Turnstile to More Crime
Can New York City close its eyes to nearly all low-level offenses and still keep serious crime down? It’s about to find out.
On Friday, Manhattan DA Cy Vance announced plans to “end criminal prosecution” of some 20,000 “low-level, non-violent misdemeanors” a year, including most fare-beating offenses — once a symbol of Gotham lawlessness. Acting Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez has similar plans.
This, on top of numerous recent measures to keep cops from enforcing the law and cut criminals a break. All told, it amounts to a rollback of Broken Windows policing — i.e., prosecuting low-level offenses, like turnstile-jumping and public urination, to create a sense of order and deter more serious crimes.
Introduced by Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Broken Windows gets much of the credit for the dramatic drop in crime over the next two decades. Murders, for example, plunged 85.4 percent, from 2,245 in 1990 to 328 in 2014.
But Mayor de Blasio and the City Council began gutting the policy and handcuffing cops soon after Hizzoner took office. They all but scrapped stop-and-frisks and de- criminalized offenses like public boozing, smoking pot, blasting music, peeing and loitering in parks after closing.
Meanwhile, the NYPD was put under the watch of a newly created inspector general
and a court-tapped monitor. Last spring, Albany raised the age for much criminal prosecution from 16 to 18.
With all this, it’s hard to see crime not veering upward. Even de Blasio is skeptical about letting turnstile-jumpers off easy: “You do it a bunch of times, you’re asking for higher consequences,” he said.
As for those, like Council Member Rory Lancman (D-Queens), who oppose prosecuting fare-beaters because it “disproportionately” affects “people of color” and puts “immigrants at risk,” the mayor was blunt: “There’s no way in hell anyone should be evading the fare,” he said. “That would create chaos.”
The irony is that it was de Blasio himself who fueled the race toward less enforcement and more restraints on police with his attacks on stop-and-frisks, slurs against cops as racist and refusal to help the feds catch illegal-immigrant criminals. New Yorkers may soon pay the price for all that.