Wednesday 26 October 2011

The Lincoln Park Raid

The Harris family had lived in Lincoln Park, Chicago since 1970. Since then, it had become a wealthy neighborhood, but they had stayed put, despite offers of over a million dollars for their dilapidated home. The owner is now 77. His son Michael lived there, who had a history of burglary and shoplifting, and other relatives too, with cleaner records. Then they were raided by the police. Here are some excerpts from the news story (but read the whole thing):

No meth was found inside the Harris home. The police did arrest two family members on animal-related misdemeanors, and took away four dogs. But they found no evidence of the crimes some neighbors had suspected, the kind that typically call for 40 officers. No drugs. No guns. No dogfighting. The 40 officers on the scene — from the Chicago Police Department Animal Crimes Unit, two SWAT teams and the Cook County Sheriff's Department — left....

As the smoke cleared, a building inspector arrived. The Harrises knew that their house was rundown. In a neighborhood of new mansions, it stood out, with its bedraggled American flag, the window fan, the brown wooden steps that sloped straight to the sidewalk. But they had never been issued a building code violation. Now the inspector wrote down dozens of infractions, and made another list for an adjacent home where two of the Harris daughters live. Bad wiring, clogged gutters, torn siding, broken plaster, rotting window sashes, unsanitary living conditions. An emergency order to vacate was issued....

From the beginning, friends and relations were in and out of the Harris house on Sheffield. Mr. Harris masterminded the community garden. Friends sat out front talking, drinking and playing checkers, customs the family maintained through the decades, sometimes to the consternation of new neighbors who conducted their social lives in the privacy of back patios and decks....

After the raid, a news release about it appeared on the 18th District CAPS website. The release, noting that citizens had complained of animal cruelty and "gang/drug sales," concluded with the statement: "This is an excellent example of the police and citizens working together." What the release did not note, however, was that no one was charged with "gang/drug" sales. It did not note that Michael Harris was arrested only for the largely unknown misdemeanor of being a felon in possession of non-neutered dogs. After he got out of jail, he collected money from neighbors to have one of the dogs, Kiki, spayed and returned to the family. Meanwhile, the case against one of the Harrises' grandsons, Andrew, 21, remains in court. According to the misdemeanor charges, his two pit bulls were malnourished and maltreated. According to the family, they were fed and watered daily and never used to fight.


Building codes are a response to asymmetric information. Animal cruelty laws can be seen a a response to externalities--- that some people feel disutility if other people mistreat animals. What does the Harris story tell of the dangers of regulation?

13 comments:

  1. The Harris story does a great job of highlighting how both the government and private individuals obtain and act on information. The difference between the two parties usually lies in the motive and payoff for each. The city's actions against the Harris family were mainly based on complaints from community members. Why did they complain? They could have a number of reasons, but I'm assuming they didn't think highly the Harris family and their property. The complaining parties acted irrationally, and the police and city acted irrationally as well since the complaints were coming from voting community members. The information the police were given was proven to be poor, as no drug charges were given. Their words to the community, however, praised the raid as a success on the alleged animal cruelty and drug activity. This action misinformed citizens even more than their initial suspicions did. The reputation of the city was not hurt by this though, and did not affect their measure of success.

    Private citizens will find out information on their own as it affects them. When asked, neighbors who lived as close as across the street said nothing but positive things about the Harris family. When given the opportunity, they donated money to have the dogs neutered. Not only does it show they wanted the problem solved, but they felt an investment on their part into the solution was well worth it.

    In this case I feel it was unfortunate that the people complaining might have not really known the Harris family too well. The complaining parties being misinformed and the city acting on this bad information in a careless manner put a family out of their home. Without perfect information, a perfect outcome can be hard to come by.

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  2. The Harris story demonstrates how regulation can activate communities to "right" nonexistent wrong's. From an economic standpoint, people's time and resources weren't being best utilized trying to enforce regulation that didn't apply to the situation at hand (since the Harris' were not actually charged with drug possession or other similar illegal activity). A misallocation of resources leads to inefficiencies, and this could likely be a danger of regulation.

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  3. The Harris story does a great job of showcasing societal members who try to exploit regulation to achieve a desired externality, not necessarily related to the actual regulatory issues themselves. Despite the purported claimed of drug/gang activity, building code violations and animal cruelty, it's highly unlikely that the Harris' neighbors actually cared about the issues themselves. Rather, each neighbor was more accurately concerned with how the Harris house detracted from the aesthetic of their lush Lincoln Park neighborhood and the decrease in property values that their proximity to such a dilipidated house was causing. The potential for abuse is always a danger for any regulation and in this case, we could see the inefficency created by such a misallocation of resources.

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  4. This is an example of government failure. I quite agree with the above comment. The small, unhappy group actually cared little about the issues they complained. They were simply using these as excuses to benefit themselves by getting rid of the Harris family. The police officers did a bad job here by taking action without doing adequate research, and it's worse that they were not willing to admit they were wrong. This really isn't a good example for a harmonious, equal community.

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  5. This story is a great example of how different entities respond to incentives. When the incentives are not in line, then problems like asymmetric information may occur. I do find it surprising, however, that the government was able to do what they did given that there was not great evidence against the Harris family.

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  7. It does seem like the raid was a waste of resources for accusations that had no real basis. I was also surprised that so many of the city's police conducted the raid without having more proof or evidence other than what the neighbors were saying. It would seem to me that a danger of regulation is that the people asking for the Harris family to be regulated had imperfect information and ended up incurring greater costs to society than the "benefits" from the raid. It also seemed to me like the neighbors were only doing it to find some way to improve the aesthetics of the neighborhood by getting rid of the Harris family who refused to conform with what the other houses looked like. Such a big operation stemming from such selfish intentions just seems inefficient for society.

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  8. I felt very sorry for the Harris family when I finished reading this article. This is not right and the government should apologize or compensate for not being justice enough. This story shows how asymmetric information can cause inefficiency and costs to society. Regulation should be based on certain facts and evidences and the government should be more careful when it decides to regulate something.

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  9. Kyle said that he thought the police and neighbors were acting irrationally, because no drugs were found. Melissa had one answer--- that the point was to force the family to sell or fix up the house rather than to really find drugs. Another answer is that the police and citizens were simply wrong, and that they did have credible information of drug use, but no drugs were kept on the premises.

    An important point to draw from this story is that regulation gives the government many tools they can misuse for unintended purposes. The building code, animal cruelty laws, and drug laws all gave excuses to make life difficult for the Harris family.

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  10. Well as a cop I can tell you that laws suffer from a fatal flaw, human beings. If a law is too narrow it restricts police discretion which is a good thing if the officer has bad intentions, but a bad thing if the officer is trying to use the law to do the 'right thing'. If a law is too broad, then it has the opposite problem. Public Intoxication is the best example in Indiana, you can have a BrAC of 0.0 and still get arrested, under the assumption that you are under the influence of intoxicants other than alcohol. This is a good thing if an officer is trying to get a naked person running and screaming down the street into a cell, but a bad thing if an officer simply doesn't like your response to his questions and arrests you.

    My point in all of this is that although the Harris family was guilty of everything they were charged with, and their home probably did fail to meet building code, it was clearly a roundabout way of getting them out of an up and coming neighborhood so that some developer can turn the land into multimillion dollar mansions. Right or wrong, it's the law.

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  11. Maximilian Roedder2 November 2011 at 12:52

    This story is, in my opinion, a strong example of how extensive regulation can be misused to influence citizens behavior. In this case, the government obviously had an incentive to make the family leave. Therefore, it tried everything to "bully" and intimidate them. In the end, this strongly highlights the importance of not giving the government too much power over its citizens so that it is not too tempting to use it for the wrong purposes.

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  12. This story highlights that the laws put in place by the government can help/harm some more than it helps/harms others. This seems to me as if the laws were used to stereotype a family with a high level of cultural differences and remove them from a neighborhood. I personally feel that if the Harris family really was involved in dog fighting and gang related drug activity that the neighbors would have realized this given the nature of the Harris family hanging out outside of their home. If the neighbors would have realized this I don’t think people would have felt so strongly about the police force used to evict the family from their home. The fact that a poorer family in a wealthier neighborhood was kicked out of their home because of a few governmental regulations regarding their personal property upsets and confuses me. Why do we have property rights if a family can be kicked out of a home they have had for years for these reasons?

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  13. It's kind of like politics...When you offend most of the others, you will be in trouble even though you are OK with the law. The poor guy should learn to get along well with his neighborhood. He didn't commit any crime but was not welcomed. It's better for him to leave here if he really like animal abuse.

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