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This chapter opens with an exchange in a community meeting about the Rodney King riots, which raises questions about the nature of these meetings, the role of police in civil disorder, and the nature of police-community relations. The authors trace the origins of community policing as key liberal reform premised on the maintenance of legitimacy. They outline the “eyes and ears” function civilians are expected to play in meetings and explain how neighborhood disputes can limit the mobilizing potential of community partnerships. The authors also discuss the setting where this study takes place and outline their methods. This chapter ends with an outline of the rest of the book.

This chapter explores how power struggles with police and racial antagonisms between Blacks and Latin@s problematize the goals of community policing and diminish the influence community leaders could build to shape police action. The crisscrossing conflicts that the authors observed between Black and Latin@ meeting leaders, Vera Fisher and Hector Mendoza, and the conflicts between another Black meeting leader, Julie Coleman, and Captain Himura frame this chapter. The discussion of a community policing “power struggle” between Blacks and Latin@s takes place within a compromised field, premised on the idea that police devolve authority to the community. Together, these characters demonstrate the ways in which members of the CPAB have only a contingent authority in meetings—given to them at the Captain’s behest—and how the local racial order and legal status of many HO participants undermine their authority as well. Leaders, if they choose to remain, must volunteer to comply with police authority. LAPD has erected a community policing apparatus that has provided rhetoric of community accountability, but, at least in Lakeside, has also succeeded in platforming divisive community politics.

This chapter looks through the eyes of Ms. Mayfield, a longtime resident and CPAB member, at the formation of the Lakeside community. Similar to the previous chapter, here the authors examine how social, economic, and demographic changes have shaped the former heart of LA’s “Black Belt.” Rather than frame each section around events of violence, the authors look back at Ms. Mayfield’s experiences topically. They begin with Ms. Mayfield lamenting the loss of the neighborhood’s “old ways,” highlighting the sociological path that Lakeside has taken to arrive at its present state. Readers also encounter a revolving cast of community people, from Ms. Stacy, who resents Latino migrants for taking jobs away from school-age Blacks, to Ms. Sanchez, whose community organizing work focuses on bridging the collective struggles of Black and Brown people. These actors give voice to the various groups that make up the Lakeside community.