class10: Policing Techniques and East v. West

End of modern era of policing - start of community era

Crime rates rises

• critiques of police effectiveness get louder

Policing as crime rises: reactive to PROACTIVE

• community oriented policing

• Broken windows policing

• Hot sports policing

• Comp stat (NYC)

Broken windows theory

• unattended behavior → breakdown of community controls → more serious crime

  • Developed by James q. Wilson and killing

Broken windows theory: in 1993, NYC mayor Giuliani and police chief bill bratton made

Broken windows a cornerstone of the city’s policing strategy

• focused first on subways

What happened:

• resulted in mass arrested/jailing for minor crimes

  • Eg jumping fair, weed, vandalism

• Homicide rate goes down (significantly) in NYC

• Giuliani credits broken windows, easily re-elected in 1997

Did broken windows work? Correlation doesn’t equal causation

Crime started dropping b4 Giuliani/bratton implementation of broken windows

Ex. The great American crime decline (UCR)

All over the country

• massive drops in victimization rates

Ex. The great American crime decline (NCVS)

• even bigger drops in victimization rates

Crime dropped everywhere, even other big cities that didn’t implement

broken windows

Systematic social observation of public spaces: a new look at disorder in urban neighborhoods

• looked at crime decreases across 5 neighborhoods

• Controlled for “collective efficacy” and structural antecedents (eg concentrated poverty and residential stability)

Systematic social observation of public spaces: a new look at disorder in urban neighborhoods: findings

• largely misplace at least in terms of directly fighting crime

• High disorder doesn’t equal higher crime rates

• Correlation (ice cream sales doesn’t equal murder rates increase) → casual relationship doesn’t make sense

• We need to apply the same scrutiny for policing and crime reforms

• Reverse to the mean

Police depts responded to the rise in crime (and the ensuring legitimacy crisis) by

moving into more proactive forms of policing, like broken windows in NYC

These expanded the scope and reach of police into everyday life and likely had

Little effect on larger crime rates (callback to RICO in BOB)

• crime went down everywhere

• Structural factors matter more for overall crime rates

River city police

The beat and district redesign is based on our mission, quite frankly. We’ve worked hard to create a mission statement that stays that we’re going to work closely with the community

Our goal is to create neighborhoods that can sustain civic life… and our strategy is community based, problem oriented and data driven - chief Lancaster

Redistricting

As a response to a labor and resource problem in the content of a turn towards a community policing strategy

Policing districts

• unit of the dept/ team like structure and culture

• Matters for how policing resources are allocated across the city

East vs west: east

• interactive - police go to block parties, events

• Police - tolerance, effort to understand people

• Predominantly white

• People in distric -wealth, upper middle class

  • See police as serving them, entitles “if they say their dad is a lawyer, probably is”

• Can be nicer person when your job doesn’t suck so much

• Conditions give different reactions towards how your police

East v west: west

• described as most dangerous

• Officers - high burnout rate, tougher beat, “crabby”

• Community policing different-lower resources in pd, teaching people to protect themselves from crime

• Proactive pol- suspicious, invasive, hostile- less receptive to residents

• Predominantly black

• Victims are treated as suspects

• Demand for policing more present

• Fewer resources; most overburdened

Police are often called on to both

Prevent and fight crimes in this historical moment, that means to take on more with fewer resources

Community policing does not mean the same thing in all communities,

the perceived needs and contributions of the district matter in what gets policed

Geographic locations are to be perceived as

Radicalized in these conversations