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The Other Broken Windows Fallacy

The NYPD is accused of under-reporting serious crimes while manufacturinones.

Radley Balko | March 8, 2010

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department’s middle

management, to generate

PR- friendly statistics about

lowering crime and

increasing arrests. Theshow, based in part on co-

creator Ed Burns'

experience as a narcotics

cop at the Baltimore Police

Department, was a running

narration of the chasmbetween what politicians

and the public consider to

be effective crime fighting

techniques and what

measures actually make

cities safer.

So a special police unit working on a long term project to bring down brutally

rival drug dealers gets scrapped for buy-and-busts on low-level peddlers. In

spinnable statistics, 50 street-level arrests look better than the takedown of a

major player. When new mayor Tommy Carcetti takes office, the acting police

orders mass arrests for petty crimes such as vagrancy and open container violThe crackdown poisons police-community relations, but the chief hopes they'

him to his new boss.

Those very themes are now playing out in real-life New York City. Last month

rocked the city's vaunted COMPSTAT program, the data-driven crime-trackin

championed by former Police Chief William Bratton and former Mayor Rudy the 1990s. COMPSTAT is widely credited for bringing down the Big Apple's cr

and has since been adopted by other cities.




But there's still fierce debate about why. Giuliani and his supporters credit the

combination of COMPSTAT and the "broken windows" theory of crime fightin

popularized by law-and-order conservative James Wilson. Under broken wind

cracking down on petty crime, you create a culture of order and law-abiding

that filters up to prevent major crimes as well. So you start making arrests forturnstyle-jumping, vagrancy, and the like, giving patrol officers broad powers

people and make arrests. Critics of broken windows counter, among other argu

that many big cities that didn't adopt the policy, including San Diego, Washin

D.C., and Houston, had more significant decreases in the homicide rate over

same period.

Whatever the causes and effects, the political reality is that the crime rate will

drop to zero, and even after a gaudy 15-year drop, no mayor wants to be in off

crime inches up again, and no high-ranking police commander wants to be the

give Hizzoner the bad news. All the incentives in the age-old push-pull betwee

and civil liberties nudge politicians to err on the side of safety over liberty, in

even when it's far from clear that the COMPSTAT/broken windows combinatioreason New York is safer.

And so in the same month the COMPSTAT study came out, a Bronx police offi

named Adil Polanco came forward to tell New York's WABC that NYPD cops

explicit arrest and citation quotas. "I'm not going to keep arresting innocent

not going to keep searching people for no reason, I'm not going to keep writinfor no reason, I'm tired of this," Polanco told the TV station. "Our primary job

help anybody, our primary job is not to assist anybody, our primary job is to

numbers and come back with them."

Polanco says he was told to issue at least 20 summonses and make one arrest

month. WABC also obtained a recording of a supervisor that appears to supporPolanco's allegations. "If you think 1 and 20 is breaking your balls, guess what

going to be doing. You're gong to be doing a lot more, a lot more than what th

saying," the supervisor says. In another, he says , "Next week, 25 &1, 35 & 1 ,




record year. More than half of those stopped in 2009 were also frisked. Nearly

percent were black or Latino.

That massive increase in stop-and-frisk operations has also led to an astrono

increase in marijuana arrests, from just 900 in 1993 to more than 40,000 inPossession of a small amount of marijuana in New York for personal use is not

criminal infraction (it's a fineable offense, akin to jaywalking), but displaying

public is; it's an arrestable misdemeanor. According to a 2008 New York Civil

Union report written by Queens College sociologist Harry Levine, New York co

engaging in stop-and-frisks will commonly ask the suspect to empty his pocke

carrying pot, his non-criminal possession of marijuana becomes the arrestableof displaying the marijuana in public.

So to summarize , we now have reports that New York City police brass have

pressuring rank-and-file cops to downgrade or bury actual thefts, robberies,

assaults committed against New Yorkers. At the same time, we also now have

accusations and credible data suggesting politicians and brass are encouragingrank-and-file cops to harass New Yorkers who have committed no crime at all

been tricked into committing a consensual crime they never intended.

Burying major crimes with real victims. Inventing petty crimes with no victims

debate over broken windows theory and COMPSTAT crime fighting won't be

any time soon. But even setting aside the obvious concerns over civil liberties

police-community relations in this story, this seems like an improbable formu

safer city.

Radley Balko is a senior editor at Reason magazine.

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The Other Broken Windows Fallacy - Reason Magazine