So is this a return to pre 9/11 or pre 1990s standards ("Broken Windows Theory")?
It's a direct response to De Blasio's asking police to implement Broken Windows policies. They are sending him the message they aren't taking his orders anymore.
Life in New York City, Where Arrests Are Down and Tickets Are Rarities
41–50 of 192 posts
Re: Life in New York City, Where Arrests Are Down and Tickets Are Rarities
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
New Orleans has had quite a history of corruption in its police force. Are you sure?
I am pretty sure that nobody who says "we desperately need more cops" means "we desperately need more corrupt cops".
I take your point but in fairness OP is definitely correct regarding a corrupt Nola police force. Definitely not a simple issue.
Re: Life in New York City, Where Arrests Are Down and Tickets Are Rarities
#43I think this most recent trend in the police department has a huge potential to backfire. Perhaps this will highlight the fact that in the US, our lives have become over-criminalized and over-monitored by an increasingly growing police force and that we simply don't need so many officers and laws. This would be a good thing in America. However, I hate the fact that this change was brought about by the deaths of peopl…
It's all relative I guess. Here in the Nola we desperately, DESPERATELY need more cops.
Why is nervousvarun's post downvoted? Is Hacker News also a cesspool of over-sensitive, ultra politically correct liberals?
Re: Life in New York City, Where Arrests Are Down and Tickets Are Rarities
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Less taxation. Police officers are effectively just tax collectors.
I'm not sure that NYC residents who have been subjected to profiling and stop-and-frisk harassment would agree with that characterization.
Who says tax collectors can't be racist and/or overly aggressive?
Re: Life in New York City, Where Arrests Are Down and Tickets Are Rarities
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
New Orleans has had quite a history of corruption in its police force. Are you sure?
I am pretty sure that nobody who says "we desperately need more cops" means "we desperately need more corrupt cops".
If you don't deal with the problems that lead to the existing cops being corrupt before trying to add new cops, that's what you get. So if you say "we desperately need more cops" without including "we first desperately need to deal with police corruption", when your present police department is noted for corruption, you are implicitly saying you need more corrupt cops.
Or, at least, that you need more cops even if they are as corrupt as the existing ones.
Re: Life in New York City, Where Arrests Are Down and Tickets Are Rarities
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
The effectiveness of cost-cutting in the NYPD would be multiplied if they started with the shiny toys first. Cut the number of SWAT teams, sell off the armored division's tanks, to Ukraine perhaps, and cut the spies and surveillance gear first, and you'll be able to keep a lot more of the useful police who might then be able to focus on boosting their solution rates for crimes people care about.
> sell off the armored division's tanks, to Ukraine perhaps People like to throw this line around... but I've yet to see an actual tank in the hands of a police department anywhere in the US. What I have seen are a lot of Armored Personnel Carriers (APC), which have no weaponry and are basically just heavily armored trucks designed specifically to protect the personnel inside (from riot, projectiles, bullets, explosi…
Part of what was said was that the police (in Ferguson) seemed ill trained to use this fancy gear. With little oversight on how and when it is used. Allegedly.
http://mashable.com/2014/08/14/war-veterans-ferguson-police/
Personally, I think the problem is when there us no cost benefit analysis. What's the cost in terms of maintenence as well as public perception and trust.
Re: Life in New York City, Where Arrests Are Down and Tickets Are Rarities
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the fear of punishment the only thing that keeps people from doing criminal acts? 1. People speed and park wrongly despite both of these being illegal 2. A huge majority of people aren't assholes all the time, despite this not being illegal 3. Murders do get committed though it's illegal 4. Most stuff isn't stolen even though it is very difficult to catch someone breaking into houses There's a book called Three Fe…
I have not read that book, but the answer here sort of blows it up: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22530/does-the-a... (That too many things are crimes is probably something I agree with; that accounting companies must only destroy documents according to retention policies and not after they find out one of their clients is a giant fraud is not something that worries me)
This is literally a real problem that Ohio has just taken steps to reform.
Re: Life in New York City, Where Arrests Are Down and Tickets Are Rarities
#48So is this a return to pre 9/11 or pre 1990s standards ("Broken Windows Theory")?
It's a direct response to De Blasio's asking police to implement Broken Windows policies. They are sending him the message they aren't taking his orders anymore.
Which, to me, is the scary part of this whole thing. Before, it was only implied that the police weren't accountable to anybody -- now they're literally turning their back on the head of the municipal government.
Re: Life in New York City, Where Arrests Are Down and Tickets Are Rarities
#49New York public employees cannot strike, so this is the labor action available to them. The union should think carefully though. If life just goes on without the nanny-state tickets and other revenue generators, the thought process may change. Maybe more fare jumping and double-parking would be ok, and we can live with that -- but with 10,000 fewer policemen. 10,000 * $100,000 = less need for ticket revenue.
The effectiveness of cost-cutting in the NYPD would be multiplied if they started with the shiny toys first. Cut the number of SWAT teams, sell off the armored division's tanks, to Ukraine perhaps, and cut the spies and surveillance gear first, and you'll be able to keep a lot more of the useful police who might then be able to focus on boosting their solution rates for crimes people care about.
Sure the NYPD has lots of gear and toys - but all of that is a rounding error in the face of pension and medical obligations.
Re: Life in New York City, Where Arrests Are Down and Tickets Are Rarities
#50I work in Manhattan and visit fairly shitty areas of Brooklyn and Queens regularly. These past few weeks have been the first time since I moved here that I've felt safe in the presence of cops. I'd read about enforcement being down just after the funeral for the officers shot in the Bronx but it really didn't click until a pair of them walked down the street by me in Chelsea. They didn't look at my SO like they were…
I'm suspecting that it will eventually prove that those that don't remember history are doomed to repeat it.
NYC in the '70s and '80s was not that safe. Street crime, muggings, etc. were common. In the 1990s Giuliani stepped up patrols and sarted enforcing what most people thought were petty crimes, such as loitering, graffiti, parking violations, subway-gate-jumping, etc. with the effect that more serious crimes also decreased, and within several years NYC became one of the safest big cities.