New York public employees cannot strike, so this is the labor action available to them.
The union should think carefully though. If life just goes on without the nanny-state tickets and other revenue generators, the thought process may change. Maybe more fare jumping and double-parking would be ok, and we can live with that -- but with 10,000 fewer policemen.
The effectiveness of cost-cutting in the NYPD would be multiplied if they started with the shiny toys first. Cut the number of SWAT teams, sell off the armored division's tanks, to Ukraine perhaps, and cut the spies and surveillance gear first, and you'll be able to keep a lot more of the useful police who might then be able to focus on boosting their solution rates for crimes people care about.
Most of the shiny toys' cost (capex, training, maintenance) is not paid by the NYPD, but through grants/subsidies from the Department of Homeland Security's anti-terrorism programs.
So, cutting that would be great, but wouldn't do much for NYPD's bottom line.
Based on that assumption (that I also made when the NYT realsead their 1033 foia data) when I made a drill down for the top line items (based on foia submitted prices) for each county and associated them with the companies for those products[0], that they added to their wiki[1]. It's seems that BAE comes out on top if you also assume that the cost of the equipment by some measure is proportional to the opex (which we already assume could be greater than the capex). Here are the top ten with more listed in [0]:
I generally agree with the sentiment that police are overbuying toys, but if there is any city where the police are justified in having that kind of stuff, it's New York. The terrorists are not going to attack St Louis Missouri, but they have attacked New York multiple times.
I say this having just seen the NYPD bomb squad show up to investigate a bag outside my apartment this morning.
Imagine for a second an attack in which a group of people with guns attack a news room and kill a bunch of people. I know that would be hard to believe, but something like that happened literally 12 hours ago in a city on the same level as NYC. In that case, I'd like the police to have armored cars, bullet proof vests, and assault rifles.
Or maybe you want to look at the Boston Marathon bombing that ended in a shoot out with a SWAT team.
Yes, terrorism is statistically insignificant compared to car crashes or heart disease in terms of deaths. Yes, police over use their equipment. To say that NYC or other cities like it don't have an actual need for this kind of equipment sometimes is just silly.
My point is not "NYC doesn't need them". It's "terrorism isn't much of an argument for them". Bank robberies and hostage situations are far more likely situations to need such a thing.
> Or maybe you want to look at the Boston Marathon bombing that ended in a shoot out with a SWAT team
In that case, poorly coordinated, heavily-armed police fired hundreds of rounds into a neighborhood of primarily wood-frame houses in Watertown, Massachusetts. That's a good case for disarming all the cops involved in that incident.
> sell off the armored division's tanks, to Ukraine perhaps
People like to throw this line around... but I've yet to see an actual tank in the hands of a police department anywhere in the US. What I have seen are a lot of Armored Personnel Carriers (APC), which have no weaponry and are basically just heavily armored trucks designed specifically to protect the personnel inside (from riot, projectiles, bullets, explosions, etc).
With that said, I have no issue with a police department using an APC in a situation where bodily harm may come to them (SWAT situation, riot situation, terrorist situation, bomb situation, etc).
And "riot" is not to be confused with "peaceful protest". Riots are bad; people and property get damaged.
Part of what was said was that the police (in Ferguson) seemed ill trained to use this fancy gear. With little oversight on how and when it is used. Allegedly.
Personally, I think the problem is when there us no cost benefit analysis. What's the cost in terms of maintenence as well as public perception and trust.
> that the police (in Ferguson) seemed ill trained to use this fancy gear
I do realize you put the disclaimer "seemed", but I don't see any evidence that the police in Ferguson (or anywhere) were ill trained to drive an APC or use riot gear (gas masks included). APC's have been used by police departments for a long long time, just only they were purchasing them back then and now the military is giving them their old ones (as apposed to just scrapping them since they were bought and paid for with tax payer's money).
Ferguson was special, there were "riots" going on for a while (stores being raided, projectiles rockets and fireworks fired at police, even guns being shot). There were both peaceful protests happening simultaneously with full on riots.
I was just sharing what I read about what people have said about police tactics. I lack the expertise to evaluate the factually of them. I thought the comment about the mere presence of riot control can escalate the situation was pretty damning.
I do believe that there mostly isn't enough cost benefit analysis going on, just more stuff is better.
In terms of 'trained', it seems like their attitude towards crowd control was to out-macho the crowd, which can only really escalate the situation. Look at that picture of the dude on top of the APC brandishing the mounted gun. He's completely exposed, he's not in a combat position, he's in an intimidation position.
I agree that this is not about the most serious infractions (though it should be noted that even arrests for violent crimes are down, just not so drastically). But we're not just talking about "nanny-state tickets" either. We're talking about plummeting arrests or tickets for robbery, fare-evasion, DWI, parking violations, and moving violations (speeding, running red lights, etc.), among other things. I don't see any future where the citizens of New York decide that enforcing traffic laws was just a failed social experiment. I think we're just seeing the entirely predictable lag between decreased (or nonexistent) enforcement, and the social consequences.
Maybe. Many pundits have been talking about NYPD's use of COMSTAT, stop-and-frisk and fighting the "broken windows" syndrome as being leading causes of the drop in crime in NYC. On closer inspection the crime appears to have been falling anyway for a number of possible reasons, some as simple as a change in demographics.
Now we have perhaps something of a controlled experiment going on regarding the alleged root cause of the drop in crime in NYC (and perhaps nationwide).
As someone who fancies libertarianism but who's wary of its effectiveness in practice, I'm hoping we get to see this impromptu social experiment play out long enough to gather some useful statistics.
Err, extreme things like that really need to be entered into democratically rather than a very small minority foisting it on a city of millions. Especially when we're discussing public safety. I hope this ends quickly and conclusively.
They are still handling serious crimes normally. What they aren't doing is enforcing arrest, ticket, and summons quotas. I think this whole thing is going to backfire on the NYPD and demonstrate that the way they were doing things before was not in the best interest of the people living in NYC.
...you mean like the democratic way we all voted for the current system? The one where we all get to vote, without being turned away at the voting booth because we "registered in the wrong precint", or don't have valid ID?
I'm in agreement though I hope they keep enough of a presence and focus on major crimes such that we don't start seeing an increase in murders or rapes or something to that effect.
Libertarians should support aggressive parking enforcement. It's a clear correction of a substantial externality.
Of course, an even more libertarian approach would be to simply sell or lease the parking spaces to private entities and let them set whatever prices and rules they want for the use of their real estate, perhaps including making deals with local merchants to subsidize market rates during business hours.
If you have ever been to NYC you would know that if the parking regulations were not enforced so zealously the city would be a mess. The only reason why $40 parking garages are full is that you know if you park illegally on the streets of Manhattan, your car is getting ticketed, and likely towed. Surely it makes NYC a ton of revenue but it is the only way to make things work. I agree with you on the other points.
Every time I get annoyed by how religiously parking regulations are followed in the UK(and they are anal about it to the extreme), I remember how it works in the country I come from. Try parking in Krakow or Warsaw - very little regulation, and people park everywhere, on sidewalks, on the grass, on pedestrian crossings...they would park on top of each other if they could. Parking regulations are a good thing.
Drastic reduction in regulations outside of "actual harm" and objective "social order" issues. Criminalize and prosecute robbery, murder, theft, etc (actual harm), along with parking violations, traffic control, etc (organizing a lot of people functioning in a compact space, things get very ugly in a hurry if you don't), but stop the aggressive pursuit of "victimless" crimes like selling individual cigarettes without a license, stopping/interviewing anyone carrying something heavy in a pocket (to wit: potential handgun), petty drug possession, etc.
It's interesting watching such things over several decades: urban rush away from conservative/libertarian principles to highly regulated progressivism subsequently leading to a backlash which, for many/most practical purposes, amounts to a return to conservative/libertarian values.
If these minor offenses are not affecting crime then are they offenses whose only purpose is to generate revenue? If the city has not imploded then is that not sufficient evidence to get a discussion about the existence of these offenses?
One of the people quoted in the article says "Of course that’s a good thing, because the traffic officers just want your money," he said on Tuesday morning in Queens. "Now I have the right to park a bit more."
I suppose he still understands that he is not really supposed to park where he is parking, but it says something about his outlook.
Well, if he blocks a hydrant and the fire department needs to use it, they will grab their leakiest hose, smash his windows out, and run that hose right through the car. I've seen pictures, it's pretty sweet justice.
Is the fear of punishment the only thing that keeps people from doing criminal acts?
1. People speed and park wrongly despite both of these being illegal
2. A huge majority of people aren't assholes all the time, despite this not being illegal
3. Murders do get committed though it's illegal
4. Most stuff isn't stolen even though it is very difficult to catch someone breaking into houses
There's a book called Three Felonies A Day which posits that the average American commits three serious crimes every day despite the overwhelming majority of those folks not meaning to. https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=three+felonies+a+day The reason for this is that the laws are written broadly enough that entirely innocent acts could be construed to be strict-liability crimes that require absolute adherence; intent does not enter into the equation.
If society is not falling apart even if the average American is in fact committing three felonies a day, then it stands to reason that perhaps the law as a whole is over-written and could stand to be reduced. This new informal policing policy in New York might end up being further evidence of such problems.
Further people have found that in many cases persuasion is much more effective than compulsion. In the UK they've found that they can replace speed cameras (which issue tickets) with radar controlled signs that display smiley or frowny faces and that's much more effective at getting people to slow down. The theory goes that compulsion is a very ephemeral threat and that the police can't be everywhere at once ticketing everyone who's speeding all the time and people know it. But just asking them to slow down with no threat is more effective since it's polite.
A similar theory was used to great effect by King Frederick of Prussia to get people to eat potatoes. Decrees did nothing to make people plant them, but declaring the potato to be a royal food and nobody but the king could eat it caused people to plant it either out of spite or a desire to flout the rules. http://www.historynet.com/ask-mhq-king-frederick-ii-of-pruss...
(That too many things are crimes is probably something I agree with; that accounting companies must only destroy documents according to retention policies and not after they find out one of their clients is a giant fraud is not something that worries me)
My point was that the book you cite is apparently a terrible resource on the issue. Which is material when you frame your statements so directly from it: even if the average American is in fact committing three felonies a day.
If private parking in Manhattan is $30 and driving up on the sidewalk to park is free, the latter will happen. There is too many cars in New York for it NOT to happen. I've seen the latter happen in another country...
My dad worked for NYC during the Dinkins administration, which took a stance of not antagonizing the population with minor tickets and citations. His big story about the downside of this approach was a major snowstorm, which crippled the city in many areas. In his case, he was stuck at work at a public housing project for 3 days with the residents, because the city didn't ticket parking violations and the plows couldn't clear the clogged streets.
It made life miserable for the residents as well. Broken elevators left the elderly trapped in high-rise buildings for days. People with medical emergencies had to be carried by fireman down the stairs and down the street to an ambulance on an avenue.
One of the reasons for the current practice in NYC is the Mayor Giuliani did a complete 180 and aggressively enforced all sorts of laws. Chaos transitioned to order. The optimal answer lies somewhere in the middle.
> In his case, he was stuck at work at a public housing project for 3 days with the residents, because the city didn't ticket parking violations and the plows couldn't clear the clogged streets.
This has still be case during some of the big snows of the past several years even with parking violations tickets.
> Broken elevators left the elderly trapped in high-rise buildings for days. People with medical emergencies had to be carried by fireman down the stairs and down the street to an ambulance on an avenue.
This still happens every once in a while. Police don't generally handle these kinds of things anyway, as the 311 service handles a lot of building code violations.
> One of the reasons for the current practice in NYC is the Mayor Giuliani did a complete 180 and aggressively enforced all sorts of laws. Chaos transitioned to order. The optimal answer lies somewhere in the middle.
This isn't accurate. Broken windows policing in NYC goes back to the mid-eighties and efforts to handle graffiti. Bill Bratton, the now police commissioner and comissioner during Guiliani's tenure, started using broken windows policing tactics and policies in the early 90s when he was at the NYC transit police.
Also, violent crime rates were already well in decline when broken windows policing became the major tactic and policy of the NYPD. It is not at all clear that broken windows policing is responsible or a contributed to that falling rate and to characterize Giuliani as instilling order on a chaotic city is laughable, as you could view many of his policies as instilling chaos.
I was specifically referring to city-owned housing.
The point is, there are extremes, and neither is the correct answer. I recall living in late 1980's Queens where getting a response from the police for anything short of a murder was an exercise in frustration. That wasn't the the case 10 years later.
At one point in the past enforcing these minor offenses served a legitimate purpose. NYC was leading the nation in violent crime and the city was in deep disrepair. Times Square, an international icon, was so filled with trash dangerous that people avoided it for fear of being mugged or killed. Movie theaters weren't safe places because drug deals would occur which sometimes lead to increased crime.
This is the NYC in which these minor offenses needed to be enforced strictly. There are a number of theories regarding the decrease in crime but I'm pretty certain no one can argue that the drastic measures were necessary. Fast forward to 2014 NYC is basically disney world for adult tourists. There definitely needs to be a review of how we police the city because the tactics currently in place are from 25 years ago. Hopefully the data from this slowdown will provide the evidence necessary to create change.
I think this most recent trend in the police department has a huge potential to backfire. Perhaps this will highlight the fact that in the US, our lives have become over-criminalized and over-monitored by an increasingly growing police force and that we simply don't need so many officers and laws. This would be a good thing in America.
However, I hate the fact that this change was brought about by the deaths of people.
> However, I hate the fact that this change was brought about by the deaths of people.
Amen. I also hate that this was brought about by, it would seem, police officers pouting about the public and the mayor finally speaking out against biased policing.
Edit: I know policing is hard. And frankly, I sympathize with a police officer who finds himself more intimidated by a black man on the street than a white man. It is racist and wrong to respond that way, but none of us are perfect, and these biases can be hard to suppress. But in the face of ample evidence that these biases are needlessly getting people killed (or, even more prevalently, to be disproportionately imprisoned), a police department has a duty to do something about it. I suspect this "something" will be a combination of training, change of internal culture (easier said then done), and altered tactics.
I wish we could have a dialogue where we admit that biased policing is a problem, but simultaneously refrain from painting all cops as racist brutes. I see our present predicament, though, as a result of cops' failing to see past the names they've been called by the angriest voices out there (not by the mayor, I might add) to the fact that there really is a problem in their departments that is causing unconscionable harm to black communities.
This was a good comment that I can agree with. I'm also genuinely curious what the reaction/outcome would be if de Blasio would be less apologetic and slightly more confrontational with the Unions. Or even if the governor spoke out more.. Maybe confrontational is the wrong word, but rather something more "truthful" as your post is suggesting. I wonder what it actually takes to make a major cultural shift in the police force.
> I know policing is hard. And frankly, I sympathize with a police officer who finds himself more intimidated by a black man on the street than a white man. It is racist and wrong to respond that way...
I think the relevant point from my source's editorial is this: "While these inferences aren’t fair to the vast majority on either side [(police or civilian)], they are rational responses to fear and uncertainty. As such, neither legislation nor indoctrination can banish them."
So I'm not sure it's fair to call police officers racist. It's certainly not old-school Racist in the form of a deliberate and systematic oppression of a minority or an opinion that they're genetically inferior.
(Disclaimer. This post is meant to provide insight into behavior of people, only. No specific public policy recommendation is hereby condemned or endorsed.)
There is a salient statistic that you (and the WSJ editorial) have overlooked: what are the actual odds that an officer will be shot by any given black man? They are greater, you say, than an officer's chances of being shot by a white man, but is the risk objectively large? I think the answer to this is clearly no.
So while it might be rational for an officer to behave as though he is more likely to be shot, this is different from responding as though he is likely to be shot. Unfortunately, they are doing the latter entirely too often. Perhaps this is the result of natural cognitive biases (some combination of confirmation bias and negativity bias, maybe), amplified by the images we all see in the media. These are powerful forces that, I think, most of us struggle with. But that does not mean that cops, who are supposed to be highly trained professionals, entrusted with powerful weapons, and the preservation of public safety, do not have a duty to overcome these biases.
(I agree it's not what you've called "old-school racist." But it makes no difference. Old-school racism is not the only bad kind of racism. [Is there a good kind?])
> police are six times as likely to be killed by black civilians than black civilians are to be killed by police. . . . . [P]police are 22 times as likely to be killed by nonblack civilians than nonblack civilians are to be killed by police.
I think this tells you everything you need to know. Police are always more likely to be killed by civilians than the other way around. This is probably as it should be, unfortunately. The police are highly trained and will typically strive for non-violent resolutions. The civilians they are interacting with, however, are sometimes criminals who are high, desperate, evil, or what have you.
Officers respond to this threat with far greater force when the threat is black, than when it is white. As the author explains, "the juxtaposition suggests that the police respond far more defensively to blacks (a 1-to-6 homicide ratio) than to whites (a 1-to-22 homicide ratio). African-Americans would correctly perceive the police as three to four times quicker to pull a lethal trigger against them than against whites."
The article goes on:
> Police officers naturally take a different perspective. While blacks are 14% of the U.S. population, they account for 47% of killings of police
But this perspective is faulty. While the 6:1, 22:1 statistics naturally take into account the frequency of police-civilian contact, the latter 14:47 comparison does not. In other words, this latter statistic is likely due to the fact that police have a disproportionate amount of contact with African americans. But the 6:1, 22:1 statistics do not have this problem.
Sadly yes so it's sortof a damned if you do damned if you don't scenario.
Just lately we've had serious issues recruiting police (largely due to antiquated policies like 'no visible tattoos' or 'they must live in Jefferson Parish (expensive on a cop's salary)'. The murder rate (always a problem in Nola) is actually currently down but violent crime is up significantly and the nature of the crime seems to be getting more and more brazen (http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/11266753-123/buffa...). It's obviously a complicated issue that requires a lot more than just "more feet on the ground" but we certainly seem to not have enough at the moment.
If you don't deal with the problems that lead to the existing cops being corrupt before trying to add new cops, that's what you get. So if you say "we desperately need more cops" without including "we first desperately need to deal with police corruption", when your present police department is noted for corruption, you are implicitly saying you need more corrupt cops.
Or, at least, that you need more cops even if they are as corrupt as the existing ones.
Arbitrary numbers but if your cops are 50% corrupt and you suddenly have twice as many total cops you still then double the number of non-corrupt cops. Obviously that's wasteful but...
Fixing deep-routed cultural corruption is obviously extremely difficult.
So yeah, at this point I (and a lot of others who live here) would say we just need more cops because violent crime is increasing and the number of street cops out there is decreasing and that's just a bad combination.
I'm from STL, about 3 miles from where Michael Brown was shot, closer to where Martin was shot at the mobile station....If NYC wants less police we'll take them.
Our police forces around here are so busy with 911 calls they barely have any time for proactive policing. There's very little patrols and fewer proactive citizen engagements that aren't because crime has flared up in that sector.
Apparently one of the reasons cited by some is that the decrease is due to police doubling up -not patrolling solo, due to perceived possible threats from possible crazies, and this doubling up has taken away availability to address non crucial policing matters...
It's a direct response to De Blasio's asking police to implement Broken Windows policies. They are sending him the message they aren't taking his orders anymore.
Which, to me, is the scary part of this whole thing. Before, it was only implied that the police weren't accountable to anybody -- now they're literally turning their back on the head of the municipal government.
The problem with the analogy is that while the mayor is the leader of the employees of the city, he is also functionally the leader of the people of the city. Acknowledging to his constituents that the friction with the police may be partially the fault of the police is not 'external'.
I think it is a bit too soon to tell what will happen. Keep in mind it has also been bitterly cold, crime is generally down when the weather is like this no matter what.
It is bitterly cold this week, but it hasn't been the two weeks prior. And the article itself includes the relevant reported crime statistics. They're down a little from this week last year, but nothing like the decrease in summonses.
> If the Police Department’s current commanders cannot get the cops to do their jobs, Mr. de Blasio should consider replacing them.
> He should invite the Justice Department to determine if the police are guilty of civil rights violations in withdrawing policing from minority communities.
> He should remind the police that they are public employees, under oath to uphold city and state laws.
Every police officer takes an oath. It generally goes like this:
"On my honor, I will never betray my badge, my integrity, my character or the public trust. I will always have the courage to hold myself and others accountable for our actions. I will always uphold the Constitution, my community, and the agency I serve."
I'm missing the part where there is an "if my mayor coddles my feelings the right way" line in there.
"[t]he duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists."
They still have the duty, but it does not necessarily apply on an individual basis.
That's carrying it a bit far, and I don't think that's what the GP was saying at all.
I think they meant that police officers have a duty to enforce the law in each situation they are presented with. And law enforcement situations are composed of individuals, some of whom may or may not be breaking the law - we give the officer the right to make a snap judgement on this in emergencies.
For example, if an officer arrives at a situation where one individual is robbing another, then their duty to the public (and to the victim) is to try to prevent the robber from victimizing the other individual, or apprehend the robber if he has already committed the crime. In attempting to do so, they uphold their law enforcement duty to the public.
Just as much, it is important for the officer to follow the law in the process of enforcing it, which is at the crux of the debates around the death of unarmed individuals by police.
While your link is not exactly pertinent to the above conversation, it does highlight how vulnerable people can be to violent action, regardless of police presence, and it serves as a reminder that personal security is in the hands of the individual, not the state.
I am not a lawyer, so forgive me for trying to apply logic to the law.
What set cardinality would be minimally necessary to generate a police duty to protect a group, if it is not one? "The public" is, after all, nothing more than a set of individuals. Two? Three? Ten? A million? Are police subject to some selfish calculus where they are not obligated to risk their own lives unless it would save more than N non-police individuals?
Since this does not make sense by common definitions, I suspect that somewhere in the law, it defines "the public" to be the municipal corporation that employs the police, meaning essentially that the police don't ever have an obligation to do anything at all, unless a madman is threatening the city's articles of incorporation with a shredder or lighter.
That seems to me to be madness. But I am not a lawyer.
> I am not a lawyer, so forgive me for trying to apply logic to the law.
Your first mistake is presuming that you're applying logic. That's not what you're doing.
Your second mistake is presuming that you're commenting on the law. You're commenting on an interpretation of the law. With, I might add, your own interpretation based explicitly on admitted ignorance.
> What set cardinality would be minimally necessary to generate a police duty to protect a group, if it is not one?
It is one. It's simply not specific as to which one. If two criminals threatened two different civilians, a policeman is not at fault for choosing to save only one of them, especially when failing to act would mean saving neither.
A policeman who patrols one neighborhood over another, ceteris paribus, is not liable for crimes that occur in neighborhoods he failed to patrol. If it can be shown that he has done so for discriminatory reasons, then he is at fault for discrimination, but not for the crimes which occurred.
You really should read the details of Warren vs DC. Your response implies that you have not.
I'll summarize for you.
A woman with a toddler was the subject of a home invasion and sexual assault. Her two upstairs neighbors called 911 to report a crime in progress.
Police arrived on the scene, but then left without investigating.
The upstairs neighbors called 911 again, 20 minutes later, as they were still hearing screams from Warren being raped downstairs. The police did not return.
The intruders then noticed that other people were present in the house, and sexually assaulted the upstairs neighbors, too. FOR FOURTEEN CONSECUTIVE HOURS.
The court literally ruled that the police were not even obligated to show up for the five minutes that they spent on the call, utterly failing to notice the screaming rape victim being assaulted in her own home.
They weren't off saving someone else from a more serious crime. Because what would that be, really?
This is not a matter of the police being held to too high of a standard, or being blamed for not stopping all the crime in their city. It is a matter of police being held to no standard at all, with no responsibility for any crimes in their city.
And you can bet that everyone that gets a ticket in DC will forever after be comparing the diligence their cops show toward sitting in their cars with radar guns with that shown when people whose lives are threatened actually want their help.
Aaaaand nope, I still agree with the court findings. I think that the dispatch officer and the officers who checked the house should be disciplined by an internal affairs investigation, and possibly that the procedures followed by officers should be updated to respond more usefully to claims of burglary. I can't be exactly sure which of these things I would have liked to happen because I'm unfamiliar with the details of how and why the DC Metro Police operate, and I'm therefore not sure exactly where the blame of incompetence actually lies.
But to suggest that the officers in question had a special duty to the women is still wrong. The dispatcher was informed that a burglary was in progress, not a rape. I have no idea why Warren decided this was a wiser course of action, nor any idea if the dispatcher simply heard or recorded it incorrectly; given that the dispatcher also used the wrong code, I'm inclined to give Warren the benefit of the doubt over the dispatcher.
So yeah. It's strange and possibly suspicious that the officer who knocked on the door failed to notice screaming from the second floor. It's not clear to me that an officer should break into a private home to prevent a burglary, but I am also not a lawyer, so I'm not familiar with the case law on when a policeman should or should not force entry. My instincts say that it would be a Fourth Amendment violation.
If he heard the screaming, then the lack of forced entry is the failure. If a Code 2 burglary merits forced entry, then that is the failure. But presuming good faith on his part--i.e., that he didn't hear anything--then I find his actions entirely reasonable and your demand that he stop a crime that he had no idea was going on completely unreasonable. To suggest that his time was best spent doing nothing but verifying that Douglas or Warren, specifically, was not being raped is to suggest a special duty over and above the general duty a policeman has to the general public.
Basically, yes. Ignore the public part; it just means they have a duty in general. A cop can watch you getting murdered in your house and they do not have to help you. The only exceptions for duty to an individual are the "danger creation exception" and the "special-relationship exception".
For 'danger creation exception', if the government doing or not doing something puts you in danger, they are liable. If you're already in danger it's not their fault.
For 'special relationship exception', basically, unless 'the government singles out a particular party [..] and affords that person special treatment', they have no liability to help that person or provide them proper services. The only exception to this is when the state has restricted the freedom of the individual, such as with prisoners.
This may be news to some of you, but that whole "I pay may taxes" line is ridiculous because of these conclusions. Yes you pay your taxes - to people who have no obligation to help you. You're welcome.
What's really odd about all this is the recent cases where someone who was handcuffed by police subsequently died. Technically this would fall under both these exceptions, because their freedom was restricted by the government and the police's action or inaction caused them danger. In the recent cases, though, the police were let off the hook. Weird.
By your guidance I've found several articles describing the circumstances that establish "special relationships", yet I can't find anything that describes an officer's duties besides duty to individuals (like those you mention). Are these listed anywhere?
For now, if I suppose the exceptions you mentioned are the only duties of an officer, is there some legal mechanism that requires officers to enter special relationships? Or is it simply that a police officer who failed to perform his or her job would be fired, but could not be sued?
I'm suddenly having a hard time identifying exactly what are an individual police officer's duties. Should "protect and serve" always appear with quotes?
For others, some links on duty to rescue, public duty, etc:
The key to understanding this case is to understand what "duty" means.
It can mean that doing, or not doing, something can allow other people to sue or prosecute you. For example, we all have a legal duty to not drive drunk. If you do that, and kill someone by accident, you can be prosecuted and sued.
This is a legal definition of the word "duty." In this case, it means that a police officer who declines or fails to assist, does not need to fear getting sued or prosecuted.
But "duty" can also mean that you were hired for a certain job, and your employer expects to you meet those obligations. This is more of a cultural definition. For example a cashier has a duty to return the correct change. If they fail that duty, you can't sue them personally. But their manager might fire them.
In that sense, police officers do have a duty to help the public. An officer who blatantly and needlessly declines to do so might not get sued, but they'll probably get fired.
> If they're not obligated to individuals, then screwups face internal discipline, whatever that might be, or (I think) criminal charges if they screw up very badly.
> If they were to be obligated to individuals, then the individuals could sue them for not performing their duty, because they failed in their duty to that individual. EDIT: In other words, it would become a private matter between the individual on the one hand and the police on the other.
> And as bad as the case in question was, I seriously doubt that adding literally millions of lawsuits to the criminal justice system (which is what would happen) would mean faster responses. It would, rather, mean more resources going to fighting lawsuits and paying when they're lost, and fewer resources left to actually respond to calls.
...so, like, were you the kid in class who always reminded the teachers when they forgot to assign homework?
After all, what this is really all about, is an attack aimed to reduce all the funds that those delicious, orange parking tickets generate. All the petty nuisance tickets, and summonses, and violations that harvest money from non-violent citizens, rather than produce burdens by incurring imprisonment costs.
Hi, I see that you have more than 500 karma, so you probably downvoted me. That's great, because I created this throw-away account specifically because of thin-skinned people like you. Did that last sentence also come across as an ad hominem attack?
The fact that you're taking the time to make an account and post comments tells me that you value the ability to influence people's minds.
Posting ad hominem attacks on Hacker News is counterproductive to that goal. It will attract downvotes, which will turn your comment white and make it hard to read. Comments that are hard to read don't work very well for influencing people.
Also, even if your comment weren't downvoted, ad hominems still tend to inhibit your words' ability to change people's minds. You'll be a more effective writer if you eschew them.
As a natural scofflaw, I find a special affinity for this unofficial shift in the NYPD's policies. You might notice that this personal quality also aligns with my tendency to flout other rules.
@everyothertime It's not about thin skin, it's about obeying the culture of the community you've involved yourself with.
Please don't complain when you violate the culture of this community and are reprimanded for doing so.
If you want a less respectful culture where attacking one another with immature statements is the norm, perhaps check raldi's previous home, reddit. Judging by your use of the unsupported reddit quote syntax and the pettiness of your replies, it seems you are already familiar with that place and its culture.
While a lot of New Yorkers appreciate the reprieve from things like parking tickets, the lack of enforcement has real consequences that will negatively effect quality of life here. For example, without enforcement of the alternate side parking rule, street cleaners won't be able to access many city streets to clean them.
I work in Manhattan and visit fairly shitty areas of Brooklyn and Queens regularly. These past few weeks have been the first time since I moved here that I've felt safe in the presence of cops. I'd read about enforcement being down just after the funeral for the officers shot in the Bronx but it really didn't click until a pair of them walked down the street by me in Chelsea. They didn't look at my SO like they were ready to beat the shit out of him for once. They were actually laughing and looked approachable.
I think all this little passive aggressive "protest" will prove is that the world isn't going to end when the police stop hassling the young, non-white and homeless. I'm surprised they don't realize they're pulling the curtain back on their own charade.
I'm suspecting that it will eventually prove that those that don't remember history are doomed to repeat it.
NYC in the '70s and '80s was not that safe. Street crime, muggings, etc. were common. In the 1990s Giuliani stepped up patrols and sarted enforcing what most people thought were petty crimes, such as loitering, graffiti, parking violations, subway-gate-jumping, etc. with the effect that more serious crimes also decreased, and within several years NYC became one of the safest big cities.
The truth of the matter is that we don't know why crime dropped over the last 30ish years. There are lots of theories, broken windows policing is just one of them.
Here in Vancouver, police appear to be fairly hands-off (of course this is coming from a white male perspective, and I don't know enough black people here to have an idea of how different their experience is).
And while we have a lot of drug activity, homelessness, streetwalking, etc. I believe there is a lower rate of violent/organized crime than NYC.
Of course, Canadians have a much different attitude towards gun ownership than Americans...
Police patrol != enforcement. Having relaxed police in the vicinity makes me feel safer, having police nearby that is just looking for minor infractions makes me feel less secure - and I'm privileged white.
> Of course, Canadians have a much different attitude towards gun ownership than Americans...
That must be why Surrey had more homicides than Seattle in 2013, despite being a couple hundred thousand people smaller, and shall-issue CCW in Seattle.
I think the point is that guns laws and attitudes don't paint the whole picture.
You have a city in an extremely gun-tolerant state (Washington) that has lower violent crime than a city in an extremely anti-gun area (Surrey).
This suggests at least that low crime with liberal gun ownership laws is possible, and also suggests that gun ownership is not a primary factor in determining the level of violent crime.
Those are just two cities. Saying an incredibly safe city in a 'gun-tolerant' state (though I'm pretty sure it's not particularly gun-tolerant in attitude compared to the southern U.S.) is safer than one of the more dangerous cities of a gun-intolerant countries doesn't prove anything. Those are just two data points in a much more complicated graph. Overall Canada is much safer than the U.S. That doesn't mean every city in Canada is safer than every city in the U.S. However, guns are much harder to get in Canada, and that is believed by many to be a main contributing factor to it's lower rates of gun crime
The idea of tough, aggressive policing in New York has a lot of cultural momentum that will be hard to reverse. Despite the impression that Internet media subcultures try to create, New York is not united against police harassment. This is why de Blasio & co are being extremely careful to not politicize that incident where two policemen were randomly executed; and why the police union is doing its best to do the opposite. They are fighting for the "support the police" crowd.
The reason for this cultural momentum is because it wasn't too long ago that Manhattan was overrun with open drug use, open solicitation of prostitution, three-card-monte scammers, squeegee men, and so on. Central Park was dangerous after dark (and somewhat so even during the day). This is a particular sort of crime that we can imagine is solved by tough policing--and in the judgment of many people, this is exactly what happened.
I can't tell if you're disassociating yourself from the "many people" you mentioned or not, so I'm not sure how to word this, but... Just out of curiosity (because you seem like you have first-hand experience of the old NYC) What do you believe has had the most impact on decreasing crime in NYC? And what do you believe is the best solution going forward?
Crime went down because many criminals couldn't afford rent anymore and left. This is by far the number one reason. Crime in counties in northern pensylvania and parts of NJ went up. The criminals just moved.
The same thing is happening in many "gentrifying" cities. Crime goes down in DC as the rates in neighboring counties in Maryland increase.
You get a fantastic correlation between section 8 housing and crime. Eliminating a ton of crime is not very complicated and doesn't require much police work. You just deport all the poor people. That's effectively what happened under Giuliani.
I don't know why people down voted this to death. Whether true or not (no one knows for sure), it's a view held by many.
If the enforcement is down 90%, there will always be some consequences / impacts down the road. It will not be immediate because it takes some time for criminals to test the new boundaries of what they can get away with.
And for those who think this will hurt the police budget, ticket revenue only accounts for 10% of NYPD budget. It will not lead to layoff.
It will if they think they can blame it on the Mayor. NYPD appears to be throwing a temper-tantrum, I wouldn't exactly expect nothing but rational actions from them.
Estonia even decreased their prison population during that period and their crime still fell massively. Whatever is going on, it didn't just happen in New York, so it is not to do with the policies of Giuliani.
edit - Guiliani was a thug who commented about the NYPD's "degree of restraint which is virtually unmatched in the country.", during a Civil Rights Commission hearing about a suspect being sodomised with a broomstick.
... and a lot of this change can be attributed to changes in demographics, wealth, improved car alarms, the decline of cash, and dozens of other variables. Policing has, I'm sure, some impact, but no research I've seen suggests it is the primary (or even a significant) driving force in the declining crime-rate.
The "broken windows" theory of police enforcement doesn't stand up when compared to other Western cities. A big part of the "broken windows" theory is that small crimes, such as graffiti, created an atmosphere that allowed worse crimes to happen. And yet, if you visit Berlin, you will see a city with a shocking amount of graffiti, but very little crime. If you visit parts of London you'll see run down industrial districts, but very little crime.
Even if you confine your analysis to the USA, the "broken windows" theory of crime does not explain the relative shift in crime towards the suburbs, nor does it explain the increasing epidemic of drugs in rural areas. There is a lot that it does not explain, so it should be treated with suspicion. A theory that only explains one data point is not a theory at all.
Most Western nations have seen decreases in crime during since the late 1980s. The USA had the most crime, and the USA has seen the biggest decrease. No one knows why. New York City has seen the biggest decrease of all the big cities, but figuring out why, given the extremely multi-variate nature of the problem, will be extremely difficult to do. Even those theories that attempt to explain the decline of crime in the USA (aging of the population, Roe vs Wade, unleaded gasoline, change in police tactics) fail to explain why New York City should see the largest decrease in crime, since one can find other cities, for any of those variables, that saw larger changes than New York City.
>The USA had the most crime, and the USA has seen the biggest decrease. No one knows why.
Some have proposed that outlawing leaded gasoline has led to less lead poisoning in children, thus less aggressive behavior in adults and subsequent decreases in crime.
NBER paper - Environmental Policy as Social Policy? The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime
> A bit part of the "broken windows" theory is that small crimes, such as graffiti, created an atmosphere that allowed worse crimes to happen.
I've always been confused as to why the broken windows theory presumes that the window is broken because of malicious action. It seems obvious to me that the window was broken accidentally, and as such, the correct response (in police action and otherwise) is to repair the window. Full stop.
> I've always been confused as to why the broken windows theory presumes that the window is broken because of malicious action.
It doesn't.
> It seems obvious to me that the window was broken accidentally
Are you suggesting that no young vandal has ever broken a window on purpose? I assure you, it happens.
> and as such, the correct response (in police action and otherwise) is to repair the window. Full stop.
I don't understand what you're disagreeing with. Has anybody ever seriously argued that the police should punish accidental window breaking? Conversely, if a police officer witnesses somebody throw a rock through a window without cause, should he not stop them?
jerf explains it well above - the theory is that the appearance of disorder begets more disorder. Whether that disorder is deliberately caused by bad actors is significant at the micro scale but somewhat moot at the macro scale.
i.e., a window broken by malicious act is a bad thing, but ultimately an accidentally broken window will also contribute to crime. The notion is that the appearance of disorder signals that such laws are poorly enforced, as well as decreases the level of responsibility and ownership people feel towards the place ("this place sucks already, what's one more...")
But punishing small crimes doesn't fix broken windows, so it doesn't actually contribute to the presumed consequence of decreasing disorder.
I mean, let's say that a vandal deliberately broke a window, and this act is witnessed by a police officer. Arresting the vandal doesn't fix the window, so why does the theory call for such an arrest?
As potatolicious stated, part of the proposed mechanism by which broken windows contribute to urban decay is that "the appearance of disorder signals that such laws are poorly enforced". Surely, a police officer ignoring the crime as it is being performed in front of them would send this signal even more strongly.
Also, I should point out that the theory doesn't say that an arrest must be made. Maybe they simply intervene and issue a warning. Maybe you record their identity and create a police record of the incident so that the building owner can sue to defray the cost of replacement. Maybe they take the kid back to his parents, so they can offer replace the window. And yes, maybe you arrest them if they've been repeatedly warned in the past or are causing immense property damage. It's all contextual.
The theory just says that the government (not just law enforcement) shouldn't let the little things slide because they lead to bigger problems down the road. You get the most "bang for your buck" by nipping the little things in the bud. You seem to have a warped idea that it means draconian punishments for every infraction, no matter how minor.
It doesn't necessarily call for an arrest - either in theory or in practice.
For example, during the height of the Broken Windows implementation in New York, transit agencies had a policy of not allowing a vehicle to leave the depot with graffiti on it. It was obviously impossible to catch all vandals in the act, but by cleaning up graffiti as soon as it is found, it sends the message that not only are their acts futile, but that society has no tolerance for this type of behavior.
So to use your example, if you witness a vandal breaking a window, you may fine him, or arrest him if the behavior is particularly repeated or egregious - but in any case you make sure the window gets fixed ASAP such that the appearance of order may be maintained.
You're taking it a little too literally. The theory is that once a situation seems less maintained, people will normalize that state and allow it to decline further.
It's essentially a slippery slope argument, though I do think there's a little bit of psychological truth to the argument. But I also think there's a really high cost for trying to keep things perfect.
The cost is in cultural adaptation, not police work. Singapore has a high standard of public appearance and behavior. It comes at a cost. But they did succeed in creating the social norm. Without that the police effort is endless.
That's what I meant, though maybe with a different spin. The cultural adaptation to a grossly over-aggressive police force is the major cost: fear, oppression, distrust, etc.
As far as Singapore goes, I don't have a ton of experience there to comment. If their standards end up leading the police to proactively treat people like criminals, then I suppose I wouldn't like that very much.
Worth noting that Asian culture in general seems to have much more of a "compromise the individual for the good of the whole" component, though. Nothing wrong with that, but it's a poor fit with our cultural expectations.
The idea of the broken window theory isn't that the window was broken was any particular way. The idea is that the visual image of a broken window serves as a signal that the degree of social concern/cohesion/enforcement in the area is low, and will thus encourage further behaviors. Also, breaking the second window is psychologically easier than the first.
I say this without endorsement, just explanation. (I'm ready to believe the evidence suggests it doesn't actually work and that the real drop in crime was another cause, but, on the other hand, academics can sometimes just be contrarians too, it's not just an online thing, and I still give some credence to successful engineering efforts such that one ought to at least consider the original theory.)
This is just not plausible. New York is not the same city today as it was then. I grew up in the East Village in the 70s and 80s and live in same place now. Having witnessed the entire process up close and personal, I'm deeply skeptical that Giuliani's policies [1] were responsible for more than a minuscule drop in crime here – it was almost entirely due economic and demographic changes. The new "relaxed" police enforcement is how enforcement morally and practically ought to be. I would be thrilled if they continue this indefinitely. Maybe the cops could feel like they actually exist to help the people who live here instead of harassing them.
[1] The culmination of those policies led to a cop trying to ticket my mother for jay walking. I say "try" because what happened instead is that she lectured him for a good 20 minutes and in the end he apologized and tore up the ticket.
This theory of crime actually says that police presence can be safely reduced now, because all those petty crimes are no longer common.
What you're talking about is a theory of how to boot-strap a reduction in crime: start small. But it also implies that once crime is reduced, the reduction will be self-persisting (for the same reason crime was self-persisting--because of the environment). It does not imply that heavy police presence needs to be permanent.
Anyway, it's never been proved in any real way, it's just an idea that got popular. And a whole lot of cities that Giuliani did not lead also saw significant reductions in serious crime over that same period of time.
Only a couple of decades ago, Manhattan has many shitty areas before the ramp up the police force. The real effect of this "protest" won't really show that quickly. Stopping hassling the "usual" targets may not be the only thing they do.
I don't think we should just sit back and let the situation fold out on its own. Whatever the intention is, if the police force is putting public safety in risk, it's critical to not let that happen.
I agree. This article from the NYT seems very premature. I think this is part of the current media backlash which is trying to shame the cops for pointing the finger at DeBlasio. "See! You end stop and frisk and crime didn't go up. It is wrong to demonize the administration."
Reducing patrols and arrests isn't going to spike crime immediately, but if this condition persists for another three months, we might be able to comment. The theory is, people have to notice that enforcement is down/stays down, and therefore it is "safe" to try and commit crimes again.
Interesting side note - the drop in parking tickets etc - is a way for the police to starve the city government of revenue. Apparently $550 million or so per year, so there's that element to consider as well. The city could respond with more cameras / automated tickets, so maybe that winds up backfiring. We'll see.
It will be interesting to see how this balances out. Fewer arrests, fewer court cases and fewer people sent to jail. All of which, especially the jail, are expensive...
The NY Post has been crowing about what a disaster this is and how it's de Blasio's fault. In my opinion, they're missing a tremendous opportunity.
If you're an economic conservative, public unions should be your enemy #1. They have tremendous leverage in local politics, and the fat pensions they've voted for themselves are the top economic problem facing states and municipalities.
Supporting de Blasio against the police union would strike a major blow. The union would find itself facing opposition from both liberals and conservatives (for different reasons), which would create major leverage in the ongoing negotiations between the union and the city.
> public unions should be your enemy #1... The union would find itself facing opposition from both liberals and conservatives (for different reasons)
I wish there was more discussion about this sort of thing. My pet hypothesis is that nobody holds police unions accountable because conservatives like police and liberals like unions. It's hard to even find discussion about the actual extent of police union influence, much less how bad the effects may or may not be and what should be done about it.
I think the difference is that the Post and most right-wing media in the USA support not the libertarian notion of conservatism, but a more authoritarian version.
It's almost as if the NYPost only cares about selling papers using simple, moralistic stories and doesn't actually care about making the city a better place
Yes, by backing away from issuing summons for minor offenses, there is overlap with what many have rightly sought in the aftermath of Eric Garner's death. To me, that silver lining is coincidental, and it's taking the thunder out of their protest. As a New York City resident who has been closely following the issue, I do fear that the police, with tacit approval by their unions, will expand/escalate their protest (not by harassing minorities, in case that's how my original comment came across) by further scaling back enforcement of crime.
This fear, after all, is exactly what they're trying to leverage.
London on the whole gets by with a pretty light police presence. The police generally don't get involved with parking and most traffic violations - we have cameras and plenty of traffic wardens who put tickets on your window but can't arrest anyone. It seems to work quite well on average. Policing in the US kind of freaks me out.
>>But the police union's phrasing—officers shouldn't make arrests "unless absolutely necessary"—begs the question: How many unnecessary arrests was the NYPD making before now?
I suspect think there can in fact be desirable arrests which are not necessary: arrests for petty theft and shoplifting, vandalism, malicious mischief, et cetera.
That's one thing "begs the question" was at one point used to mean. "begs the question" has also often been used to mean "begs for the question to be asked", which seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Your own link notes that the use of "begs the question" to mean "assumes the initial point" arose as a mistranslation of Latin. I see no reason to cling to that mistranslation as the only possible use of the English phrase.
NYPD, one of the largest municipal armies in history, has become a latter-day Praetorian Guard. They have yet to stage a coup and appoint their own Caracalla as emperor, however.
The NYPD actually has an entirely separate arm that handles parking tickets & traffic enforcement. They don't have guns and can't arrest you. They also drive around in silly 3 wheel cars.
All this back-turning, slowdown, etc. have more to do with the NYPD contract renewal coming up. I hate to say this, but it looks to me that the unions are politicizing the death of the two officers to gain leverage in the contract negotiations.
The slain officer lived in my neighborhood. Every single officer I know was impacted by this. They have 24/hour shifts guarding their house on their own time and thousands of officers showed up to his funeral.
It's funny that you assume that. Given the amount of crime and interactions they have, they are actually doing a pretty good job.
This is coming from a guy who got harassed by cops and filled formal complaint that went no where.
Shit happens, you are out of your mind if you think any police in the world that deals with so many people outside and inside multiple 'hoods' will have better accountability.
Were these the first officers ever killed in the line of duty? No. It was a tragedy, no doubt about it. I feel bad for the families of these officers, who died simply because of the color of their uniform.
Read what? I live in this neighborhood and grew up around here. Where did you grow up? Entertain me please.
You realize that Eric was selling cigarettes (no id) to high school kids for months right? You realize that most people with families (majority) in that neighborhood, do not support him... right?
Yes he died. Everything went well during his previous arrests. When he decided to resist he knew what he was getting into. He simply did not want to deal with the third record of the same kind / fines.
If you want to claim that multiple officers that detained him over last few years were all targeting him and making up stories, just so they can force him to resist arrest, feel free.
In general, I don't understand why people who obviously never lived in a such community are so eager to give their 2 cents. If this guy was selling drugs to your 13 year old kid, you would be the first one to call NYPD. Would love too see your reaction if NYPD simply ignored this dude and your child got hooked on smoking.
In regards to line of duty, yes it's a big deal when you have two officers get executed in the middle of the day while sitting in their cruiser. Not sure how ignorant you have to be.
> Read what? I live in this neighborhood and grew up around here.
Totally, absolutely, irrelevant. I don't need to live in your neighborhood to have an opinion. And just by geographical proximity your opinion doesn't get any magical powers.
> You realize that Eric was selling cigarettes (no id) to high school kids for months right? ... (blah blah blah)
It was not an arrestable offence. Selling "loosies" gets your a $100 fine, not an arrest. Read the laws.
> If you want to claim that multiple officers that detained him over last few years were all targeting him and making up stories, just so they can force him to resist arrest, feel free.
Strawman. You keep making up things in your head and then arguing against them.
The crime was of selling loose cigs, not selling to children. It was a tax issue, plain and simple. This "selling to children" claim was tacked on later (oh please, won't anybody THINK of the children!!1!!11!).
And BTW: I've lived in worse communities. Try the City of Buffalo, for instance.
>I don't need to live in your neighborhood to have an opinion. A
Nobody in the neighborhood needs your opinion. If you are going to comment on the community you were never a part of or a certain class you never been a part off, then be humble when you get corrected.
> It was not an arrestable offence. Selling "loosies" gets your a $100 fine, not an arrest. Read the laws.
Get off Wikipedia and stop pretending to know stuff, there is a clear pattern where you attempt to know everything.
The fine has not been anywhere close to $100 in NYC for selling cigarettes for years now. This fine you are speaking about is also imposed on stores. Not people who are classified as drug dealers.
Right now you get fined $1000 for failing to display warning label within your store. Selling to minors? You are looking for thousands of dollars of fines. Those fines go up 3/4x if you keep it up.
This would have been arrest #3 for Eric. Which would likely would have resulted in heavy fines / jail time.
> The crime was of selling loose cigs, not selling to children. It was a tax issue, plain and simple.
What tax issue? He is selling loosies at profit. Taxes are already paid and the kids can't get those in bodegas anyways. If anything he was helping with your so called 'tax' issues.
Majority of buyers are kids. Grown men won't pay 50% mark-up on something they can get in the store.
Neither of your counter points hold any water, stick to bullshitting your friends. They don't know any better.
Stopping the aggressive pursuit of people selling individual cigarettes would be a good place to start. If cigarette taxes are too damn high, people will find a cheaper way to smoke. Quit picking on poor people that smoke. Note: I don't smoke or drink.
I wish they would stick with it. This is the New York I grew up in, and loved so much. I don't believe the broken windows theory, and i think Freakonomics made a good statistical argument it is the number of police, rather than the style, that reduces violent crime.
I think funding your government through tickets and summonses is hostile to quality of life. And detainment or imprisonment for minor offenses is imho a human rights violation.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 504 ms ] threadThe union should think carefully though. If life just goes on without the nanny-state tickets and other revenue generators, the thought process may change. Maybe more fare jumping and double-parking would be ok, and we can live with that -- but with 10,000 fewer policemen.
10,000 * $100,000 = less need for ticket revenue.
So, cutting that would be great, but wouldn't do much for NYPD's bottom line.
I say this having just seen the NYPD bomb squad show up to investigate a bag outside my apartment this morning.
Which of these attacks required armored cars to fend off?
Or maybe you want to look at the Boston Marathon bombing that ended in a shoot out with a SWAT team.
Yes, terrorism is statistically insignificant compared to car crashes or heart disease in terms of deaths. Yes, police over use their equipment. To say that NYC or other cities like it don't have an actual need for this kind of equipment sometimes is just silly.
In that case, poorly coordinated, heavily-armed police fired hundreds of rounds into a neighborhood of primarily wood-frame houses in Watertown, Massachusetts. That's a good case for disarming all the cops involved in that incident.
People like to throw this line around... but I've yet to see an actual tank in the hands of a police department anywhere in the US. What I have seen are a lot of Armored Personnel Carriers (APC), which have no weaponry and are basically just heavily armored trucks designed specifically to protect the personnel inside (from riot, projectiles, bullets, explosions, etc).
With that said, I have no issue with a police department using an APC in a situation where bodily harm may come to them (SWAT situation, riot situation, terrorist situation, bomb situation, etc).
And "riot" is not to be confused with "peaceful protest". Riots are bad; people and property get damaged.
http://mashable.com/2014/08/14/war-veterans-ferguson-police/
Personally, I think the problem is when there us no cost benefit analysis. What's the cost in terms of maintenence as well as public perception and trust.
I do realize you put the disclaimer "seemed", but I don't see any evidence that the police in Ferguson (or anywhere) were ill trained to drive an APC or use riot gear (gas masks included). APC's have been used by police departments for a long long time, just only they were purchasing them back then and now the military is giving them their old ones (as apposed to just scrapping them since they were bought and paid for with tax payer's money).
Ferguson was special, there were "riots" going on for a while (stores being raided, projectiles rockets and fireworks fired at police, even guns being shot). There were both peaceful protests happening simultaneously with full on riots.
I do believe that there mostly isn't enough cost benefit analysis going on, just more stuff is better.
They should hire you to run NYPD.
Now we have perhaps something of a controlled experiment going on regarding the alleged root cause of the drop in crime in NYC (and perhaps nationwide).
Don't kid yourself.
I'm not sure we need strict laws regarding parking, public drinking, loosies, ect. Let alone aggressive enforcement.
I think parts of NYC are a good example of how enforcement can cause a more negative environment than the original activity.
Of course, an even more libertarian approach would be to simply sell or lease the parking spaces to private entities and let them set whatever prices and rules they want for the use of their real estate, perhaps including making deals with local merchants to subsidize market rates during business hours.
It's interesting watching such things over several decades: urban rush away from conservative/libertarian principles to highly regulated progressivism subsequently leading to a backlash which, for many/most practical purposes, amounts to a return to conservative/libertarian values.
I suppose he still understands that he is not really supposed to park where he is parking, but it says something about his outlook.
Apparently he believes he has the "right" to park wherever he pleases.
We are left to wonder if he has the common sense to avoid blocking hydrants, etc.
1. People speed and park wrongly despite both of these being illegal
2. A huge majority of people aren't assholes all the time, despite this not being illegal
3. Murders do get committed though it's illegal
4. Most stuff isn't stolen even though it is very difficult to catch someone breaking into houses
There's a book called Three Felonies A Day which posits that the average American commits three serious crimes every day despite the overwhelming majority of those folks not meaning to. https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=three+felonies+a+day The reason for this is that the laws are written broadly enough that entirely innocent acts could be construed to be strict-liability crimes that require absolute adherence; intent does not enter into the equation.
If society is not falling apart even if the average American is in fact committing three felonies a day, then it stands to reason that perhaps the law as a whole is over-written and could stand to be reduced. This new informal policing policy in New York might end up being further evidence of such problems.
Further people have found that in many cases persuasion is much more effective than compulsion. In the UK they've found that they can replace speed cameras (which issue tickets) with radar controlled signs that display smiley or frowny faces and that's much more effective at getting people to slow down. The theory goes that compulsion is a very ephemeral threat and that the police can't be everywhere at once ticketing everyone who's speeding all the time and people know it. But just asking them to slow down with no threat is more effective since it's polite.
https://www.google.com/webhp?q=speed+cameras+persuasion+comp...
A similar theory was used to great effect by King Frederick of Prussia to get people to eat potatoes. Decrees did nothing to make people plant them, but declaring the potato to be a royal food and nobody but the king could eat it caused people to plant it either out of spite or a desire to flout the rules. http://www.historynet.com/ask-mhq-king-frederick-ii-of-pruss...
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22530/does-the-a...
(That too many things are crimes is probably something I agree with; that accounting companies must only destroy documents according to retention policies and not after they find out one of their clients is a giant fraud is not something that worries me)
http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/23/ohio-remembers-mens-rea
2) the average American does not commit 3 felonies a day.
We have found that small rewards for not speeding reduces speeding - so yes, driving behavior can be modified by externalities.
http://www.rooneylawfirm.com/Articles/Monetary-Rewards-May-S...
If private parking in Manhattan is $30 and driving up on the sidewalk to park is free, the latter will happen. There is too many cars in New York for it NOT to happen. I've seen the latter happen in another country...
My dad worked for NYC during the Dinkins administration, which took a stance of not antagonizing the population with minor tickets and citations. His big story about the downside of this approach was a major snowstorm, which crippled the city in many areas. In his case, he was stuck at work at a public housing project for 3 days with the residents, because the city didn't ticket parking violations and the plows couldn't clear the clogged streets.
It made life miserable for the residents as well. Broken elevators left the elderly trapped in high-rise buildings for days. People with medical emergencies had to be carried by fireman down the stairs and down the street to an ambulance on an avenue.
One of the reasons for the current practice in NYC is the Mayor Giuliani did a complete 180 and aggressively enforced all sorts of laws. Chaos transitioned to order. The optimal answer lies somewhere in the middle.
This has still be case during some of the big snows of the past several years even with parking violations tickets.
> Broken elevators left the elderly trapped in high-rise buildings for days. People with medical emergencies had to be carried by fireman down the stairs and down the street to an ambulance on an avenue.
This still happens every once in a while. Police don't generally handle these kinds of things anyway, as the 311 service handles a lot of building code violations.
> One of the reasons for the current practice in NYC is the Mayor Giuliani did a complete 180 and aggressively enforced all sorts of laws. Chaos transitioned to order. The optimal answer lies somewhere in the middle.
This isn't accurate. Broken windows policing in NYC goes back to the mid-eighties and efforts to handle graffiti. Bill Bratton, the now police commissioner and comissioner during Guiliani's tenure, started using broken windows policing tactics and policies in the early 90s when he was at the NYC transit police.
Also, violent crime rates were already well in decline when broken windows policing became the major tactic and policy of the NYPD. It is not at all clear that broken windows policing is responsible or a contributed to that falling rate and to characterize Giuliani as instilling order on a chaotic city is laughable, as you could view many of his policies as instilling chaos.
The point is, there are extremes, and neither is the correct answer. I recall living in late 1980's Queens where getting a response from the police for anything short of a murder was an exercise in frustration. That wasn't the the case 10 years later.
This is the NYC in which these minor offenses needed to be enforced strictly. There are a number of theories regarding the decrease in crime but I'm pretty certain no one can argue that the drastic measures were necessary. Fast forward to 2014 NYC is basically disney world for adult tourists. There definitely needs to be a review of how we police the city because the tactics currently in place are from 25 years ago. Hopefully the data from this slowdown will provide the evidence necessary to create change.
However, I hate the fact that this change was brought about by the deaths of people.
Amen. I also hate that this was brought about by, it would seem, police officers pouting about the public and the mayor finally speaking out against biased policing.
Edit: I know policing is hard. And frankly, I sympathize with a police officer who finds himself more intimidated by a black man on the street than a white man. It is racist and wrong to respond that way, but none of us are perfect, and these biases can be hard to suppress. But in the face of ample evidence that these biases are needlessly getting people killed (or, even more prevalently, to be disproportionately imprisoned), a police department has a duty to do something about it. I suspect this "something" will be a combination of training, change of internal culture (easier said then done), and altered tactics.
I wish we could have a dialogue where we admit that biased policing is a problem, but simultaneously refrain from painting all cops as racist brutes. I see our present predicament, though, as a result of cops' failing to see past the names they've been called by the angriest voices out there (not by the mayor, I might add) to the fact that there really is a problem in their departments that is causing unconscionable harm to black communities.
"Wrong" maybe, but it's also statistically sound. Police 3 to 4 times more likely to shoot a black man but black men are 5.6 times more likely to shoot a police officer. (source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/kent-osband-what-statistics-say-... )
I think the relevant point from my source's editorial is this: "While these inferences aren’t fair to the vast majority on either side [(police or civilian)], they are rational responses to fear and uncertainty. As such, neither legislation nor indoctrination can banish them."
So I'm not sure it's fair to call police officers racist. It's certainly not old-school Racist in the form of a deliberate and systematic oppression of a minority or an opinion that they're genetically inferior.
(Disclaimer. This post is meant to provide insight into behavior of people, only. No specific public policy recommendation is hereby condemned or endorsed.)
So while it might be rational for an officer to behave as though he is more likely to be shot, this is different from responding as though he is likely to be shot. Unfortunately, they are doing the latter entirely too often. Perhaps this is the result of natural cognitive biases (some combination of confirmation bias and negativity bias, maybe), amplified by the images we all see in the media. These are powerful forces that, I think, most of us struggle with. But that does not mean that cops, who are supposed to be highly trained professionals, entrusted with powerful weapons, and the preservation of public safety, do not have a duty to overcome these biases.
(I agree it's not what you've called "old-school racist." But it makes no difference. Old-school racism is not the only bad kind of racism. [Is there a good kind?])
> police are six times as likely to be killed by black civilians than black civilians are to be killed by police. . . . . [P]police are 22 times as likely to be killed by nonblack civilians than nonblack civilians are to be killed by police.
I think this tells you everything you need to know. Police are always more likely to be killed by civilians than the other way around. This is probably as it should be, unfortunately. The police are highly trained and will typically strive for non-violent resolutions. The civilians they are interacting with, however, are sometimes criminals who are high, desperate, evil, or what have you.
Officers respond to this threat with far greater force when the threat is black, than when it is white. As the author explains, "the juxtaposition suggests that the police respond far more defensively to blacks (a 1-to-6 homicide ratio) than to whites (a 1-to-22 homicide ratio). African-Americans would correctly perceive the police as three to four times quicker to pull a lethal trigger against them than against whites."
The article goes on:
> Police officers naturally take a different perspective. While blacks are 14% of the U.S. population, they account for 47% of killings of police
But this perspective is faulty. While the 6:1, 22:1 statistics naturally take into account the frequency of police-civilian contact, the latter 14:47 comparison does not. In other words, this latter statistic is likely due to the fact that police have a disproportionate amount of contact with African americans. But the 6:1, 22:1 statistics do not have this problem.
Just lately we've had serious issues recruiting police (largely due to antiquated policies like 'no visible tattoos' or 'they must live in Jefferson Parish (expensive on a cop's salary)'. The murder rate (always a problem in Nola) is actually currently down but violent crime is up significantly and the nature of the crime seems to be getting more and more brazen (http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/11266753-123/buffa...). It's obviously a complicated issue that requires a lot more than just "more feet on the ground" but we certainly seem to not have enough at the moment.
Here's a link but there's probably a million more available via Google: http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2014/05/nopd_understaffi...
Or, at least, that you need more cops even if they are as corrupt as the existing ones.
Arbitrary numbers but if your cops are 50% corrupt and you suddenly have twice as many total cops you still then double the number of non-corrupt cops. Obviously that's wasteful but... Fixing deep-routed cultural corruption is obviously extremely difficult.
So yeah, at this point I (and a lot of others who live here) would say we just need more cops because violent crime is increasing and the number of street cops out there is decreasing and that's just a bad combination.
So many lesser of two evils at play here :(
Our police forces around here are so busy with 911 calls they barely have any time for proactive policing. There's very little patrols and fewer proactive citizen engagements that aren't because crime has flared up in that sector.
source: http://forums.officer.com/t146829/
They are actually doing you a huge favor. No more bullshit tickets at the end of the month.
Check out the infographics.
> If the Police Department’s current commanders cannot get the cops to do their jobs, Mr. de Blasio should consider replacing them.
> He should invite the Justice Department to determine if the police are guilty of civil rights violations in withdrawing policing from minority communities.
> He should remind the police that they are public employees, under oath to uphold city and state laws.
I could not agree more.
"On my honor, I will never betray my badge, my integrity, my character or the public trust. I will always have the courage to hold myself and others accountable for our actions. I will always uphold the Constitution, my community, and the agency I serve."
I'm missing the part where there is an "if my mayor coddles my feelings the right way" line in there.
Furthermore, the duty of "respect" is for public servants to the duly elected representative of the people they serve, not the other way around.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
"[t]he duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists."
They still have the duty, but it does not necessarily apply on an individual basis.
I think they meant that police officers have a duty to enforce the law in each situation they are presented with. And law enforcement situations are composed of individuals, some of whom may or may not be breaking the law - we give the officer the right to make a snap judgement on this in emergencies.
For example, if an officer arrives at a situation where one individual is robbing another, then their duty to the public (and to the victim) is to try to prevent the robber from victimizing the other individual, or apprehend the robber if he has already committed the crime. In attempting to do so, they uphold their law enforcement duty to the public.
Just as much, it is important for the officer to follow the law in the process of enforcing it, which is at the crux of the debates around the death of unarmed individuals by police.
What set cardinality would be minimally necessary to generate a police duty to protect a group, if it is not one? "The public" is, after all, nothing more than a set of individuals. Two? Three? Ten? A million? Are police subject to some selfish calculus where they are not obligated to risk their own lives unless it would save more than N non-police individuals?
Since this does not make sense by common definitions, I suspect that somewhere in the law, it defines "the public" to be the municipal corporation that employs the police, meaning essentially that the police don't ever have an obligation to do anything at all, unless a madman is threatening the city's articles of incorporation with a shredder or lighter.
That seems to me to be madness. But I am not a lawyer.
Your first mistake is presuming that you're applying logic. That's not what you're doing.
Your second mistake is presuming that you're commenting on the law. You're commenting on an interpretation of the law. With, I might add, your own interpretation based explicitly on admitted ignorance.
> What set cardinality would be minimally necessary to generate a police duty to protect a group, if it is not one?
It is one. It's simply not specific as to which one. If two criminals threatened two different civilians, a policeman is not at fault for choosing to save only one of them, especially when failing to act would mean saving neither.
A policeman who patrols one neighborhood over another, ceteris paribus, is not liable for crimes that occur in neighborhoods he failed to patrol. If it can be shown that he has done so for discriminatory reasons, then he is at fault for discrimination, but not for the crimes which occurred.
I'll summarize for you.
A woman with a toddler was the subject of a home invasion and sexual assault. Her two upstairs neighbors called 911 to report a crime in progress.
Police arrived on the scene, but then left without investigating.
The upstairs neighbors called 911 again, 20 minutes later, as they were still hearing screams from Warren being raped downstairs. The police did not return.
The intruders then noticed that other people were present in the house, and sexually assaulted the upstairs neighbors, too. FOR FOURTEEN CONSECUTIVE HOURS.
The court literally ruled that the police were not even obligated to show up for the five minutes that they spent on the call, utterly failing to notice the screaming rape victim being assaulted in her own home.
They weren't off saving someone else from a more serious crime. Because what would that be, really?
This is not a matter of the police being held to too high of a standard, or being blamed for not stopping all the crime in their city. It is a matter of police being held to no standard at all, with no responsibility for any crimes in their city.
And you can bet that everyone that gets a ticket in DC will forever after be comparing the diligence their cops show toward sitting in their cars with radar guns with that shown when people whose lives are threatened actually want their help.
Aaaaand nope, I still agree with the court findings. I think that the dispatch officer and the officers who checked the house should be disciplined by an internal affairs investigation, and possibly that the procedures followed by officers should be updated to respond more usefully to claims of burglary. I can't be exactly sure which of these things I would have liked to happen because I'm unfamiliar with the details of how and why the DC Metro Police operate, and I'm therefore not sure exactly where the blame of incompetence actually lies.
But to suggest that the officers in question had a special duty to the women is still wrong. The dispatcher was informed that a burglary was in progress, not a rape. I have no idea why Warren decided this was a wiser course of action, nor any idea if the dispatcher simply heard or recorded it incorrectly; given that the dispatcher also used the wrong code, I'm inclined to give Warren the benefit of the doubt over the dispatcher.
So yeah. It's strange and possibly suspicious that the officer who knocked on the door failed to notice screaming from the second floor. It's not clear to me that an officer should break into a private home to prevent a burglary, but I am also not a lawyer, so I'm not familiar with the case law on when a policeman should or should not force entry. My instincts say that it would be a Fourth Amendment violation.
If he heard the screaming, then the lack of forced entry is the failure. If a Code 2 burglary merits forced entry, then that is the failure. But presuming good faith on his part--i.e., that he didn't hear anything--then I find his actions entirely reasonable and your demand that he stop a crime that he had no idea was going on completely unreasonable. To suggest that his time was best spent doing nothing but verifying that Douglas or Warren, specifically, was not being raped is to suggest a special duty over and above the general duty a policeman has to the general public.
Source: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=9108468254125174...
For 'danger creation exception', if the government doing or not doing something puts you in danger, they are liable. If you're already in danger it's not their fault.
For 'special relationship exception', basically, unless 'the government singles out a particular party [..] and affords that person special treatment', they have no liability to help that person or provide them proper services. The only exception to this is when the state has restricted the freedom of the individual, such as with prisoners.
This may be news to some of you, but that whole "I pay may taxes" line is ridiculous because of these conclusions. Yes you pay your taxes - to people who have no obligation to help you. You're welcome.
What's really odd about all this is the recent cases where someone who was handcuffed by police subsequently died. Technically this would fall under both these exceptions, because their freedom was restricted by the government and the police's action or inaction caused them danger. In the recent cases, though, the police were let off the hook. Weird.
By your guidance I've found several articles describing the circumstances that establish "special relationships", yet I can't find anything that describes an officer's duties besides duty to individuals (like those you mention). Are these listed anywhere?
For now, if I suppose the exceptions you mentioned are the only duties of an officer, is there some legal mechanism that requires officers to enter special relationships? Or is it simply that a police officer who failed to perform his or her job would be fired, but could not be sued?
I'm suddenly having a hard time identifying exactly what are an individual police officer's duties. Should "protect and serve" always appear with quotes?
For others, some links on duty to rescue, public duty, etc:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue http://www.policeone.com/police-jobs-and-careers/articles/49... http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseac...
It can mean that doing, or not doing, something can allow other people to sue or prosecute you. For example, we all have a legal duty to not drive drunk. If you do that, and kill someone by accident, you can be prosecuted and sued.
This is a legal definition of the word "duty." In this case, it means that a police officer who declines or fails to assist, does not need to fear getting sued or prosecuted.
But "duty" can also mean that you were hired for a certain job, and your employer expects to you meet those obligations. This is more of a cultural definition. For example a cashier has a duty to return the correct change. If they fail that duty, you can't sue them personally. But their manager might fire them.
In that sense, police officers do have a duty to help the public. An officer who blatantly and needlessly declines to do so might not get sued, but they'll probably get fired.
> If they're not obligated to individuals, then screwups face internal discipline, whatever that might be, or (I think) criminal charges if they screw up very badly.
> If they were to be obligated to individuals, then the individuals could sue them for not performing their duty, because they failed in their duty to that individual. EDIT: In other words, it would become a private matter between the individual on the one hand and the police on the other.
> And as bad as the case in question was, I seriously doubt that adding literally millions of lawsuits to the criminal justice system (which is what would happen) would mean faster responses. It would, rather, mean more resources going to fighting lawsuits and paying when they're lost, and fewer resources left to actually respond to calls.
After all, what this is really all about, is an attack aimed to reduce all the funds that those delicious, orange parking tickets generate. All the petty nuisance tickets, and summonses, and violations that harvest money from non-violent citizens, rather than produce burdens by incurring imprisonment costs.
You do realize this, right?
Hey, ad hominems like your opening sentence are not welcome on Hacker News :)
Hi, I see that you have more than 500 karma, so you probably downvoted me. That's great, because I created this throw-away account specifically because of thin-skinned people like you. Did that last sentence also come across as an ad hominem attack?
Posting ad hominem attacks on Hacker News is counterproductive to that goal. It will attract downvotes, which will turn your comment white and make it hard to read. Comments that are hard to read don't work very well for influencing people.
Also, even if your comment weren't downvoted, ad hominems still tend to inhibit your words' ability to change people's minds. You'll be a more effective writer if you eschew them.
Please don't complain when you violate the culture of this community and are reprimanded for doing so.
If you want a less respectful culture where attacking one another with immature statements is the norm, perhaps check raldi's previous home, reddit. Judging by your use of the unsupported reddit quote syntax and the pettiness of your replies, it seems you are already familiar with that place and its culture.
What has been broadly noted is that violations that generate money are not being enforced.
That part about "generating money" is the crux of the strategy we're seeing.
I think all this little passive aggressive "protest" will prove is that the world isn't going to end when the police stop hassling the young, non-white and homeless. I'm surprised they don't realize they're pulling the curtain back on their own charade.
NYC in the '70s and '80s was not that safe. Street crime, muggings, etc. were common. In the 1990s Giuliani stepped up patrols and sarted enforcing what most people thought were petty crimes, such as loitering, graffiti, parking violations, subway-gate-jumping, etc. with the effect that more serious crimes also decreased, and within several years NYC became one of the safest big cities.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/11/24/10-not-entirel...
And while we have a lot of drug activity, homelessness, streetwalking, etc. I believe there is a lower rate of violent/organized crime than NYC.
Of course, Canadians have a much different attitude towards gun ownership than Americans...
That must be why Surrey had more homicides than Seattle in 2013, despite being a couple hundred thousand people smaller, and shall-issue CCW in Seattle.
Maybe, just maybe, something else is involved.
Surrey's was obtained from this article: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Surrey+murders+four+days+ho...
By the way, the Canadian city with the highest murder rate (Red Deer, with a murder rate of 6.4 http://www.macleans.ca/worst-cities/) has a lower murder rate than nearly every city on this list of American cities by crime statistics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by...)
You have a city in an extremely gun-tolerant state (Washington) that has lower violent crime than a city in an extremely anti-gun area (Surrey).
This suggests at least that low crime with liberal gun ownership laws is possible, and also suggests that gun ownership is not a primary factor in determining the level of violent crime.
I doubt our attitudes differ much with respect to violent criminals using guns (or knives or fists) to hurt people, as we are talking about here.
Attitudes on gun ownership by peaceable citizens may be another story.
The reason for this cultural momentum is because it wasn't too long ago that Manhattan was overrun with open drug use, open solicitation of prostitution, three-card-monte scammers, squeegee men, and so on. Central Park was dangerous after dark (and somewhat so even during the day). This is a particular sort of crime that we can imagine is solved by tough policing--and in the judgment of many people, this is exactly what happened.
The same thing is happening in many "gentrifying" cities. Crime goes down in DC as the rates in neighboring counties in Maryland increase.
You get a fantastic correlation between section 8 housing and crime. Eliminating a ton of crime is not very complicated and doesn't require much police work. You just deport all the poor people. That's effectively what happened under Giuliani.
If the enforcement is down 90%, there will always be some consequences / impacts down the road. It will not be immediate because it takes some time for criminals to test the new boundaries of what they can get away with.
And for those who think this will hurt the police budget, ticket revenue only accounts for 10% of NYPD budget. It will not lead to layoff.
It will if they think they can blame it on the Mayor. NYPD appears to be throwing a temper-tantrum, I wouldn't exactly expect nothing but rational actions from them.
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21582041-rich-world-s...
Estonia even decreased their prison population during that period and their crime still fell massively. Whatever is going on, it didn't just happen in New York, so it is not to do with the policies of Giuliani.
edit - Guiliani was a thug who commented about the NYPD's "degree of restraint which is virtually unmatched in the country.", during a Civil Rights Commission hearing about a suspect being sodomised with a broomstick.
Even if you confine your analysis to the USA, the "broken windows" theory of crime does not explain the relative shift in crime towards the suburbs, nor does it explain the increasing epidemic of drugs in rural areas. There is a lot that it does not explain, so it should be treated with suspicion. A theory that only explains one data point is not a theory at all.
Most Western nations have seen decreases in crime during since the late 1980s. The USA had the most crime, and the USA has seen the biggest decrease. No one knows why. New York City has seen the biggest decrease of all the big cities, but figuring out why, given the extremely multi-variate nature of the problem, will be extremely difficult to do. Even those theories that attempt to explain the decline of crime in the USA (aging of the population, Roe vs Wade, unleaded gasoline, change in police tactics) fail to explain why New York City should see the largest decrease in crime, since one can find other cities, for any of those variables, that saw larger changes than New York City.
Some have proposed that outlawing leaded gasoline has led to less lead poisoning in children, thus less aggressive behavior in adults and subsequent decreases in crime.
NBER paper - Environmental Policy as Social Policy? The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime
[1] - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13097.pdf
MotherJones story
[2] - http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...
Links to criticism of the story above
[3] - http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-and-crime...
I've always been confused as to why the broken windows theory presumes that the window is broken because of malicious action. It seems obvious to me that the window was broken accidentally, and as such, the correct response (in police action and otherwise) is to repair the window. Full stop.
It doesn't.
> It seems obvious to me that the window was broken accidentally
Are you suggesting that no young vandal has ever broken a window on purpose? I assure you, it happens.
> and as such, the correct response (in police action and otherwise) is to repair the window. Full stop.
I don't understand what you're disagreeing with. Has anybody ever seriously argued that the police should punish accidental window breaking? Conversely, if a police officer witnesses somebody throw a rock through a window without cause, should he not stop them?
If it doesn't, then why does the theory call for small crimes to be punished?
i.e., a window broken by malicious act is a bad thing, but ultimately an accidentally broken window will also contribute to crime. The notion is that the appearance of disorder signals that such laws are poorly enforced, as well as decreases the level of responsibility and ownership people feel towards the place ("this place sucks already, what's one more...")
Note that I don't endorse this particular view ;)
I mean, let's say that a vandal deliberately broke a window, and this act is witnessed by a police officer. Arresting the vandal doesn't fix the window, so why does the theory call for such an arrest?
Also, I should point out that the theory doesn't say that an arrest must be made. Maybe they simply intervene and issue a warning. Maybe you record their identity and create a police record of the incident so that the building owner can sue to defray the cost of replacement. Maybe they take the kid back to his parents, so they can offer replace the window. And yes, maybe you arrest them if they've been repeatedly warned in the past or are causing immense property damage. It's all contextual.
The theory just says that the government (not just law enforcement) shouldn't let the little things slide because they lead to bigger problems down the road. You get the most "bang for your buck" by nipping the little things in the bud. You seem to have a warped idea that it means draconian punishments for every infraction, no matter how minor.
For example, during the height of the Broken Windows implementation in New York, transit agencies had a policy of not allowing a vehicle to leave the depot with graffiti on it. It was obviously impossible to catch all vandals in the act, but by cleaning up graffiti as soon as it is found, it sends the message that not only are their acts futile, but that society has no tolerance for this type of behavior.
So to use your example, if you witness a vandal breaking a window, you may fine him, or arrest him if the behavior is particularly repeated or egregious - but in any case you make sure the window gets fixed ASAP such that the appearance of order may be maintained.
It's essentially a slippery slope argument, though I do think there's a little bit of psychological truth to the argument. But I also think there's a really high cost for trying to keep things perfect.
As far as Singapore goes, I don't have a ton of experience there to comment. If their standards end up leading the police to proactively treat people like criminals, then I suppose I wouldn't like that very much.
Worth noting that Asian culture in general seems to have much more of a "compromise the individual for the good of the whole" component, though. Nothing wrong with that, but it's a poor fit with our cultural expectations.
I say this without endorsement, just explanation. (I'm ready to believe the evidence suggests it doesn't actually work and that the real drop in crime was another cause, but, on the other hand, academics can sometimes just be contrarians too, it's not just an online thing, and I still give some credence to successful engineering efforts such that one ought to at least consider the original theory.)
[1] The culmination of those policies led to a cop trying to ticket my mother for jay walking. I say "try" because what happened instead is that she lectured him for a good 20 minutes and in the end he apologized and tore up the ticket.
What you're talking about is a theory of how to boot-strap a reduction in crime: start small. But it also implies that once crime is reduced, the reduction will be self-persisting (for the same reason crime was self-persisting--because of the environment). It does not imply that heavy police presence needs to be permanent.
Anyway, it's never been proved in any real way, it's just an idea that got popular. And a whole lot of cities that Giuliani did not lead also saw significant reductions in serious crime over that same period of time.
I don't think we should just sit back and let the situation fold out on its own. Whatever the intention is, if the police force is putting public safety in risk, it's critical to not let that happen.
Reducing patrols and arrests isn't going to spike crime immediately, but if this condition persists for another three months, we might be able to comment. The theory is, people have to notice that enforcement is down/stays down, and therefore it is "safe" to try and commit crimes again.
Interesting side note - the drop in parking tickets etc - is a way for the police to starve the city government of revenue. Apparently $550 million or so per year, so there's that element to consider as well. The city could respond with more cameras / automated tickets, so maybe that winds up backfiring. We'll see.
If you're an economic conservative, public unions should be your enemy #1. They have tremendous leverage in local politics, and the fat pensions they've voted for themselves are the top economic problem facing states and municipalities.
Supporting de Blasio against the police union would strike a major blow. The union would find itself facing opposition from both liberals and conservatives (for different reasons), which would create major leverage in the ongoing negotiations between the union and the city.
I wish there was more discussion about this sort of thing. My pet hypothesis is that nobody holds police unions accountable because conservatives like police and liberals like unions. It's hard to even find discussion about the actual extent of police union influence, much less how bad the effects may or may not be and what should be done about it.
Yes, by backing away from issuing summons for minor offenses, there is overlap with what many have rightly sought in the aftermath of Eric Garner's death. To me, that silver lining is coincidental, and it's taking the thunder out of their protest. As a New York City resident who has been closely following the issue, I do fear that the police, with tacit approval by their unions, will expand/escalate their protest (not by harassing minorities, in case that's how my original comment came across) by further scaling back enforcement of crime.
This fear, after all, is exactly what they're trying to leverage.
>>But the police union's phrasing—officers shouldn't make arrests "unless absolutely necessary"—begs the question: How many unnecessary arrests was the NYPD making before now?
Because if there are unnecessary arrests, it's a travesty of our court system. :-/
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/second_cop_confirms_nypd_arr...
Gah. "Begging the question" means assuming something is already proved. Alas, people misuse "beg" as a synonym for "suggests" or "raises"...
Your own link notes that the use of "begs the question" to mean "assumes the initial point" arose as a mistranslation of Latin. I see no reason to cling to that mistranslation as the only possible use of the English phrase.
Nobody is going to die if you don't arrest a guy for jerking it on the subway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_of_the_New_York_Ci...
You sound extremely ignorant.
This is coming from a guy who got harassed by cops and filled formal complaint that went no where.
Shit happens, you are out of your mind if you think any police in the world that deals with so many people outside and inside multiple 'hoods' will have better accountability.
Bubble.
But has the NYPD union ever expressed any sorrow for the loss of Eric Garner? How about Amadou Diallo? Or Akai Gurley? Please read this before responding: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/179-nypd-invol...
And drop the fake hyperbole.
You realize that Eric was selling cigarettes (no id) to high school kids for months right? You realize that most people with families (majority) in that neighborhood, do not support him... right?
Yes he died. Everything went well during his previous arrests. When he decided to resist he knew what he was getting into. He simply did not want to deal with the third record of the same kind / fines.
If you want to claim that multiple officers that detained him over last few years were all targeting him and making up stories, just so they can force him to resist arrest, feel free.
In general, I don't understand why people who obviously never lived in a such community are so eager to give their 2 cents. If this guy was selling drugs to your 13 year old kid, you would be the first one to call NYPD. Would love too see your reaction if NYPD simply ignored this dude and your child got hooked on smoking.
In regards to line of duty, yes it's a big deal when you have two officers get executed in the middle of the day while sitting in their cruiser. Not sure how ignorant you have to be.
Totally, absolutely, irrelevant. I don't need to live in your neighborhood to have an opinion. And just by geographical proximity your opinion doesn't get any magical powers.
> You realize that Eric was selling cigarettes (no id) to high school kids for months right? ... (blah blah blah)
It was not an arrestable offence. Selling "loosies" gets your a $100 fine, not an arrest. Read the laws.
> If you want to claim that multiple officers that detained him over last few years were all targeting him and making up stories, just so they can force him to resist arrest, feel free.
Strawman. You keep making up things in your head and then arguing against them.
The crime was of selling loose cigs, not selling to children. It was a tax issue, plain and simple. This "selling to children" claim was tacked on later (oh please, won't anybody THINK of the children!!1!!11!).
And BTW: I've lived in worse communities. Try the City of Buffalo, for instance.
Nobody in the neighborhood needs your opinion. If you are going to comment on the community you were never a part of or a certain class you never been a part off, then be humble when you get corrected.
> It was not an arrestable offence. Selling "loosies" gets your a $100 fine, not an arrest. Read the laws.
Get off Wikipedia and stop pretending to know stuff, there is a clear pattern where you attempt to know everything.
The fine has not been anywhere close to $100 in NYC for selling cigarettes for years now. This fine you are speaking about is also imposed on stores. Not people who are classified as drug dealers.
Right now you get fined $1000 for failing to display warning label within your store. Selling to minors? You are looking for thousands of dollars of fines. Those fines go up 3/4x if you keep it up.
This would have been arrest #3 for Eric. Which would likely would have resulted in heavy fines / jail time.
> The crime was of selling loose cigs, not selling to children. It was a tax issue, plain and simple.
What tax issue? He is selling loosies at profit. Taxes are already paid and the kids can't get those in bodegas anyways. If anything he was helping with your so called 'tax' issues.
Majority of buyers are kids. Grown men won't pay 50% mark-up on something they can get in the store.
Neither of your counter points hold any water, stick to bullshitting your friends. They don't know any better.
>Quit picking on poor people that smoke.
Are you referring to cigarette taxes or the law banning the selling individual cigarettes?
If the former, as a non-smoker, I do not wish to continue covering the cost of health care for those that choose to smoke.
Unless they were purchased in a jurisdiction without that tax.
I think funding your government through tickets and summonses is hostile to quality of life. And detainment or imprisonment for minor offenses is imho a human rights violation.
So great.