In a startling bit of revisionist history, some activists argue that the miraculous drop in crime in New York City was inevitable — and didn’t have anything to do with the “broken windows” strategy enacted two decades ago.
Crime dropped nationwide, they argue, so New York isn’t unique. More criminals were locked up, or demographics changed. Some even credit the legalization of abortion or the introduction of unleaded gasoline.
But these arguments defy logic — New York not only became safer than any large city in America, it did so while its population grew and its prison population fell.
Statistics illustrate the dramatic “policing difference” enjoyed by New York. While the homicide rate dropped by half in the nine largest cities other than NYC between 1990 and 2009, it dropped by 82 percent here. Rapes dropped 77 percent in New York, compared with a median rate of 49 percent in those other cities.
New York showed larger declines in every major crime, though particularly in robbery, burglary and auto theft. While robberies dropped 49 percent in other major cities, they fell an astounding 84 percent here.
Consider: In 1990, there were 2,272 homicide victims in New York City. If that rate had remained unchanged, more than 2,400 would have been killed in 2013.
Instead, there were 335. For one year alone, 2,000 fewer homicides.
And that’s not because New York sent more criminals to jail. While the incarceration rate increased by 65 percent nationwide between 1990 and 2008, New York City’s rate declined by 28 percent. From 1997 until 2008, 20,000 more persons were released from prison and jail than were admitted.
New York’s racial makeup during this time did not dramatically change. Nor did the number of young people. Even per-capita income didn’t go up by that much. In 2005, it was $27,233; in 1989, inflation adjusted to 2005 dollars, it was $25,693. While Manhattan’s per-capita income rose 21 percent over two decades, in Queens and The Bronx it declined by more than 6 percent. Yet crime fell everywhere.
The only logical explanation for the New York difference, then, is how New York fought crime. The NYPD rapidly expanded the police force and targeted specific crimes in specific areas, like cleaning up outdoor drug markets.
The only logical explanation for the New York difference, then, is how New York fought crime. The NYPD rapidly expanded the police force and targeted specific crimes in specific areas, like cleaning up outdoor drug markets.
To be clear, this isn’t really “broken windows,” though that term gets much of the credit. The broken windows theory says you flood marginal neighborhoods with “order maintenance” enforcement, making sure it doesn’t slip into a chaotic spiral.
Instead, the NYPD targeted the hot spots where violence was highest. Rather than do sweeps for all low-level crimes, the department experimented with what arrests would be most effective in finding and removing serious offenders. “Zero tolerance” policing never existed in New York (or anywhere else) and would have been a disaster if it had.
So, collars for prostitution never increased, and those for public gambling are lower now than in 1990. But arrests for marijuana and turnstile jumping increased and stayed high — because they were the most effective for finding some dangerous persons.
As Jack Maple, the architect of the new strategy explained, “The units enforcing quality of life laws must be sent where the maps show concentrations of crime and criminals . . . to catch the sharks, not the dolphins.”
The police were not really interested in the possession of marijuana but instead used marijuana arrests to try to discover people with felony warrants outstanding against them.
This use of minor arrests as a pretext targets many young men of color who don’t have warrants against them, so the problems of fairness with that tactic and stop-and-frisk are legitimate. But the objective is crime reduction, and the effects were significant.
Al Sharpton, who led a march on Saturday protesting the NYPD, blames the broken windows approach for the death of Eric Garner, subdued for selling loose cigarettes.
Is the Jack Maple theory to blame? No. Garner’s death is proactive policing done wrong, not right. Garner was already known to the officers and was not a public danger. He was a non-dangerous “dolphin,” and the police knew this.
The tragedy will be tried in the court, and it rightly led to Police Commission Bill Bratton ordering the retraining of all police on the use of force.
Broad slogans like “quality of life” and “order maintenance” that mischaracterize the strategic reason for police stops invite exactly the confusion that produce disasters like the Garner case.
But should this really lead to the elimination of the strategy that made the city safe? Done right, the benefits of intensive patrol and aggressive policing are real.
Franklin E. Zimring is Simon Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. His book, “The City That Became Safe: New York’s Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control,” is now in paperback.