Mapping Police Geographies The practices of discursive mapping present data, policy, or otherwise opaque information in new ways recasting “facts” to allow for new perspectives or new frameworks to understand the spatial and geographic circumstances that characterize events. The following maps and diagrams visualize and contextualize data procured via ACLU MA’s litigation with the City of Boston regarding “Operation Clean Sweep.” 1. Long Island by the numbers. This infographic makes legible the quantitative discrepancies between the number of potentially sheltered residents on Long Island in comparison to the provision of emergency shelter after Long Island’s closure. 2. Displacement. Of the residents displaced after the closing of Long Island, a large number found emergency shelter in the geographies of Mass and Cass. Thicknesses of lines indicate number of sheltered individuals in each location. 3-6. Operation Clean Sweep Arrests. The diagram, as a collection of geospatial data, indicates where and when arrests occured during Operation Clean Sweep. Examining geographic information in time points to certain coincidences - of shelter access, closing times , and the proliferation of arrests in these geographies.
Fallow. 2020.