Zero tolerance for zero tolerance?: Analyzing how zero tolerance discourse mediates police accountability activism

- Research on opposition to NYPD policies is underdeveloped.
- There has been a significant amount of contestation to current NYPD policies.
- I examine how zero tolerance discourse is inflected in activists' claims, demands and strategies.
- Activists' strategies left NYPD emphasis on stringent enforcement of petty disorders and unilateral decision making unchallenged.

While several scholars critically analyze the effects that the New York Police Department's zero tolerance policy has on poor minority communities, few have adequately explored contestations to the policy. This article draws on interview data from the Communities united for Police Reform campaign in New York City to investigate how zero tolerance discourse is inflected in the claims, demands, and strategies of police reform activists. I chronicle how several core principles underlying the NYPD's zero tolerance policy resonate in activists' grievances and demands for reform, culminating in pursuit of what I term accountable zero tolerance. These data, I posit, provide insight into the resilience and depth to which zero tolerance discourses influence shared understandings of criminality, crime, and law enforcement.