Photo: Police Commissioner Bill Bratton. Courtesy of William Alatriste/New York City Council.
With the debate over how to properly address lower-level offenses—fare beating, public urination, etc.—at the forefront of the city’s crime conversation, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton last week issued a 41-page treatise on the benefits of quality-of-life policing.
City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito is pushing a plan in the council to decriminalize such infractions, making them punishable by a civil summons.
Bratton has publically voiced his disapproval of the plan, and said that his report, “Broken Windows and Quality-of-Life Policing in New York City,” details how “misdemeanor arrests help forestall felony crime. During the era of quality-of-life policing, from 1994 to today, we have seen major crime plummet and felony arrests fall. Furthermore, because misdemeanor arrests rarely result in jail time, both the jail population on Rikers Island and the prison population in New York State penitentiaries have fallen dramatically during that time.”
Broken Windows, according to the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University, refers to a model of policing established by criminologist George Kelling and public administration expert James Wilson that focuses on the importance of disorder in generating and sustaining more serious crime. “Disorder is not directly linked to serious crime; instead, disorder leads to increased fear and withdrawal from residents, which then allows more serious crime to move in because of decreased levels of informal social control,” according to the center’s Broken Windows research. “The police can play a key role in disrupting this process. If they focus in on disorder and less serious crime in neighborhoods that have not yet been overtaken by serious crime, they can help reduce fear and resident withdrawal. Promoting higher levels of informal social control will help residents themselves take control of their neighborhood and prevent serious crime from infiltrating.”
Quality-of-life policing, as Bratton asserted in his report, also depends greatly on the tenet that public safety is a “shared responsibility” of both cops and the community.
“It is something from which we all benefit—in economic terms, it is a public good. In our democracy, it is government’s first obligation. But it is not entirely the government’s burden, because democracy is about shared responsibility. We all have a fundamental right to live free from fear, free from crime, and free from disorder—but while we share that right, we also share the duty to secure it.”
City Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Ozone Park) also disagreed with Mark-Viverito’s plan, and echoed Bratton’s sentiment regarding Broken Windows.
“If we decriminalize these offenses, that will set us back two or three decades—people will lose respect for community, and it will promote a sense of lawlessness,” he said. “The point is Broken Windows works, it’s effective. The City Council should not be telling cops how to do their jobs.”
Bratton said in his report that he remains optimistic about the future of the city, largely because cops and the public they serve have answered the call on myriad occasions in the past.
“The challenge of this new era is ensuring that all New Yorkers feel that their city is not only safer, but fairer,” he wrote. “We can achieve this, too, the police and the community, together.”
By Michael V. Cusenza michael@theforumnewsgroup.com
