The New York City Police Department launched a Twitterstorm Wednesday morning defending its “Broken Windows” community policing strategy. The social media rant came in conjunction with the release of the NYPD’s 46-page rebuttal to a June 22 report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) titled “An Analysis of Quality-of-Life Summonses, Quality-of-Life Misdemeanor Arrests, and Felony Crime in New York City, 2010 to 2015.”
“Broken Windows” policing, which focuses on targeting smaller offenses (a.k.a. “quality-of-life” policing) to mitigate bigger offenses down the line, was heavily criticized by the OIG, which claimed the policy was essentially racist as it unfairly targeted minorities. The NYPD’s epic rebuttal, titled “Broken Windows is Not Broken,” tears into “the unsupported assertions put forth in the OIG report.”
The NYPD describes the OIG report as “the culmination of a months-long analysis of the NYPD’s quality-of-life (QOL) summons and misdemeanor arrests from 2010-2015, and the impact of that enforcement on the reduction of felony crime.” It reportedly concludes that the NYPD’s QOL measures had “little-to-no temporal relationship with the decline in felony crime rates across New York City.”
It also claims to have found that QOL enforcement is “not evenly distributed across the city.” Cue the accusations of racial discrimination.
But the NYPD contests that the OIG selectively quoted its 2015 report titled “Broken Windows and Quality-of-Life Policing in New York City,” which aimed to dispel myths surrounding quality-of-life and Broken Windows policing. According to the NYPD, “the OIG report largely ignores most of its most pertinent information,” like the fact that “both city and state prison populations have fallen from previous highs, by 49 percent and 27 percent, respectively” in the 21 years since QOL policing was first introduced. Further, city leaders announced this week that 2016 was one of New York City’s safest summers ever.
From the press release:
Beyond the NYPD’s own comprehensive review and subsequent rejection of the OIG report, two independent eminent criminologists, Richard Rosenfeld and David Weisburd, have also roundly criticized the report, citing: problems with its research and statistical methodology; the lack of consideration for officer discretion; and the omission of the 16 years prior to 2010 — when misdemeanor arrests strongly correlated to the largest crime decline in New York City history. These criminologists have also determined the analysis contained in the report is not strong enough to support its conclusions.
In the past year especially, local law enforcement have been the target of public and private criticism. Wednesday, the NYPD sent a clear message: If you’re going to attack us, at least get your facts straight.
“Going back as far as 1978, in the streets of the Fenway, I have seen community complaints about quality of life conditions dominate conversations between the community and the police,” Police Commissioner William J. Bratton — set to retire this month — said in a statement:
“The NYPD’s Neighborhood Coordination Officer Program re-affirms what I learned all those years ago, that neighborhood residents expect action on the part of the police regarding lesser crimes and signs of disorder. Enforcement targeting these conditions has become known as ‘quality-of-life’ policing, and it has been frequently disparaged as a vehicle of oppression that creates racially disparate outcomes. That could not be further from the truth. This type of policing is an essential tool of community engagement and trust building, most often in direct response to community concerns. Quality of life policing will remain a key strategy for the NYPD.” (For more from the author of “After Being Accused of Racist Policing, the NYPD Is Blasting This ‘Deeply Flawed’ IG Report” please click HERE)
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