Police

Broken Windows, Subways, and Crime

The danger in New York City of subway cuts and transit fare hikes looms. Keeping the transit system in decent shape affects more than your commute to work. It’s a public safety issue. The proposed MTA “doomsday” service cuts puts the past 15 years of public-safety gains in jeopardy. Many factors contributing to New York City’s crime drop, but a…

Continue Reading

Police

Broken Windows Works

Researchers, working with police, identified 34 crime hot spots. In half of them, authorities set to work – clearing trash from the sidewalks, fixing street lights, and sending loiterers scurrying. Abandoned buildings were secured, businesses forced to meet code, and more arrests made for misdemeanors. Mental health services and homeless aid referrals expanded. In the remaining hot spots, normal policing…

Continue Reading

Police

Broken Windows in the Economist

I got issues with this piecefrom the normally stellar Economist.I just happened to have lunch yesterday with George Kelling. He has issues, too. For one thing, Broken Windows is not Zero Tolerance.

Police

Fixing Broken Windows in Chicago

Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weiss says he plans more foot and bike patrol and an emphasis on “broken windows” policing. This is great news for Chicago… if it actually happens. It’s tough to get cops out of cars. But Weiss is certainly saying the right things. This is reported in the Sun Times. The point of getting tough on the…

Continue Reading

Police

Shooting in NYC, 2020

Quality of life / Broken Windows policing has basically ended in NYC. There simply is no proactive enforcement. Every category is down, from open container to public pissing to being in a park after hours. Collectively all these categories (listed below) resulted in tens of thousands of police public contacts. It correlates with the largest increase in violence in New…

Continue Reading

History

History isn’t Bunk, part 1

This is Part One of Two. There’s so much Jill Lepore gets wrong in her New Yorker article “The Invention of the Police.” The spoiler is in the subtitle: “Why did American policing get so big, so fast? The answer, mainly, is slavery.” She seems to ignores the actual history of police in America, but I’ll get to that in…

Continue Reading

Police

What’s Up With Crime Being Down in Camden?

Let me start by saying I don’t know much about Camden, New Jersey. So if you know more, help me figure things out. The city of Camden is just across the river from Philadelphia. It’s part of Camden County. The city has a declining population of about 75,000. Camden is about half black and half hispanic. It is, by any…

Continue Reading

Police

Progressive Misbelief

For well over a century, “progressives” have a proud tradition of not only exposing what is best for other people (often correctly, I might add) but also thinking they know what other people believe (often incorrectly). There’s a paternalism inherent to the progressive movement that can come awfully close to racism (or at least a white-savior complex) when it comes…

Continue Reading

Police

The Curious Case of Poverty and Crime

When I’m charming people at a cocktail parties with talk of rising crime and the role of police, the good people I talk to, rather than even considering the possibility that police matter and post-Ferguson protests might matter (in a negative way), inevitably try and shift the discussion to greater social issues: poverty, racism, and inequality, the so called “root…

Continue Reading