Effects of Foot Patrolling and Broken Windows Theory: Analytical Essay

Over the past few years, New York City’s crime rate has managed to decrease. There have been many factors that have contributed to this crime decrease, but there have also been many controversial issues that have been raised as well. There have been many changes made over the past few years and they have played a large role in shaping society today, some good some bad, but they have all helped to make New York a better place. The goal of the NYPD is to protect the people and make the city a better place and many things have been done to make this goal a reality.

In Moskos “Cop In The Hood” and Wilson and Kelling’s “Broken Windows” They discuss the effects of foot patrolling and the positive effects it has on crimes as well as communities. There have been many changes that have resulted in a decrease in crime and according to Moskos, Wilson and Kelling’s foot patrolling has played a role. In Moskos’s book “Cop In The Hood ”, he contributes a part of his book to discussing the benefits of foot patrolling which he refers to as policing green. In the text, he states ”Foot patrol officers know the neighborhood and see more than officers in cars do. The key to foot patrols success, especially in maintaining order and seeing and stopping potential crimes before they start, is long term presence and building knowledge of the community” (Moskos 2008; 198). Moskos is saying that foot patrolling is a benefit to communities and will help crime decrease because police are able to be there when something happens. In the text, Moskos also states “Currently the nation’s largest foot patrol program is operation impact in New York City” (Moskos 2008; 202). New York has experienced a decrease in crime in the last few years and this crime rate continues to decline and policing has played a major role in this. Foot patrol is one of these methods although to some it may not seem impactful to others it has been extremely helpful because it is very rare to see police officers walking around. They will be permitted to understand the way a community is run and make changes necessary based on what they have seen and experienced in that particular community.

In Wilson and Kelling’s article “Broken Windows” they also discuss the effects of foot patrolling and discuss the broken windows theory; the idea that smaller crimes lead to bigger crimes, so if you focus on smaller crimes this will prevent larger ones from happening. Wilson and Kelling discuss foot patrolling, they believe that it has a positive effect on the people because it allows officers to be apart of the communities and the people, as a result, they feel safer and more comfortable talking to them. He believes that in order for the broken windows theory to work, the police have to be in the community to understand it. Cops should understand the norms in a certain community and if the community is alright with something, they should be too. Police should try to fit in and understand how communities work and conform to this but unfortunately, many officers do not seem to do this. Most of the time they overlook the norms of a particular community and this causes a disconnect which results in the people viewing the police as villains. This concept of broken windows was implemented by NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton and played a large role in New York. It is important that police officers take this into account, they should try to blend in and make people feel comfortable in their own neighborhoods. The goal should be to make individuals comfortable and able to communicate with them not to fear them. It is not their job to take over the neighborhoods but to instead understand it and find ways to make it better.

In my opinion, there have been many factors responsible for the crime decrease in New York City. The three that I think were most influential were both hotspots, compstat and the increase in police manpower. In the text “The City that Became Safe: New York and the Future of Crime Control” Zimring states “ The department emphasis on ‘hot spots’ for special enforcement was proven to work in other cities and well implemented in New York” (Zimring 2011; 14). Hot spots target places where crime is highest and shift the focus to these areas. This would, of course, contribute to the decrease in crime because if you find where the most crimes are coming from you are then able to put a stop to whatever is causing or allowing there to be so much crime in that particular area. Although hotspots were very influential in the decrease in crime another factor was compstat, There was a time when compstat was more than just numbers, it allowed police officers to take responsibility and actually make a difference. Officers were expected to pay attention to all crime not just pick which is more important than the other and overlook it, it held many responsible and allowed officers to focus on all crime as a whole and not just pick and choose. This was the ultimate goal of compstat and it worked for a while until it became all about the numbers which resulted in many officers neglecting and downgrading certain crimes. Another factor that accounted for the decrease on crime was the increase in manpower in the text, Zimring states “Beginning in 1990, the city added 9,000 new uniformed police, changed its management of police efforts and made its street policing tactics both much more aggressive and more focused on high crime settings”(Zimring 2011; 11) This shows that the increase in manpower and the change in police tactics played a large role in the crime rates of New York. There were more police officers to handle situations and take care of problems happening and there were new techniques to help these officers get their point across and make it clear to the people that they were looking to make New York a better place. Not all of these factors were positive or exemplary ways to deal with crime but they did play a large role in making a change and decreasing the crime rate. Although these weren’t the only ones I believe they had the biggest impact.

In 1994 a police commissioner by the name of Bill Bratton took over the New York City Police Department, his second in command was Jack Maple who was responsible for creating Compstat. In the Reply All podcast titled Crime Machine host, PJ Vogt discusses Compstat also known as computer statististics, he mentions that compstat was originally supposed to focus on crimes happening in all neighborhoods. Compstat was meant to show police where the crime was happening and allow them to figure out crime patterns. Maple created compstat because he wanted the police to learn to take every crime seriously and he also wanted to be informed about all crimes occurring. Compstat made sure that every precinct kept track of crimes that happened on a daily basis. There would then be meetings in which commanders would walk in front of a giant screen with their data on it and be questioned about the crimes happening in their neighborhoods, and what they were doing to stop it. If these commanders did not meet the expectations they would be embarrassed and criticized, if expectations were met they would be praised. Compstat put a lot of pressure on commanders to keep crime rates down, this led to the police downgrading crimes, which means that they would make certain crimes seem smaller than they were. And because they were the ones responsible for inputting data into compstat they would also withhold information by either not reporting a crime, not taking crime reports from victims, or writing something different from what had actually happened. To keep up with the constant pressures of compstat officers also had to hand out summonses, do more stop and frisks and were even expected to reach certain quotas daily. Cops were told their activity had to go up and they had to arrest and give summonses to more people. Compstat definitely played a role in the increase in stop and frisk because the police were expected to have a low crime rate and high police activity. They used stop and frisk and other methods as a way to show this and because of compstat, their target happened to be young black males between the ages of 14-21. Although compstat was a very useful system there are some changes that should be made, this does not only apply to compstat this should also be applied to policing as well. The fact that compstat is so concerned with numbers is not beneficial to the people, but officers shouldn’t be ignoring and overlooking crimes happening because they want to meet the expectations of the system. One way to fix this is to perhaps make it so that if commanders do not meet the expectations they are instead able to formulate a plan to make their numbers go down. This way they are not embarrassed or ashamed and can also focus on protecting the people and focusing on crimes and not numbers.

Overall, There have been many factors that have played a large role in making New York what it is today; A safe place. Although there are many flaws in the criminal justice system that does not mean that New York hasn’t made a remarkable transition from a city so dangerous to a city that people want to come and visit. There are many methods that can be improved and changes that can be made, but that does not take away from the fact that New York has managed to and will continue to decrease in crime which is something not many places are capable of.