If one phrase should be planted firmly in the minds of every police executive in the country, it’s this: public order matters. In the 1990s, the New York City Police Department incorporated this insight into how it patrolled the nation’s biggest city. Its policing of disorder was arguably the central factor on which the success of the department’s campaign turned. The NYPD’s recent announcement that it will launch a new quality-of-life division demonstrates a meaningful recommitment to this priority. It should be viewed as a positive development for two reasons.
The first has to do with the central insight of Broken Windows theory, as formulated by the late Manhattan Institute scholar George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson. Kelling and Wilson showed that untended property “becomes fair game for people out for fun or plunder.” Similarly, they suggested that “untended behavior” leads some to “think that crime, especially violent crime, is on the rise.” While allowing disorder tells people that no one is in charge of a given public space, policing the disorder sends the opposite signal. New Yorkers are desperate to see their government communicate this message. By reclaiming the public spaces—subway benches commandeered by sleeping vagrants, street corners and plazas overrun by drug addicts and pushers—the NYPD can help alleviate the anxieties so many New Yorkers feel when they walk the streets and ride public transit.
Disorder policing will provide more concrete benefits than a mere vibe shift. Sweating the “small stuff” will pay real public-safety dividends, as past evidence suggests. Those who engage in disorderly conduct often overlap with those who commit more serious crimes, because disorderliness is a marker of the antisocial disposition that characterizes more serious offenders. Inevitably, a substantial share of those engaged in petty offenses will turn out to be wanted for far more serious crimes. For proof of this, one need only follow the NYPD Transit Bureau’s X feed, which regularly posts about fare-evasion encounters leading to the arrests of wanted felons or people in possession of illegal firearms.
The second reason New Yorkers should welcome the NYPD’s new quality-of-life division is that it shows the city is listening to the concerns New Yorkers have been voicing for years. The announcement reflects an understanding that disorder control is a core function of police; that the police department should be organized to serve that function; and that officers’ interactions and tactics should be geared to meet public demands. Accommodating public concerns is a key component of true community policing.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the department’s announcement, however, is that it will be launching a Quality-Of-Life CompStat to track the new division’s performance. The addition of publicly available metrics suggests that this effort is a meaningful commitment, not a publicity stunt. It’s a lot easier to get away with failure when you hide the numbers.
If there’s one question about the NYPD’s announcement that should concern New Yorkers, it’s whether, and to what degree, other elements of the city’s criminal-justice system will play along. The department would be well advised to track this variable as well, if only in private.
Perhaps the most frustrating feature of the policing world over the past few years has been watching the desperate attempts to “innovate” and “reimagine” responses to problems we’ve long known how to solve. The NYPD’s recommitment to a public-order approach with a proven track record is gratifying. It will be even more so when New Yorkers can once again enjoy public parks, transit systems, and sidewalks without fear.
Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
