A leading sociological theory of crime is the "routine activities" approach (Cohen and Felson, 1979). The premise of this ecological theory is that criminal events result from likely offenders, suitable targets, and the absence of capable guardians against crime converging nonrandom4 in time and space. Yet prior research has been unable to employ spatial data, relying instead on individual-and household-level data, to test that basic premise. This analysis supports the premise with spatial data on 323,979 calls to police over all 115,000 addresses and intersections in Minneapolis over 1 year. Relatively few %ot spots" produce most calls to Police (50% of calls in 3 % ofplaces) and calls reportingpredatory crimes (all robberies at 2.2% of places, all rapes at 1.2% of places, and all auto thefs at 2.7% of places), because crime is both rare (only 3.6% of the city could have had a robbery with no repeat addresses) and concentrated, although the magnitude of concentration varies by offense type. These distributions all deviate signijicantly, and with ample magnitude, from the simple Poisson model of chance, which raises basic questions about the criminogenic nature of places, as distinct from neighborhoods or collectivities.Is crime distributed randomly in space? There is much evidence that it is not. Yet there are many who suggest that it is. In a leading treatise on police innovations, for example, Skolnick and Bayley (1986: 1) observe that "we feel trapped in an environment that is like a madhouse of unpredictable violence and Quixotic threat." People victimized by crime near their homes

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This article summarizes the major cases that established the existence of racial profiling in the American public debate. The authors distinguish the widening split between the narrow, case-bound definition acknowledged by the police and the broader definition asserted by minority communities, which see the practice as widespread, affecting all areas of police-community contacts. The fact patterns of incidents substantiated on the public record set the stage for a discussion of the expected efficacy of the palliative measures now being undertaken in the political domain.The term racial profiling embodies a widespread belief that minorities are disproportionately singled out by the American police for scrutiny on a class basis-equating race or ethnicity with criminality-rather than on the basis of individual suspicion. Allegations that "police [use] traffic offenses as an excuse to stop and conduct roadside investigations of Black drivers and their cars, usually to look for drugs" (Harris, 1999) are enshrined in the term DWB, "Driving While Black" or Brown. Media accounts of racial discrimination in Dearborn, Michigan ("Racism Charges

This article proposes separate variations of the title theme. First, community anticrime activities address two distinct target groups, only one of which is responsive to the modest community-organizing tactics, the legacy of Alinsky organizations. Second, the community is similarly divided into two categories. Community policing tactics are more appropriate to communities at the tipping point than inner-city neighborhoods afflicted with endemic social and economic neglect. The mediocre success of community organizing results from applying inadequate tactics to the two more difficult target groups. New techniques must supplement current strategies for community-based activities to be effective against crime.