Safer Era Tests Wisdom of ‘Broken Windows’ Focus on Minor Crime
While the apparent chokehold fueled much of the initial public outcry, community leaders have begun asking whether focusing police officers so intently on such petty offenses makes sense in a city that is far different and far safer than the one Mr. Bratton left in the mid-1990s.
“I think we need to look at whether we still need these arrests,” said Eric L. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and a former captain in the Police Department.
“This is a good moment,” he said, “to re-evaluate what comes after ‘broken windows,’ now that the windows are no longer broken.”
And with the number of stop-and-frisk encounters down sharply, the community groups that mobilized against those street stops are turning their attention to the number of low-level arrests, saying they will push for changes.
“It’s the new stop-and-frisk,” Robert Gangi, director of the Police Reform Organizing Project, said of the low-level arrests, which, he added, were eclipsed in recent years by the public debate over the stop-and-frisk tactic.
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