TheAgitator.com
NYPD and Broken Windows
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010My crime column this week looks at a couple of scandals to hit NYPD in recent weeks—one alleging that police commanders were pressured to downgrade or bury actual crimes, and another that rank-and-file cops are given arrest and citation quotas.
Thanks for writing about this. The pot thing is especially heinous, but street-wise people are learning not to empty their pockets and spend a night in jail. The technicalities work both ways. But the fact that the NYPD is in fact creating crime where it didn’t exist before is simply awful.
Many old-school residents of Harlem who felt ignored for decades welcomed the overbearing police presence which had a lot to do with transforming this neighborhood from an anarchic, neglected shit-hole into a place where a woman can walk alone on the street after dark without worry. That’s a huge deal.
The happy medium is still in progress though.
Thanks again and keep up the great work!
my dad always said you can make stats tell any story you want…
So… in this post you link to an article about how the NYPD was under reporting serious crimes, and in the post just prior, to link to a story about how L.A.’s murder rate is at an all time low.
Granted… it’s different cities… but I can only imagine that the sort of pressure placed on brass in NY has also got to affect L.A. which historically has had a lot of gang violence.
Not sure what to make of it all… it just seems like an odd juxtaposition.
my dad always said you can make stats tell any story you want…
And that’s without manipulating them in advance.
The arrest quota is one of those things that sounds sensible on paper (at least if we’re employing law enforcement officers rater than peace officers), but is impossible to implement due to human nature. The idea is that cities/states are paying these guys to enforce the laws, and that every day, many times a day laws are being broken. So someone decides that police need to justify their pay (again, sensible in theory) with statistics.
Leaving aside the problem of weighing crimes differently(It’s impossible to say that they must catch one murderer, rapist of buglar in the act each), the reality is that most people will focus on the safest and easiest way to meet their quota, which in this case means harassing harmless people.
This is why cops love the drug war.The charges are much easier to prove,you don’t need harm or a victim.Same with the war on DUI.A simple test and your guilty.No more proof of an accident or reckless driving.Numbers mean funding.
Many years ago I got pulled over on my motorcycle and was given ‘the business’ by a cop with some rage issues.
During the jury trial (after having laughed at the ADA when he called to settle with a plea and telling him he really needs to grill his officer/witnesses over what REALLY happened and then call me back with a notification of dismissal or see-you-in-court) I took an opportunity to ask one of the officers about quotas, with questions like “So if Officer A writes 20 tickets a week and Officer B writes 3, that has no impact on their promotability or ranking? Your jobs aren’t at all performance-based?” The jury ate it up and you could just see the guy squirming as he tried to respond with a straight face that it was perfectly acceptable to write nothing for weeks or months at a time.
I think at this point everyone knows ‘the boys in blue’ are really the King’s tax agents, shaking the peasants down for coins with daily levies.
Great piece Radley. As The Wire went on to illustrate, the “juking” of stats permeates not only law enforcement, but pretty much any government-run institution. Numbers may not lie, but the people who add them up can be pretty damn deceitful even with the best of intentions.
Once more, I suggest that all fines and forfeitures should be seized by the state and lumped into a fund that’s shared out among the taxpayers once a year. Gets rid of the ‘law as a cash cow’ thing in a single stroke.
As for the argument that fines help pay for law enforcement, since the fine-money is put back into the economy, taxes can be raised to pay for real court costs without actually taking more money from taxpayers’ pockets. But getting more than real costs back will prove difficult.
Whoops, damn. “real court costs” should have been “the real cost of law enforcement.” Sorry, brain fart.
From the article:
“Under broken windows, by cracking down on petty crime, you create a culture of order and law-abiding behavior that filters up to prevent major crimes as well. So you start making arrests for graffiti…”
I bet no one will agree with me, but I think graffiti should be cracked down on. It makes the buildings and surfaces it’s painted on much uglier and hurts the appeal of the city as a whole. Also, as a libertarian…isn’t graffiti defacing of property?
Of course they have arrest quotas. That is how they “prove” to the federal government that they need more federal funding. It’s all in search of the dollars.
Great point by @Peter Ramins. I’m sure that a cop that doesn’t make the “average” number of arrests in a week/month/period is admonished for being on the low side. It would probably reflect badly on his performance report, too.
Marc,
I agree with you that graffiti is essentially defacing of property. However, I’ve seen plenty of graffiti that made major improvements in the appearance of buildings and the city in general. Man, just think what a good graffiti artist could do with a nice, new white train…
So, whether or not graffiti should be cracked down on can be rather subjective depending on the graffiti and the location.
//the reality is that most people will focus on the safest and easiest way to meet their quota, which in this case means harassing harmless people.//
This is made worse by the fact that someone who goes after real criminals will not only risk getting shot, but may also risk the ire of the ACLU or other groups that insist they have to protect criminals to ensure other people’s rights are protected, when in reality their protection of criminals merely encourages police to target innocents.
supercat, you truly believe that cops factor the lowly ACLU into their decision making? That’s quite a stretch. Careful you don’t pull something.
#8 PersonFromPorlock:
Portioning out the take amongst the taxpayers could introduce perverse incentives as well, especially in some of these corrupt little towns that are shaking down people just for carrying cash while passing through.
I agree with MattJ – society in whole or in part should not profit from lawlessness, or that creates an incentive to safeguard lawlessness.
That’s why I say “seized by the state.” The “corrupt little towns” won’t bother if they can’t keep the cash.