Broken windows works
Perennial foes of broken windows policing have found a new reason to oppose the vital tool: It might lead to deportations in the age of Donald Trump. To which we answer, too bad. As Mayor de Blasio and Police Commissioner Jimmy O’Neill understand, cops dare not abandon what is one of the pillars of a safer New York City because a President committed to overzealous immigration enforcement might overstep his bounds.
The near-miraculous quarter-century crime decline in America’s largest city has been built on three foundations: accountability-based policing, otherwise known as CompStat; vigorous enforcement of strict gun laws; and consistent attention not only to driving down rape, murder and assault, but to dealing with lower-level disorder, from turnstile-jumping to drug use, that threatens the quality of life of residents.
That third foundation is now being cheaply derided as “the fuel for Donald Trump’s deportation machine,” as Queens Councilman Rory Lancman puts it, because when people are arrested, their fingerprints, by law, get sent to the feds.
With an illegal-immigrant offender’s identity and last known address in hand, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents just might come knocking on their door.
That risk is real. But the alternative, of effectively telling cops to close their eyes to lawbreaking in progress because a fraction of their arrests might eventually produce deportations, is unacceptable.
Especially since Lancman and the Council have already converted many low-level crimes — public urination, littering and open-container drinking among them — from arrestable offenses to triggering only civil summonses.
Meantime, misdemeanor arrests have fallen by 25% since 2010, and overall police enforcement actions, including drug enforcement, have dropped even more sharply since 2013.
In short, de Blasio, Bratton and O’Neill have responded repeatedly to concerns about wielding too heavy a hammer — while maintaining the necessary ability to enforce the law.
“We believe in quality of life policing,” de Blasio said at his latest monthly crime briefing, which marked yet another low in the modern era. “We’re not changing a formula that works.”
Thank you, Mr. Mayor.