> NYC has used analytics since 1993 and it's widely credited as contributing to the incredible drop in crime.
I see the "NYC did X in the 90s and it caused crime to decrease" thing pretty often, but from what I've read, the real reasons for crime reduction in NYC aren't well understood, and when compared with crime reduction on the national level, NYC isn't really all that special; crime was dropping at similar rates throughout the country (and the world, even). So I'm not convinced that a NYC-centric examination of policy is at all representative. Not to mention that NYC itself is not a representative place, so what works in NYC may have no connection to what works elsewhere.
> Certainly we can decrease brutality by sending police into areas with no conflicts but that defeats the whole purpose of policing.
That's not the issue. The issue is that police are being sent to places, and because the computer told them to expect crime, they are primed to find crime, even if it's stuff they wouldn't bother with under normal circumstances. The simple act of saying "this neighborhood is a hot spot" makes it a hot spot, regardless of whether or not it actually is.
Put another way: the computer sends the police to places where there probably are some problems, but much fewer than police are primed to expect, so they end up creating problems in addition to any they solve. They get this "warzone" mentality where they feel like they're going into an "us vs. them" situation, where anyone on the street is assumed to possibly be a criminal. That's a recipe for unnecessary violence.
> We need effective and aggressive law enforcement as much as ever.
Effective, yes. We severely lack this in many places and need to work hard to fix this. Aggressive, no. That's why we're in the position we're in: aggressive assholes on a power trip who just happen to also be racist and think they're above the law.
> ...and show them that bad behavior will be punished severely.
That attitude suggests that you aren't really interested in making society better, just that you want to punish people for doing the wrong thing. But I suppose this shouldn't surprise me; based on incarceration rates and the state of prisons in the US, it doesn't seem like anyone is interested in prevention and rehabilitation, just "sticking it to those bad people".
> That can easily be contrasted to Manhattan that was cleaned up by "broken windows policy".
I believe this is more a just-so story than a fact. While New York did use the broken windows policy, they also grew the police force by 35%[1]. Rather than a special effect of the broken windows policy, it could just be with more police they were able to solve/prevent more crimes.
One interesting thing about policing in the US, is that the US has fewer police than Europe and also more crime. People want to say interesting things about how politics or culture affect crime, but the simple story (where crime is high in the US because it is relatively easy to get away with it because there aren't many police) may be the best one.
> without heavy policing a large city with very high income inequality like NYC would quickly turn into a dystopian shithole
A lack of order is not what I'm 'proposing', but more the factor that 'order' is very obviously skewed towards minorities as shown by various sources you could seek now. One could also discuss how it's based on crime statistics, but that would reach to "systematic oppression" fields: You can't continuously punish random people of a certain race just because statistics say they're 'likely' to commit crime, this is systematic. What you see as a dystopian shithole is already just that for those who can't have their peace without law involvement, and ML tools will not skirt around this, the bias will only transfer and amplify such shit.
> I also believe countermeasures are necessary to prevent Islamic radicalization (and any other kind of radicalization as well).
The department responsible for the spying disbanded and confirmed in 2014 that they hadn't generated a terrorism related case since 2008, as stated in the previous NYT article. You'd frankly figure that after 9/11, American Muslims — Let alone those in New York, would be actively against any kind of 'radicalization' unless you consider simply practicing religion as 'radicalization', which NYPD practically did here.
> Don't try nothing - won't be nothing
I mentally envy the ability to state such a thing, to be honest.
> What you're missing though is that without heavy policing a large city with very high income inequality like NYC would quickly turn into a dystopian shithole.
This is the same place that has E-ZPass trackers and automated license plate readers all over the city tracking vehicle movement, that has an untold number of CCTV cameras, and corrupt cops that get away with murder.
I'm not saying we shouldn't commend them for this, just that there are many other major related issues that should be equally concerning.
If you're trying to convince a majority to change its views, labelling them as "extreme" is unhelpful.
Many New Yorkers are within living memory of the Cold War-era crime peaks that almost destroyed our city. 9/11 and the Boston Bombing normalized a more-militarized police, as well as the NYPD building up an intelligence agency that rivals some countries'.
Looting isn't terrorism. And we have had zero mass violence from protesters. But there are good reasons for an island as dense as Manhattan to be hyper-sensitive to incipient lawlessness. (There are also bad ones.)
> it somehow managed to effect places outside of New York across the country that didn’t adopt similar policies.
I definitely remember "tough on crime" being nationally popular (not just in NYC) in both parties through the '90s. Even if it wasn't called "broken windows policing".
Obviously some of the Bratton/Giuliani policies were specifically tailored to NYC and not really applicable elsewhere (no need to crack down on subway fare evasion in Houston for example) but the general sentiment of "the police should aggressively enforce all laws and lock all criminals up" was extremely popular.
This is not to say that any of this was right, or good, or just, or why crime fell or whatever. But it was definitely popular in the '90s outside of NYC.
> NYC elected a cop as mayor, and his only idea for solving the city's problems is more policing
I don't notice much difference with him compared to de Blasio, except de Blasio was universally not liked. Adams is better but surprisingly by not much.
> It hasn't worked in the past
Considering the 70s were a complete mess & a generation afterwards it didn't feel like that, whatever happened in-between seems to have improved things. And that improvement definitely did come from police to some degree.
Crime was at a historic low until recently with the advent of "defund."
Crime has decreased everywhere since then (not just NYC) while the US prison population has increased 500% over the past 40 years.
> Certainly we can decrease brutality by sending police into areas with no conflicts but that defeats the whole purpose of policing.
Thanks for pointing out very clearly what you believe to be the purpose of policing. For a lot of cops as well, brutality is the goal. What we're seeing right now is Americans re-aligning those priorities.
>"NYC is generally safer than the rest of America."
What does that even mean - "generally" safer? Saying "generally" and "the rest of America" are nebulous to the point of being completely meaningless. If I were to compare hunting accidents, wild fires and car accidents in NYC compared to the "rest of the America" then yeah sure. Have a look at these NYPD crime stats from May and tell me that it's safer than the entire "rest of America."
> In fact, the vast majority of police are assigned to tasks like traffic enforcement
NYPD is not known exactly known for a particularly large amount of traffic enforcement, to the point that I think you'd find most residents wish they did more of it.
>> New York city has been home to organized crime in the form of the mafia and gangs, boasted a huge murder rate in the middle of the 20th century, and is the frequent target of terror threats (literally the stated target of terror groups in their own words).
The FBI was responsible for taking care of the last generation of organized crime in NY, not the NYPD, precisely because of internal corruption issues.
You're going to need to elaborate beyond "let's say". What you wrote is basically just a conspiracy theory. In fact crime statistics reporting is an extremely mature field with well-understood methods and comparable data, and nothing one particular administration can do it really going to impact things very much. Basically, if this was such a great trick for Adams to have invented, why didn't it occur to Bloomberg or Giuliani or Koch?
In fact NYC is a very safe city. That it's inconvenient for you to believe that doesn't change the facts.
> Previous “slowdowns” by the NYPD have resulted in a drastic reduction in reported crime in NYC.
I couldn't find where that was mentioned in your linked article, but the Occam's razor takeaway is that the crime is still happening and not being reported because people know nothing will be done.
“crime across the five boroughs is nowhere near the levels seen in the 1990s, and while there was a rise in 2022, those figures are already trending down this year.”
> and presumably NYC can't pursue as many people now that they've cut down the size and efficacy of the police force
Source? NY has the highest number of police per capita in the US. And from their own stats [0] they're only expecting a tiny increase in uniform officers in 2022 vs 2021 (+23) after a slightly larger dip from 2020 to 2021 (-551, out of 36,461).
The only ones who have cut the "efficacy" of the police force is the police force themselves with their bullshit "go slow"/"work stops"/"slowdown". Not to mention this isn't even an issue the police should be handling. Your comment makes no sense.
Had you read the article you would have seen:
> Police often turn a blind eye, amid allegations that they illegally park their personal cars and harassed a cyclist who reported them.
So the police are already busy not doing their jobs (surprise!)
> But a significant amount of illegal parking by wealthy operators is officially sanctioned – and even subsidized. Under a controversial New York City policy called the stipulated fine program, corporations among the city’s biggest parking offenders may prepay their tickets for a hefty discount, if they agree not to contest the fines.
And they are not only fine with it but they give discounts to the corporations. It's just the the cost of doing business.
Honestly this is a pretty bad article focusing entirely too much on silly weed trucks while hiding the more obscene practices (not ticketing and giving discounts) deeper in the article. Even going as far as to call out the fact the weed trucks aren't even selling gummies, which has what to do with parking fines?
> issues with police that wildly escalate a situation, in ways that result in things like "burn-half-the-city-down riots".
That is one way of putting it. Another and in my opinion more correct way is to conclude that some groups of people are looking for reasons to burn half the city down and find it in "police brutality" or "racism". When the police is just as brutal towards different groups of people the cities do not burn down.
You can have a look at the areas which gave heed to the calls to "defund the police" to find out whether that has led to a decrease or increase of crime. If the police were the cause of these problems you'd expect fewer problems when there are fewer police encounters. In actuality the result is the opposite and what most people who do not hold with the narrative expected: less police leads to more crimes committed.
No, reducing police presence in these dystopian areas is not the solution. A better trained police force with better tactics might be. Giuliani managed to turn New York around so it can be done if there is the will and the opportunity to act upon that will.
Giving up and giving in will lead to streets empty of stores instead of streets with empty stores which will promptly be followed by claims of "discrimination" and "structural racism" because there are no shops in those areas without a single person asking why those shops left. Giving up and giving in is not an option.
> In a 2001 story, the New York Times reported that there were 23,068 reported pickpocketing incidents in the city in 1990, amounting to nearly $10 million in losses. Five years later, the number of reported incidents had fallen by half, and by the turn of the millennium, there were less than 5,000. Today, the NYPD doesn't even maintain individual numbers on pickpocketing.
NYPD crime statistics become more and more bogus every year. Just Google "NYPD statistics" and read the articles which pop up on the front page. Every mayor and police chief wants to point to statistics showing that crime is falling, and promotions and such are all related to statistics looking good, so naturally enough, the statistics are being fudged all over the place.
There may be more or less pickpockets now than in decades past, but NYPD statistics are nothing to go by.
I see the "NYC did X in the 90s and it caused crime to decrease" thing pretty often, but from what I've read, the real reasons for crime reduction in NYC aren't well understood, and when compared with crime reduction on the national level, NYC isn't really all that special; crime was dropping at similar rates throughout the country (and the world, even). So I'm not convinced that a NYC-centric examination of policy is at all representative. Not to mention that NYC itself is not a representative place, so what works in NYC may have no connection to what works elsewhere.
> Certainly we can decrease brutality by sending police into areas with no conflicts but that defeats the whole purpose of policing.
That's not the issue. The issue is that police are being sent to places, and because the computer told them to expect crime, they are primed to find crime, even if it's stuff they wouldn't bother with under normal circumstances. The simple act of saying "this neighborhood is a hot spot" makes it a hot spot, regardless of whether or not it actually is.
Put another way: the computer sends the police to places where there probably are some problems, but much fewer than police are primed to expect, so they end up creating problems in addition to any they solve. They get this "warzone" mentality where they feel like they're going into an "us vs. them" situation, where anyone on the street is assumed to possibly be a criminal. That's a recipe for unnecessary violence.
> We need effective and aggressive law enforcement as much as ever.
Effective, yes. We severely lack this in many places and need to work hard to fix this. Aggressive, no. That's why we're in the position we're in: aggressive assholes on a power trip who just happen to also be racist and think they're above the law.
> ...and show them that bad behavior will be punished severely.
That attitude suggests that you aren't really interested in making society better, just that you want to punish people for doing the wrong thing. But I suppose this shouldn't surprise me; based on incarceration rates and the state of prisons in the US, it doesn't seem like anyone is interested in prevention and rehabilitation, just "sticking it to those bad people".
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