This research adopts a hyperlocal design to foreground the specific histories, geographies, and relationships that shape policing and racialised criminalisation in a specific neighbourhood. While national statistics and macro-level analyses offer important context, they cannot capture the granular realities that play out in parks, youth clubs, shopping centres, and housing estates. My methodology is grounded in an in-depth, situated study that draws on qualitative interviews and focus groups with local residents, youth workers, and community leaders to explore the meanings they ascribe to encounters with police and with the state more broadly.