NYPD Inspector General's 'Broken Windows' Report Will Make It Tougher for Cops to Maintain Order in High-Crime Areas

A report issued by the new Inspector General for the NYPD is being interpreted as showing that New York cops engage in racially disproportionate enforcement of so-called quality of life (or “Broken Windows”) laws in minority neighborhoods. In fact, the report reaches the opposite conclusion. Sadly, however, the IG’s report will inevitably be used to further undermine the order maintenance policing the law-abiding residents of high-crime areas demand from their local police.

The IG report purported to test the relationship between enforcement of low-level public order offenses like graffiti, turnstile-jumping, and disorderly conduct, on the one hand, and felony crime, on the other. Using a highly complex statistical model, the report purports to find that between 2010 and 2015, there was no causal relationship between broken windows policing, as measured by arrests and summonses, and the reduction of felony crime. This conclusion contradicts a 2013 study for the Brennan Center for Justice by former Corrections Commissioner Michael Jacobson that found that misdemeanor arrests and summons between 1985 and 2009 reduced New York State’s prison population by reducing the amount of felonies being committed. The IG’s report does not address the Jacobson study. The IG’s report does mention, however, a 2015 study by the NYPD that confirmed the Brennan Center results and the IG’s report claims to have refuted the NYPD's own analysis.

This latest study needs further testing and explanation in order to determine the validity of its statistical model. Among the questions to be answered is whether the model correctly represents the relationship between quality of life enforcement and felony crime.

But what can be definitively said about the report right now is that it does not show that “Broken Windows” policing in New York is racially biased. “Broken Windows” enforcement actually occurs at a lower rate in predominantly black neighborhoods than what the violent crime rate in those areas would predict. And “Broken Windows” enforcement occurs at a higher rate in predominantly white areas than what the local violent crime rate would predict. That fact, buried in the body of the report and not mentioned in the executive summary, is being ignored in the news coverage. True, there are more quality-of-life summons being written in public housing projects and areas with high numbers of young men of color than in other areas, but that is because there are higher rates of law-breaking there.

The report and its press reception are silent about the fierce desire on the part of law-abiding minority New Yorkers for the police to maintain order. Last June, I attended a police community meeting in the Bronx’s 41st Precinct. Residents begged their precinct commander to arrest the large crowds of youth hanging out on street corners and fighting. Over the years, I have heard the following requests in police community meetings: “There are youths congregating on my stoop, can’t you arrest them for loitering?” or “I smell marijuana in my hallways, can’t you do something?”

To be sure, an arrest or summons is not always needed in response to such quality-of-life infractions. Sometimes, a warning suffices. But if activists use the IG’s report to accelerate their demand that NYPD officers turn their backs on disorder, they will be letting down the many New Yorkers who agree with an elderly woman in the 41st Precinct who exclaimed last summer: “Oh, how lovely when we see the police! They are my friends.”

This piece originally appeared in the New York Daily News

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Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal.

This piece originally appeared in New York Daily News