Geographies of Arrest: Street Vending, Race, and Policing in Los Angeles

The Yale Center for Geospatial Solutions provided essential data cleaning and analytical support for “Geographies of Arrest: Street Vending, Race, and Policing in Los Angeles,” processing and mapping 10,852 LAPD arrest records from 2010–2018 across 23 charge codes to examine racialized policing patterns. Center staff designed custom maps for the book publication that visualize how municipal codes, exclusionary zones, and spatial enforcement intersect with race and urban inequality, and created a poster presentation for conference dissemination. This support enabled the integration of quantitative arrest geographies with seven years of visual ethnography, producing “thick maps” that trace both structural patterns of policing and the lived experiences of Black and Latinx street vendors navigating Los Angeles.