Social and Urban Policy

The Philadelphia Anti-Drug Coalition

Publication Date: January 01, 1990

A 1960s-style community activist returns to the Philadelphia of the 1980s to attempt to mobilize its black community to reject drugs and drug dealers. As Herman Wrice begins to organize all-night anti-drug vigils and other grassroots efforts,...

Computer-Aided Police Dispatching in Houston, Texas

Publication Date: January 01, 1990

A computer-driven police dispatching system, keyed to respond to emergency 911 calls, proves an obstacle to the implementation of an innovative new community policing system in Houston. In 1989, the city's police department faced tough questions...

Fighting the Drug Trade in Link Valley

Publication Date: January 01, 1990

When an apartment complex near a freeway interchange becomes a drug supermarket, frustrated Houston police confront the limits of traditional crime control methods. Specifically, they find that responding to a growing number of increasingly...

Finding Black Parents: One Church, One Child (Epilogue)

Publication Date: January 01, 1988

In 1980, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services faced a crisis. Over 700 black children in Cook County, including 69 infants, waited for adoption while the agency was unable to find black parents. Director Gregory L. Color, with...

Jean Ekins and the Family Learning Center (Epilogue)

Publication Date: January 01, 1988

During the 1978-79 school year, the state of Michigan turned down Jean Ekins' application for model-site designation of her Leslie, Michigan Family Learning Center. Ekins had started the program four years earlier within the Leslie public school...

Jean Ekins and the Family Learning Center (B)

Publication Date: January 01, 1988

During the 1978-79 school year, the state of Michigan turned down Jean Ekins' application for model-site designation of her Leslie, Michigan Family Learning Center. Ekins had started the program four years earlier within the Leslie public school...

Finding Black Parents: One Church, One Child

Publication Date: January 01, 1988

In 1980, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services faced a crisis. Over 700 black children in Cook County, including 69 infants, waited for adoption while the agency was unable to find black parents. Director Gregory L. Color, with...

Neighborhood Policing: The London Metropolitan Police Force

Publication Date: January 01, 1987

After 1981's fierce antipolice riots in Brixton, a heavily black and immigrant London borough, the London Metropolitan Police Force ("Scotland Yard") undertook a comprehensive re-examination of its policing practices. A new commissioner chose...

Neighborhood Policing in Los Angeles

Publication Date: January 01, 1987

For more than fifteen years the Los Angeles Police Department has made community relations and community mobilization important -- sometimes key -- elements in the way it goes about its work. This case focuses on the evolution of the LAPD away...

Peabody's Trailer Parks

Publication Date: January 01, 1987

In the late 1984, when the owners of trailer parks housing 2,000 residents of Peabody, Massachusetts, threatened to evict their tenants and redevelop the land for other uses because they cannot get satisfactory rent increases under the city's...

Deciding to Use Force in Grenada

Publication Date: January 01, 1986

In late October 1983, United States military forces landed on the Caribbean island-nation of Grenada—the first time U.S. forces had intervened in their own hemisphere in a generation. The United States' immediate concern was the safety of...

Goals For Dallas (C): The Program

Publication Date: January 01, 1985

This series of cases focuses on three related phenomena: "Goals for Dallas," a program that engaged a cross-section of Dallas leadership in assessing the state of the city and establishing goals for the community; Erik Jonsson, a founder and...