Pubdate: Sat, 26 Jul 2014
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2014 The New York Times Company
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298

BROKEN WINDOWS, BROKEN LIVES

How terrible it would be if Eric Garner died for a theory, for the
idea that aggressive police enforcement against minor offenders (he
was a seller of loose, untaxed cigarettes) is the way to a safer, more
orderly city. Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner William
Bratton responded swiftly after Mr. Garner was fatally assaulted by
officers on Staten Island. They reached out to his family, promising
to retrain every officer about the rules against using chokeholds. Two
officers have been put on desk duty pending investigations.

The mayor and the commissioner should also begin a serious discussion
of the future of "broken windows" policing, the strategy of
relentlessly attacking petty offenses to nurture a sense of safety and
order in high-crime neighborhoods, which, in theory, leads to greater
safety and order. In reality, the link is hypothetical, as many cities
and towns across the country have enjoyed historic decreases in
violent crime since the 1990s, whatever strategies they used. And the
vast majority of its targets are not serious criminals, or criminals
at all.

Mr. Bratton is a pioneer of broken windows policing and Mr. de Blasio
is a stout defender. The tactic was embraced in the crime-plagued New
York of 20 years ago. But while violence has ebbed, siege-based
tactics have not. The Times reported on Friday that the Police
Department made 394,539 arrests last year, near historical highs.

The mayor and the commissioner should acknowledge the heavy price paid
for heavy enforcement. Broken windows and its variants -
"zero-tolerance," "quality-of-life," "stop-and-frisk" practices - have
pointlessly burdened thousands of young people, most of them black and
Hispanic, with criminal records. These policies have filled courts to
bursting with first-time, minor offenders whose cases are often thrown
out, though not before their lives are severely disrupted and their
reputations blemished. They have caused thousands to lose their jobs,
to be suspended from school, to be barred from housing or the
military. They have ensnared immigrants who end up, through a federal
fingerprinting program, being deported and losing everything.

The city should be making a turn. When Judge Shira Scheindlin of
Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled a year ago that
stop-and-frisk policies were unconstitutional, she ordered a pilot
program for officers to wear cameras that record interactions with the
public. The program will be in precincts with the most stop-and-frisk
cases, including the North Shore of Staten Island, where Mr. Garner
lived. That is a promising development. So was the announcement this
month by the Brooklyn district attorney, Kenneth Thompson, that he
would no longer prosecute most minor marijuana cases. More than 70
percent of people arrested for marijuana have no convictions of any
kind. Though whites and minorities don't differ much in marijuana use,
more than 85 percent of people arrested for marijuana in New York City
are black or Hispanic.

Mr. Thompson's shift was a perfect opportunity for Mr. de Blasio to
recalibrate the aggressive and discriminatory police stance toward
marijuana users and other minor offenders. But he deferred to Mr.
Bratton, who insisted that department policies would not change, in
Brooklyn or anywhere.

Mr. Bratton should not be a once-innovative general fighting the last
war. Mr. de Blasio was elected on a promise of being a transformative
mayor who would recognize the times we live in and respect the
communities whose residents fear the police. Now is the time to show
it.
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MAP posted-by: Matt