Pubdate: Fri, 02 May 2003
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2003 The Vancouver Sun
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: William Boei, Vancouver Sun

U.S. EXPERTS DEBATE DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE'S POLICE CRACKDOWN

Criminologists Flown In By Opposing Lobby Groups Square Off Over Use Of 
New-York-Style Get-Tough Approach

Vancouver's Downtown Eastside becomes a battleground today for competing 
theories on how to bring law and order to decaying inner cities.

The conservative Fraser Institute is bringing in one of the world's 
best-known criminologists, Californian James Q. Wilson, co-author of the 
"Broken Windows" approach to policing that was used by New York City police 
to sweep drug dealers, prostitutes, gang members and panhandlers off the 
streets of Manhattan.

New York hired thousands of extra cops in the mid-1990s to drive visible 
crime and disorder off the streets. The campaign made a crime-fighting hero 
of then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Downtown Eastside activists, meanwhile, are flying in Chicago law professor 
Bernard Harcourt, who criticizes Broken Windows as a civil liberties 
nightmare that attacks the poor and homeless and doesn't necessarily reduce 
crime. Their visit may heat up the debate over the Four Pillars program 
being implemented to tackle the drug problem on the Downtown Eastside.

The Fraser Institute has not taken a stand on Four Pillars. But executive 
director Michael Walker, calling Wilson "the top conservative criminologist 
in the world," said if there's any conflict between Four Pillars and Broken 
Windows, "I would be guided by Jim (Wilson)'s insights rather than by 
anything else."

Only one of the four pillars -- enforcement -- has been launched so far 
with a beefed-up police presence on downtown streets. Mayor Larry Campbell 
has been struggling to find resources for the other three: prevention, 
treatment and harm reduction.

But Wilson said in an interview he is skeptical that Four Pillars will do 
much good in cleaning up the Downtown Eastside.

He said he's not against harm reduction for drug users, but "that doesn't 
say anything about how you make downtown safe for people who are not drug 
users."

Harcourt said there is no evidence Broken Windows reduces crime, and that 
while the New York campaign produced more orderly streets, it also spawned 
complaints about police misconduct.

Elsewhere in the U.S., Broken Windows ignited what has become known as "the 
Blue Revolution," a series of big-city police crackdowns on minor offenders 
in high-crime neighbourhoods with the hope that major crimes would also be 
deterred.

The term "Broken Windows" was coined in an Atlantic Monthly article by 
Wilson and co-author George Kelling in 1982.

They wrote that "if a window in a building is broken and is left 
unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken." They applied 
the same rule to whole neighbourhoods, which they said can deteriorate into 
chaos and disorder if criminals and non-criminals alike get the message 
that nobody's in charge and vandalism and crime are tolerated.

They argued that law-abiding citizens fear not only crime and criminals, 
but are also afraid of "being bothered by disorderly people. Not violent 
people, nor necessarily criminals, but disreputable or obstreperous or 
unpredictable people: panhandlers, drunks, addicts, rowdy teenagers, 
prostitutes, loiterers, the mentally disturbed."

In practice, Broken Windows crackdowns have chased such people out of 
troubled neighbourhoods, and the crime rate in those cities has fallen sharply.

But crime has fallen just as sharply -- and farther, in some cases -- in 
cities that did not conduct crackdowns. It also fell during the same period 
in Canada, where there were no Broken Windows campaigns.

Wilson toured the Downtown Eastside on Thursday evening and was scheduled 
today to make media appearances and possibly do another tour, followed by a 
speech to a Fraser Institute luncheon on Broken Windows: Cleaning up the 
Downtown Eastside.

After the speech, Wilson is off to Walker's Vancouver Island retreat. The 
two have been friends for years.

Harcourt will also make the media rounds and tour the neighbourhood and 
will likely hold a news conference outside the Hyatt Regency Hotel 
following Wilson's luncheon speech inside, said organizer Thia Walter of 
LINES -- the Life is Not Enough Society. Harcourt planned to spend the 
weekend studying harm-reduction measures in the Downtown Eastside.

Wilson said he can't prove Broken Windows-style policing reduces the crime 
rate, and that its principal aim is "improving the conditions of public order."

"Suppose you go into a neighbourhood and clean up the graffiti, disperse 
the prostitutes, make sure that teenage gangs are not harassing innocent 
citizens, suppose you do all of these things," he said. "Will the crime 
rate fall in that neighbourhood?

"George Kelling and I speculated that it would, but we as yet have no firm 
evidence that it does, because nobody has tried to test the Broken Windows 
idea in a way that would permit you to evaluate it honestly."

Wilson wasn't familiar with Four Pillars but on the basis of some of the 
phrases used to describe it, such as harm reduction, he declared himself 
skeptical.

"I think that making drugs safer for drug users does not solve the problem 
of drug-related crime," he said.

He denied accusations by Amnesty International and others that the New York 
Broken Windows campaign used racial profiling, targeting more blacks and 
Hispanics than others.

"I have little patience with civil liberties advocates that tell us that no 
crime enforcement policy can ever be successful unless it treats all racial 
and ethnic groups equally," Wilson said. "That is simply statistically 
impossible. We are concerned about behaviour. We are not concerned about 
identity."

Harcourt said he plans to discuss the track record of Broken Windows-style 
policing while he's in Vancouver.

Many proponents of Broken Windows claim it does reduce the crime rate, 
Harcourt said, even though "it's pretty clear that there's no good 
social-scientific evidence that disorder is related to serious crime."

He said there is evidence that when street people have been targeted in 
Broken Windows campaigns, civil liberties were violated.

Allegations filed with a civilian complaint review board of police 
misconduct rose 68 per cent in New York from 1993 to 1996, he said, 
complaints of police abuse filed in court rose 40 per cent and Amnesty 
International reported "racial disparities" in the way police chose their 
targets.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom