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New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton is defending his departmentâs use of the âbroken windowsâ strategy, which, as Al-Jazeera reports, is âthe practice of cracking down on minor offensesâ because if they go unchecked, the argument goes, âthey create visible signs of public disorder that encourage more serious crimes.â
Bratton co-authored a 4,500-word essay for City Journal backing the tactic, but critics are not convinced that itâs fair game. Reform groups are concerned that the strategy actually reinforces the racial biases in law enforcement because African-American and Hispanic people are often the targets of this kind of policing. Â
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Joo-Hyun Kang, director of Communities United for Police Reform, emailed a statement to Bratton and the essayâs co-author, Rutgers University professor George Kelling, to communicate these concerns.
âMisdemeanor arrests that disproportionately target people of color for the lowest-level offenses have severely strained relations between local communities and the police,â Kang wrote. âThese arrests have real consequences on peopleâs lives, including jeopardizing housing, employment, educational and immigration opportunities.â
Kangâs organization argued that the broken-windows strategy is a regurgitation of the âsame old stop-and-friskâ policy that has been another point of contention for the New York City Police Department.
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Bratton and Kelling countered that idea and described how working-class communities are actually in favor of police officers being strict about low-level crimes in order to deter major crime.Â
âOur experience suggests that, whatever the critics might say, the majority of New Yorkers, including minorities, approve of such police order-maintenance activities,â Bratton and Kellingâs essay read. âAfter all, most of these activities come in response to residentsâ demands. ⌠Contrary to conventional wisdom, citizens almost invariably are more concerned about disorderly behavior than about major crimes, which they experience far less frequently.â
According to a New York Post report, since shortly after two New York City police officers were shot dead on Dec. 20, âtraffic tickets and summonses for minor offenses have dropped off by a staggering 94 percentâ as an apparent retaliation against New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is believed, by some, to have thrown New York police officers under the bus when communicating his support for protests against police brutality.
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The Patrolmenâs Benevolent Association, the labor union representing NYPD officers, âhas warned its members to put their safety first and not make arrests âunless absolutely necessary,ââ the Post explained.
Read more at Al-Jazeera and the New York Post.
