Being Proactive: On the Streets in Southeast Nashville

As regulatory arms of the state, police achieve social control through tactics that are coercive and interventionist. However, social control can also be produced through tactics that are “soft,” such as through persuasion, negotiation and community interaction. In this chapter I examine the contours of policing Latinos in Nashville by documenting coexisting inclusive and exclusionary police policies and practices. Integrating these divergent modes of social control represents a new perspective to the study of policing and Latino immigrants because most scholars tend to look at policing Latinos in terms of repression and racial profiling or community policing and welcoming practices. As such, this chapter offers crucial insights regarding how police, from administrators to patrol officers, make sense of Latino immigrants and their place vis-à-vis the law.