Over the last quarter of a century, the United States has seen
historic drops in crime—most famously in New York. These gains, once
thought impossible, were achieved largely through dramatic innovations
in policing, especially the adoption of an approach that stressed order
maintenance in communities, data- and intelligence-gathering, and a
problem-solving approach to crime and disorder.
In recent years, however, antipolice sentiment has risen in the U.S.,
sparked in part by a series of tragic, high-profile police-involved
killings in major cities but also by the work of critics, mostly on the
left but also on the libertarian right, who argue that targeted policing
aimed at public disorder is coercive, hostile to community life, and
often racist. These critics see such policing as the antithesis to what
they
call community policing. The arguments that have gained popular
currency among police critics have essentially blinded them from seeing
that the sort of aggressive policing that they object to can actually be
an element of a community-policing model.
The increasingly widespread view that community policing and
order-maintenance efforts are at odds represents a fundamental
misunderstanding. In reality, the proactive policing that New York first
undertook in its subway system under then–transit police chief William
J. Bratton in the early 1990s—informed in significant part by Broken
Windows theory—was a core element of community policing. Indeed, the
very behaviors that residents wanted more heavily policed called for
exactly the sort of approach that many modern community-policing
advocates now decry.
For decades prior, the prevailing model saw the role of police as
responding to serious crime, and it relied on traditional measures of
enforcement actions such as arrests and response time to gauge whether
they were accomplishing their mission. Call it the law-enforcement
model. Policing and criminal-justice policy were, as I wrote in
City Journal
back in 1992, driven by “the official crime problem as defined in
crime, response, and arrest statistics.” But a shift was already under
way; soon, police forces would begin to focus their attention on what
community members perceived to be the most serious problems that their
neighborhoods faced.
Origins of the paradigm began to emerge around the country during the
1980s, when some of its basic ideas began to be implemented in programs
such as team policing, increased foot patrol, and improved community
relations. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that there was, in the Big
Apple, a full-scale reorientation of policing around the community; and
that development constituted a once-in-a-generation paradigm shift,
setting an example that would be followed by urban police departments
across the country. Integral to this move was Bratton, at the time a
young police chief from Boston. He would serve first as chief of the
transit police in New York City, from 1990 to 1993, and then as NYPD
commissioner from 1994 to 1996. He returned for a second stint as New
York’s police chief, under Mayor Bill de Blasio, in 2014, serving until
2016. I worked with him as a consultant during both periods.
Community policing is often portrayed as being soft on crime. A
Google search of the phrase turns up images of smiling police officers
allowing children to sit on top of motorcycles, posing for pictures,
playing touch football, and making presentations to schoolchildren. This
risks making community policing seem like a publicity stunt, an
insincere attempt by cops to foster a gentler image—what some
law-and-order critics mock as “hug-a-thug” enforcement. Community
policing, rightly understood, can be, and often is, aggressive and even
intrusive, depending on the community’s concerns.
It’s important to understand the context in which the new policing
model emerged; today’s police critics fail to appreciate that context.
In essence, they can’t help but see the efforts of New York City cops in
the 1990s through 2019 eyes. Compared with today, the New York of the
1990s was a very different world—and residents’ worries were different,
too. The decay of public spaces was at the forefront of many New
Yorkers’ minds. People wanted to use public parks, ride public
transportation, and walk in their neighborhoods without fear of being
victimized by an aggressive beggar, mentally disturbed street person, or
young gangbanger.
Crime was then a daily fear for New Yorkers. In 1990, New York saw
2,262 murders, along with more than 100,000 robberies; in 2017, by sharp
contrast, there were 292 murders and 14,000 robberies in the city. Yet,
scary as crime was, community fear has always been more closely
correlated with public disorder. And by the early 1990s, as
City Journal readers
know well, New York City was two decades into a meteoric rise in
visible disorder. Subway trains were covered in graffiti. Times Square
was overrun by prostitutes, pimps, and drug dealers. A drive through the
Bronx would reveal whole blocks on which only one structure—if
any—remained standing. A trip to the corner store would often require
cutting through a group of youngsters dealing drugs, drinking, playing
loud music, or catcalling young women.
As this kind of disorder worsened, law-abiding residents began to
feel increasingly vulnerable to more serious street crime. The disorder
made people feel that no one was in charge, and if no one was in charge,
anything could happen. More and more New Yorkers began to avoid many
public spaces. And the absence of law-abiding citizens from public
spaces allowed those spaces, and the surrounding neighborhoods, to fall
further into disorder. Eventually, this breakdown encouraged more
serious criminal behavior. My colleague James Q. Wilson and I explained
the phenomenon in a 1982 article for
The Atlantic. I saw my
role as a consultant working with Bratton in the 1990s as helping police
to incorporate this reality into how they approached their jobs.
The only way to give law-abiding citizens the confidence to begin
taking back public spaces from those ruining them—with litter, noise
pollution, overaggressive panhandling, drug dealing, boorish behavior
such as public urination, and more serious criminal acts—was to respond
to their concerns. Police needed to make clear that the problems that
the
community identified as priorities would be addressed. This
focus on the community was an all-important first step in turning New
York City around.
Though there is a popular conception today of what “community
policing” means, it was actually a concrete idea that my colleague Mark
Moore and I described in great detail in a 1988 paper published as part
of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Executive Session on Policing. In short,
the various forms of policing are best understood as integrated
organizational strategies with seven essential elements: the
function of police in society; how police departments are
organized; how police
manage demand for their services; how police interact with the
external environment; how police
measure success; the sources from which police obtain their
legitimacy and authority; and the
tactics
that police adopt to perform their function. Community policing,
properly understood, reflects a department’s reorientation around public
concerns with respect to each of those elements. Though some police
department officials had been paying lip service to community policing
for nearly a decade, it had never truly and fully been done until
Bratton and his colleagues ushered in a new approach with respect to
each of these elements. This process involved considerable trial and
error.
The new approach broadened the main
function of earlier
policing—law enforcement and response to crimes after they are
committed—to include crime prevention, order maintenance, and fear
reduction. Instead of just reacting, policing in 1990s New York started
to pursue crime prevention, partly by recognizing the relationship
between disorder and crime. As Bratton often acknowledged, the idea that
cops could and should prevent crime and disorder could be traced back
to the father of British policing, Sir Robert Peel, whose nine
principles of policing, promulgated in 1829, opened with that preventive
role. When Bratton arrived in New York, police were still being told
that they couldn’t do anything to deter crime. But experience told him
that wasn’t true: “I could do something about crime,” he said. “I could
do something about disorder; and it was key to do both.”
Enlisting the public in this battle was a key aspect of Bratton’s
plan to turn New York City’s crime crisis around. As he saw it, police
had to work with everyone with skin in the game. The broader and deeper
the partnerships the police forge with community members, the stronger
the resulting trust, which will be crucial in times of stress, such as
when police make inevitable mistakes. As chief of the transit police,
Bratton ensured that the department assumed responsibility for reducing
the then-endemic crime and disorder in the subways and that it made its
efforts as visible as possible, in order to make riders feel more
secure. One example: transit cops began regularly to board trains and
address any issues they came across—such as a homeless person sleeping
on a row of seats—and announcements of an inspection would be made on
the train’s public-address systems, so that riders knew that it was
happening. Another example: the department launched new
anti-fare-evasion efforts, which included the use of “bust
buses”—hollowed-out transit-authority buses deployed as mobile
arrest-processing centers. This signaled to the public that the transit
police were doing something about fare-beaters, and it also cut down on
the overtime logged by arresting officers, who no longer needed to go
all the way downtown to do their bookings.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority did its part to promote the
change, via clever subway ads. Bratton remembers “a wonderful cover
photograph done in black, white, and blue fogged images, which was used
on posters that were put up in the subway to advertise Transit Police
efforts, to say ‘we’re here, we’re working.’ ”
Responding to the subway disorder had early and unexpected benefits.
Transit police found that one out of every seven fare-evaders was wanted
on a warrant, while one out of 21 was carrying a weapon. Cops called it
the “Cracker Jack box” effect. Kids would buy a box of the
caramel-covered popcorn snack for the toy inside as much as for the
popcorn itself; when it came to enforcing laws against fare evasion, the
“toy”—the thing that made the effort even more worthwhile, for both the
cops and the public—was the weapon or wanted criminal taken off the
street. By making what turned out to be important arrests through the
enforcement of what was (and is still today) regarded as a minor
offense, transit cops began seeing their role as preventing more serious
crime through order maintenance; previously, the sense among the rank
and file was that they were there primarily to protect the city’s
revenue stream.
Reorienting police also required fundamental changes to how they were managed and
organized.
Prior to the early 1990s, police departments were highly centralized,
both geographically and structurally. Now, geographic decentralization
and discretion for lower-level management and beat cops were promoted.
Limiting discretion had its uses—it lessened opportunities for officers
to engage in corruption, for instance. But beat cops and lower-level
supervisors were closer to the neighborhoods that they policed and had
greater insight into their problems than did their departments’
executive officers. Empowering them made the police more responsive to
the public—and more effective at fighting crime.
Decentralization encouraged less reliance on 911 and more direct contact with precinct officers, allowing police to
manage demand
for their services more directly. One of the most effective ways of
creating such interaction is through police/community meetings, where
citizens can air their concerns. But foot patrols are perhaps even more
important. Foot patrols place officers within arm’s reach of the
community, looping them into disputes and allowing them to field
requests for service on the spot, with no middleman. In addition to
making cops more accessible, foot patrols help restore the sense of
security that citizens need in order to do their part to enforce
community norms, knowing that backup is not far away.
“While working with the community as a partner, police sometimes have to take unpopular, tough stances.”
Community policing, as we understood it, called for an unprecedented level of interaction between police and the
external environment—which
included the public as well as the private sector. When it came to
giving the community a voice in identifying and dealing with problems in
the subway, the MTA used focus groups to learn what subway riders
thought about the system. The results enabled transit police to
understand public frustrations. Abundant research on community concerns
taught Bratton that disorder, unlike major crime, was something people
experienced every day, viscerally and personally. If robberies declined,
people might not feel the effect immediately; but if fare-evaders and
aggressive beggars disappeared and subway stations were cleaner and
brighter, people using the subway would feel safer. Not only did focus
groups give police a better idea of the public’s priorities; they also
proved useful in getting a sense of whether their efforts were
alleviating the public’s fears about crime and disorder. Using these
sorts of data to
measure success is another example of how policing in 1990s New York bucked the old standard.
The NYPD also worked with the private and nonprofit sectors on
initiatives to restore public order. For example, the department
partnered with local business-improvement districts to identify areas of
New York that needed cleaning, better lighting, and other services.
While working with the community as a partner, police sometimes have
to take unpopular, tough stances. It’s true that disorder drives public
fear—and that members of minority groups themselves wanted relief from
it—but addressing it meaningfully was not easy, given racial tensions in
New York City during the late 1980s and 1990s. Because crime in New
York wasn’t spread equally throughout the city’s five boroughs, the
disproportionate impact of enforcement efforts put significant strain on
the department’s relationship with some members of New York’s black and
Latino communities. Much of the crime—and, by extension, the law
enforcement—was concentrated in these areas. Yet the city’s
extraordinary crime problem demanded a strong police response. “It had
to be done,” Bratton says. “The police had to be more assertive.” (The
assertiveness of Broken Windows misdemeanor enforcement, however, does
not equate with “zero tolerance” policies and high-arrest strategies, as
is sometimes alleged; done correctly, order-maintenance policing does
not rely on such practices.) The resolve paid off: in the years
following, major (and minor) crime declined enough to save countless
lives, reduce public fear, and make the city’s meanest streets walkable
again—and the greatest drops citywide occurred in heavily minority
neighborhoods.
In a city with, as Bratton puts it, “something like 275 recognized
neighborhoods, all with different priorities and problems that changed
from time to time,” the NYPD also had to be adaptive. No two expressions
of community policing will be identical across locations and
communities—whether in New York or any other city. Changes in the
characteristics of one element of the strategy require complementary
adjustments in others: for example, the development and use of more
aggressive tactics to deal with particular crime problems requires that
police involve citizens even more closely to maintain their consent and
support, because part of the paradigm shift involved a recognition that
the police derive their
legitimacy and authority from the
public they serve. Likewise, a move toward decentralization requires
administrative refinements: those gaining new authority on the ground
will need additional training and accountability measures to handle
their expected use of discretion in problem-solving, while managers will
have to develop new skills for supervising their officers’
wider-ranging activities. For community policing to work, ongoing and
continual adjustment of its various elements is required; it is not set
in stone.
Police forces have many tactical options at their disposal. For the NYPD, perhaps one of the most important
tactics
was the use of data to inform police in deploying their resources,
allowing them to develop solutions to specific problems. Bratton saw
CompStat—the computer-based system allowing police to record and analyze
crime patterns and enforcement activity—as the ultimate blend of data
and accountability. Making crime data available in nearly real time
helped the police track their progress and measure success. Giving power
away also required ensuring that it was being used appropriately. Using
data to track crime and enforcement activity made it possible to hold
precinct commanders accountable by showing clearly whether their
approaches to crime in their jurisdictions were effective. CompStat
enabled the police to prioritize high-crime areas and target the types
of offenses that community members were most concerned about.
One reason such initiatives were so effective in reducing crime was
that they reflected an understanding of the critical link between crime
and disorder. That connection was stronger than most thought, as my
colleague William Souza and I documented in a 2001 report for the
Manhattan Institute. It found that, on average, every misdemeanor arrest
in a given precinct was associated with 0.036 fewer violent crimes.
Order maintenance serves effectively as a tactic for overall crime
reduction, partly because of the overlap between violent and nonviolent
offenders.
Unfortunately, some New Yorkers seem to be noticing a regression
toward the sorts of public disorder that characterized the city decades
ago. That perception has followed an official push on the part of some
city leaders to roll back police authority to deal with such
public-order offenses as fare evasion and public urination. The push
reflects a misunderstanding of what true community policing is. New
Yorkers who don’t wish to see the city’s gains eroded only need look to
the transformation that its police were responsible for bringing about
in the early 1990s—one that set an example for cities and police around
the country. The lessons learned then remain applicable today; but
applying them properly will require recognition that the law-enforcement
model should give way to real community policing.
George L. Kelling, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and longtime contributor to City Journal
, is one of the nation’s leading thinkers on the topic of urban policing.
https://www.city-journal.org/community-policing
