The Silver Lining of the NYPD Strike The recent story, reported by the New York Post and confirmed by the New York Times, that many NYPD police officers have stopped making minor arrests, is potentially good news for the city's residents.
During the week beginning Dec. 22, arrests for minor offenses, like drinking in public, dropped by a staggering 94 percent compared to the same week in 2013. Drug arrests were down by 84 percent during the same time period.
The Post reports that police have made the decision to not pursue low-level offenses because they fear for their safety after the murder of two police officers by a mentally unstable man with a long criminal history.
But authorities, who were granted anonymity, also told the Post that their decision to ignore their responsibilities was also driven by the feeling that they've been slighted by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The Post's story is clearly meant to drum up fear that a huge crime wave will hit the city any day now, because minor offenses are not being clamped down on. That prediction lies at the core of the broken windows theory of policing. It states, and New York's Police Commissioner Bill Bratton firmly believes, that cracking down on small crimes creates an atmosphere in which more serious offenses will take place less frequently.
But the prospect of a city where people are not not busted for blocking the sidewalk, urinating in public, or drinking a beer on a stoop is not something to fear, it's a possibility worth embracing.
The broken windows theory has been heavily challenged and, at best, has never been proven to work.
Even broken windows' co-founder, criminologist James Q. Wilson, described his theory as "a speculation" in 2004.
Though New York saw its crime rate plummet after broken windows was implemented in the early 1990s, other cities, like San Diego, saw similar crime drops without the implementation of the controversial strategy.
What commissioner Bratton has to thank for the crime dips in both New York and Los Angeles where he's led the police, is the increase in officers he's been able to secure from both cities' governments.
Creating a police state, as any effective authoritarian leader will tell you, is a great way to crack down on descent. But the question is whether that crackdown is worth the supposed safety it guarantees to its citizens.
What we are witnessing, however briefly, is a natural experiment that, I believe, could put the nail in the coffin of broken windows policing. We may actually be able to see that more serious crimes do not actually increase when police essentially walk off the job.
Further, once this takes place, we can then move to a policing strategy that prioritizes violent and more serious crimes and, just maybe, we can spend less public money on police.
Fewer arrests for minor offenses would also mean a less clogged judicial system and fewer people being held in New York City's jails for months or even years without being convicted of anything.
I am not so idealistic to believe that this utopian outcome will happen.
It's much more likely that de Blasio will capitulate to the NYPD police union, give cops more money and profusely apologize for saying anything that might have offended police, including that they police minorities differently than white people. That reality is something even some NYPD officers admit.
Even if that doesn't happen, which again I suspect it will, we've seen proof that NYPD crime stats can be easily manipulated and they have been in the past. There's no reason to think the NYPD top brass won't put pressure on their subordinates to cook the books and make it seem as though serious crime is increasing just as police are refusing to arrest people for minor crimes.
But there is still a welcome irony in the police officers' decision to essentially go on strike. They may help prove that what they've been told to do, that is, go after low-level crimes at all costs, doesn't work. And for that I am genuinely grateful to them.
During the week beginning Dec. 22, arrests for minor offenses, like drinking in public, dropped by a staggering 94 percent compared to the same week in 2013. Drug arrests were down by 84 percent during the same time period.
The Post reports that police have made the decision to not pursue low-level offenses because they fear for their safety after the murder of two police officers by a mentally unstable man with a long criminal history.
But authorities, who were granted anonymity, also told the Post that their decision to ignore their responsibilities was also driven by the feeling that they've been slighted by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The Post's story is clearly meant to drum up fear that a huge crime wave will hit the city any day now, because minor offenses are not being clamped down on. That prediction lies at the core of the broken windows theory of policing. It states, and New York's Police Commissioner Bill Bratton firmly believes, that cracking down on small crimes creates an atmosphere in which more serious offenses will take place less frequently.
But the prospect of a city where people are not not busted for blocking the sidewalk, urinating in public, or drinking a beer on a stoop is not something to fear, it's a possibility worth embracing.
The broken windows theory has been heavily challenged and, at best, has never been proven to work.
Even broken windows' co-founder, criminologist James Q. Wilson, described his theory as "a speculation" in 2004.
Though New York saw its crime rate plummet after broken windows was implemented in the early 1990s, other cities, like San Diego, saw similar crime drops without the implementation of the controversial strategy.
What commissioner Bratton has to thank for the crime dips in both New York and Los Angeles where he's led the police, is the increase in officers he's been able to secure from both cities' governments.
Creating a police state, as any effective authoritarian leader will tell you, is a great way to crack down on descent. But the question is whether that crackdown is worth the supposed safety it guarantees to its citizens.
What we are witnessing, however briefly, is a natural experiment that, I believe, could put the nail in the coffin of broken windows policing. We may actually be able to see that more serious crimes do not actually increase when police essentially walk off the job.
Further, once this takes place, we can then move to a policing strategy that prioritizes violent and more serious crimes and, just maybe, we can spend less public money on police.
Fewer arrests for minor offenses would also mean a less clogged judicial system and fewer people being held in New York City's jails for months or even years without being convicted of anything.
I am not so idealistic to believe that this utopian outcome will happen.
It's much more likely that de Blasio will capitulate to the NYPD police union, give cops more money and profusely apologize for saying anything that might have offended police, including that they police minorities differently than white people. That reality is something even some NYPD officers admit.
Even if that doesn't happen, which again I suspect it will, we've seen proof that NYPD crime stats can be easily manipulated and they have been in the past. There's no reason to think the NYPD top brass won't put pressure on their subordinates to cook the books and make it seem as though serious crime is increasing just as police are refusing to arrest people for minor crimes.
But there is still a welcome irony in the police officers' decision to essentially go on strike. They may help prove that what they've been told to do, that is, go after low-level crimes at all costs, doesn't work. And for that I am genuinely grateful to them.
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