Michael Maiello's picture

    It's Time For Bill de Blasio To Abandon "Broken Windows"

    Best I can tell, "broken windows" policing does sort of work to reduce crime rates, though it probably also gets more credit than it should.  The theory behind it is that you can reduce crime by reducing "disorder."  There's a logic to this that can't be dismissed.  If millions of people living in New York City really internalize the idea that the city cannot be governed, then the city will be harder to govern.  So, you set the police against some of the cosmetic stuff -- graffiti tagging, public urination, turnstile hopping, kids tossing bricks at windows with no intent to break and enter -- and the more serious crimes fade away too.  Getting rid of the "anything goes" mentality engages law abiding citizens and dissuades law breakers.

    At the same time, it's too pat an answer.  The link between minor disorder and serious crime is anything but proven.  It also happens that New York City, the best example of "broken windows" policing we have, saw its crime rates drop during a long economic boom period where things went particularly well for both wall street and global city real estate.  It might well be that things were bound to improve for New York City, so long as the economic rewards persisted.  Though, to be fair, the link between crime and economic development is as fraught as the link between crime and disorder.

    Another thing... in the time that crime rates fell in New York City they also fell nationally.  It could be that, even if a view of society evolving towards something better is naive that we have, over time, made progress on some major, if unresolved, issues.

    Bill de Blasio was elected mayor of New York City as something of a progressive rebuke to the technocratic Michael Bloomberg years.  The knock on de Blasio was that he would, with his hippie mentality, plunge the city back into the chaos of the 1970s.  This is a little ridiculous.  Our new mayor is a real estate mogul.  He is  decamillionaire, at least, if you include his Brooklyn real estate.  He is a smart man who I am proud to support but he is no hippie.  On the crime front, he countered criticism that he would bring New York back to the blackout riots by hiring Bill Bratton, the architect of broken windows policing, as his new police commissioner.

    Since then, we have had some incidents.  First, the Brooklyn district attorney has stated publicly that his office will not prosecute people for possessing small amounts of marijuana, unless there is some other crime involved.  Bratton responded by... changing nothing.  His police still make marijuana possession arrests in Brooklyn even though they know that charges will not ever be filed.

    Police recently got into a violent physical altercation with a woman grilling food in front of her home.  It is technically illegal to set up a grill on a New York City sidewalk but, um... it isn't a crime worth police violence, is it?  Separately, a man died after being put in a choke hold by police.  His crime?  Selling loose cigarettes to people.  There is a black market in cigarettes in New York City.  It is the result of rational but very high taxes on cigarettes.  It is not worth killing or even attacking anyone over.

    Mayor de Blasio says the law is the law.  Bratton says the law is the law.  In many ways, I sympathize. The laws should change, but that doesn't happen on the streets. On the other hand, Reason magazine is right to call enfrocement of some of these laws, especially with violence, petty and an affront to the poor.

    I think that even if broken windows policing works that it should be dropped.  Every enforcement encounter between the police and a citizen is a potential tragedy.  You can stop those tragedies by reducing the number of encounters.  That means telling the police to back off.  If every law isn't enforced at every second we will not wind up in chaos.  "Broken windows" might work but it is, by any measure, disproportionate.

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    Sadly, although you are perfectly corrrect in your criticism of the stated theory underlying the "broken windows" policing model, you are missing the real point.

     

    The aggressive search for ever more interaction between the cops and the populace is, in fact, a surrogate for the real desideratum, viz, a central registry of the mug shots, address and known associates, biometric markers etc, of the entire population, without regard to probable cause, etc.  While the cops are striving for this universal registry, they will settle for what they can get.

     

    More or less a real world version of the NSA data collection model in the virtual one.

     

    Thus, the more individuals who can, because of their relatively innocent but nonetheless proscribed behaviour (standing by the subway turnstile, for example, silently waiting for a good samaritan to "swipe them in" with an unlimited metrocard, which is, in fact, a form of "turnstile jumping" and prosecuted as such ) be entered into "the system", the greater the database for subsequent sweeps, whether virtual or real world.


    Yes, this is very likely.  Occupy Wall Street was a good opportunity to put a bunch of people they otherwise wouldn't have had into the system.


    The photographic data alone, coupled with modern facial recognition software, is no doubt a treasure trove.  

     

    I forget where it was officially admitted that the NSA had systematically collected the faces of every visitor to Zuccotti and other occupy venues, but I read it with a shiver.  (Genghis, this means you....)


    At my book signing, a young woman came up to ask me about modern progressive leaders who emulated Bob La Follette. I suggested that De Blasio had campaigned as a modern Fighting Bob, but that I wasn't sure yet about his administration. She told me that worked for the major's office and was utterly disillusioned by De Blasio's lack of progressive vision and direction. As an alternative, I suggested Elizabeth Warren, but the woman just shook her head in disagreement and sadly wandered off.


    Just as Reagan wouldn't satisfy many Reagan worshipers if he were running today, I suspect that La Follette wouldn't satisfy many of his fans if he ran today.


    I disagree. One of the disconnects between Reagan and the Tea Party is that Reagan was not confrontational. If he were still around, he'd be more conservative than he was in the 1980s, but he wouldn't be threatening debt default or attacking moderate Republicans.

    La Follette, by contrast, was a born insurgent. If he were around today, he'd be howling in the capitol and denouncing conservatives from both parties. Political ideas have obviously evolved over a century, but the differences between his ideology and that of modern progressives is surprisingly small, and he would certainly be charging hard to the left if he were still around.


    Did you see the front page of Monday's NY Daily News?

    The story:

    EXCLUSIVE: Daily News analysis finds racial disparities in summons for minor violations in 'broken windows' policing
    Summons for petty infractions are an element of 'broken windows' policing — and roughly 81% of the 7.3 million people hit with violations between 2001 and 2013 were black and Hispanic. Charges that the NYPD's execution of the policy is racially biased have intensified again since Eric Garner was killed July 17 during an attempted arrest for selling loose cigarettes.
    BY Sarah Ryley , Laura Bult , Dareh Gregorian
    NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
    Monday, August 4, 2014, 2:00 AM


    Good on them!


    Great point, and great post.

    And when even The Daily News has given up on broken windows ....

    I think there might (and I emphasize *might*) be a way to do a modified broken windows that works. Quality-of-life policing is not a bad goal in itself. But the enforcement has to be proportionate, and with quality-of-life issues almost anything but the lightest touch is disproportionate.

    A lot of this piddling nonsense should never come to an arrest. These are things you ticket people for. Jaywalking, grilling on the sidewalk: those things should be citations, not arrests. They are on a level with double-parking, which I would call a more serious threat to the quality of urban life.

    If the guy selling loosies is really bothering the local store owners, I think the range of sane policing options are 1) ask him nicely to move along and 2) write him a citation. Anything beyond that is overkill. And if he collects enough, I don't know, $50 fines,  that might change the behavior.

    The point of police work is to keep the peace. If peace officers are also keeping the city clean and orderly, that's a nice bonus. If they're causing street mayhem in the pursuit of a more livable city ... who wants to live in a city where the cops are causing mayhem?


    Without losing focus on the captial punishment outcome that this case imposed for the "crime" of selling what are called "untaxed" cigarettes, I am unable to deconstruct exactly how the "loosie" is untaxed.  

     

    The guy presumably purchases a pack of cigarettes at the bodega, where he pays both the state and federal tobacco taxes and the NYC retail sales tax.

     

    Thus, these are "taxed" cigarettes.

     

    He then breaks down the pack and re-sells them individually, but this is really more like buying a case of  soda cans and then selling them separately to thirsty, hot, drivers waiting in line at the lincoln Tunnel.


    Interesting that you mention double parking... so here's a crime that really does cause a lot of inconvenience but the nasty secret is that the city can't function without it. A lot of the double parkers are car services and delivery trucks with nowhere else to go.  They collect tickets, basically, as a cost of doing business.  Then, once a year or so, the big delivery and car service companies hire a lawyer, compile all of their tickets, bring them to traffic court and cut some sort of deal.  It's basically a variable tax on these industries. You can't just legalize double parking because that would lead to chaos but if the laws were strictly enforced getting deliveries to shops and restaurants or picking people up to take to the airport would be impossible.


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