June 25, 2016

NYPD Inspector General says broken windows policing doesn't work

Boing Boing

For years, the NYPD and other police departments have justified the highly racialized practice of stop-and-frisk and zero-tolerance approaches to turnstyle hopping, etc, by citing the "broken windows" theory of policing -- the idea that if the police stop petty crime, major crime will follow.

The NYPD's Office of the Inspector General has just released a statistical analysis of "broken windows" policing and concluded that there's no evidence to support the idea -- meaning that around 100,000-500,000 New Yorkers (overwhelmingly brown people) were stopped and frisked by cops every year, for more than a decade, for no evidence-based reason. 

No comments: