A fresh look at broken windows
It’s a rare day that I post something from NY Daily, but this is well written and thought provoking.
Bratton’s original insight was that stopping small crimes — fixing broken windows — helped prevent big ones: Once the cops began stopping fare-beaters, they found a remarkable number had drugs, weapons and/or outstanding warrants.
The strategy worked spectacularly well. In addition to catching truly bad players, having the NYPD crack down on nuisance crimes like public drunkenness, fare-beating and panhandling helped convince the public that the cops were there to proactively help keep order, not just chase criminals after the fact. And in some cases, like with fare-beaters — one in seven of whom turned out to have either a weapon or an outstanding warrant when stopped — it helped take serious criminals off of the streets,
But a generation later, with New York’s war on the violent crime level of the 1990s now decisively won, some neighborhoods are calling for a peace dividend — a relaxing of the sometimes relentless police pressure on low-level nuisance crimes.
Every New Yorker knows there are times and places when, in a nod to neighborhood sentiment and common sense, the rules get relaxed. In my Crown Heights, Brooklyn, neighborhood, it’s pointless to make or enforce noise complaints (or, for that matter, indecent exposure laws) in the days immediately preceding the West Indian American Day Carnival.