The embedded video relates to the class reading “Broken Windows” by Wilson and Kelling. A news anchor woman interviews the Corpus Christi Police Chief about a Graffiti Summit taking place in his town that night. The PC says that graffiti has been happening in bigger, higher profiler areas, churches, etc. He said past graffiti summits in their town have attracted elected officials, citizens, and other law enforcement agencies looking to collaborate with and help the CCPD prevent graffiti. The PC mentions that state representatives proposed new laws to combat graffiti, and that judges have issued harsher penalties for graffiti. The news anchor even comments that the community’s involvement is necessary for this undertaking to be successful. All of this reflects the article’s emphasis on collaboration being important to police maintaining order in a community:
“These rules were defined and enforced in collaboration with the “regulars” on the street…If someone violated them the regulars not only turned to [the police officer] for help but also ridiculed the violator” (Wilson & Kelling, 2).
When the PC said
“we’re not there yet, but we’re definitely taking a bite out of graffiti”
this reminded me of an officer’s description of running out gang members from neighborhoods in the article:
“We kick ass” (Wilson & Kelling, 8).
By pursuing these quality of life issues, not violent crimes, the police do really feel like they are accomplishing something and not wasting their resources.
When the news anchor comments that
“Graffiti leads to other crime.”
the PC says she is right. He says that it not only leads to other crimes such as petty theft, but that it’s an important quality of life issue. This harkens back to the “Safe and Clean Neighborhoods Program” that was done in Newark in the 1970’s, which was
“designed to improve the quality of community life…” (Wilson & Kelling, 1).
The news anchor brings up criminology’s Broken Windows Theory. According to her, the theory says that when a community isn’t taken care of, then people stop caring about the community and commit more crime. The class article says this about the theory:
“Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken… one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing” (Wilson & Kelling, 2-3).
The PC affirms the anchor’s statement, and says the Broken Windows Theory was used to deter crime in NYC. The way he says this suggests to me that, because NYC used this measure, that it is a good idea to use it as a model for other police departments.
– Kelly Reznick
I think we’ve seen what happens when the focus is shifted from the actual deterrence of crime, to running a numbers game. New York City can’t be a good place to determine whether Broken Windows is a successful policing theory or not, since there has been such a blatant contamination of the kept statistics. I feel like most of the numbers cannot be taken too seriously, since one bad number makes the whole statistic a nightmare.
What the pure Broken Windows Theory is never has a chance, particularly if important tenets are not heeded to, such as a close relationship between the police and neighborhood community. You say the anchor mentions that in order for anything to be successful, the community as a whole needs to take part of it. Why would the community want to be part of anything if it can’t even trust or relate to the people that are supposed to be protecting them?
I think the police should consider going back to the way it used to police crime, before CompStat. What good are lower rates of crime and delinquency if they’re fantasy?
Another danger about the use of the Broken Windows Theory as a policing policy, is that its distorted story of success may be seen by other towns or cities who could be considering similar policies within their area. If we continue to tell ourselves that broken theory does work as a policing policy, and continue to implement it despite its shortcomings, pretty soon we wont have a police force left.