This article in the Times is worth reading. Of note: the most discretionary arrest in NYC, Dis Con, down 91 percent. Meanwhile the courts are close to empty. “This proves to us is what we all knew as defenders: You can end broken-windows policing without ending public safety,” said Justine M. Luongo, the deputy attorney-in-charge of criminal practice for the…
Tag: broken windows
Blue Flu (II): Arrest “only when you need to”
Conor Friedersdorf has a excellent piece in The Atlantic, “The NYPD’s Insubordination—and Why the Right Should Oppose It.” [And just for the record I did scoop the New York Post, albeit only be a few hours.] There’s lot here that doesn’t fit in our normal political divide. And I love that cognitive dissonance! You’ve got union blue-collar workers, and the…
“The Police-Community Divide”
Best 22 minutes you’re going to hear about the current state of policing. My colleague David Kennedy on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show. I can’t thing of anything he said that I don’t agree with.
“A fairer, safer city”
I stumbled across this column by Harry Siegel yesterday in the Daily News while getting my shoes shined. It’s bar far the best thing I’ve read in a while about the current state of crime and New York City. Read the whole thing. But here are some highlights: Pay no mind to the shrill voices on the left warning of…
On jaywalking and giving tickets and 84-year-old men: “If the ends of justice are not met…”
In a comment Kyle W was kind enough to get me going about the situation in which a Manhattan resident Kang Chun Wong suffered injuries after an officer attempted to give him a jaywalking ticket and Mr. Wong seems to have tried to walk away. Mr. Wong is 84. I wasn’t there, so it’s hard for me to talk about…
Lexington Market
Last week I mentioned“the army of junkies outside Lexington Market.” My tender New York eyes were a bit shocked by 20 people shouting and 20 other people nodding in what I call the “junkie lean.” You can’t expect decent people or caring parents with children to walk a gauntlet of junkies to go shopping. They won’t do it. Nor should…
Broken Windows does not equal Zero Tolerance
This article in Slate by Justin Peters is perhaps not the stupidest thing I’ve ever read on policing. But it is the stupidest thing I’ve read about Broken Windows since Bratton was announced as the next NYPD commissioner about 20 hours ago. Peters writes, “Broken-windows strategies and zero-tolerance policing strategies go hand in hand.” Well, no. They don’t. Bill Bratton…
James Q. Wilson
James Q. Wilson passed away yesterday. From The Chronicle of Higher Education: James Q. Wilson’s Practical Humanity James Q. Wilson made me a cop, even though I never met the man. I think I heard him give a conference talk once. Many say that Wilson, who died Friday after a battle with leukemia, was a kind and nurturing soul. Indeed,…
“Zero tolerance for what?”
Here’s a great interview from Investigative Voice with Baltimore homicide detectives Irving Bradley and David Hollingsworth. You had to be an actor. I had to convince you, what I was telling you to do was the right thing to do. Even though before I got you, you had torn out every window in the neighborhood, you had torn up somebody’s…
Alan F. Kiepper dies at 81
OK. I’ll be honest. I had never heard of the guy either. But it turns out he might be responsible for America’s great crime drop (not that he ever claimed such a feat). But he did hire Bill Bratton to run the New York Transit Police, and that was perhaps the start of it all. “Effective management is doing small…