reasons. First, we are concerned that faculty and students are requesting an increase in existing policing and surveillance technologies that have not effectively prevented tragedies. Second, given the history of UCPD’s policing tactics, we are concerned about the impact that increased surveillance and policing may have on Black and Latinx students and community members. Third, we are concerned with the shaky outcomes of evidence surrounding increases in surveillance and policing. It is ultimately irresponsible for faculty from an elite research university to call for interventions that place some community members at increased risk of harm without engaging with data demonstrating the ineffectiveness of the proposed strategies and engaging a larger number of community voices.
W
e are most concerned with calls to expand the power and jurisdiction of the University of Chicago Police Department and neighborhood surveillance cameras. In 2018, UCPD shot a student of color on campus, and for years, UCPD has been accused of racial profiling in their arrests and stops. It is notable that despite the public release of policing data and statistics from an Independent Review Committee, local residents continue to express distrust and concern about the unbridled power of the University’s police force. It also must be acknowledged that between 2005 and 2020, the vast majority of complaints
NOVEMBER 25, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7
