#How NYC championed broken windows policing and threw it away: Goodwin

In the event the goon squad trashing New York and other cities puts me under a hot light and demands I say nice things about their “movement,” I’m ready. I will thank them for proving the righteousness of the “broken windows” theory of policing.

That wasn’t the aim, of course, but the mayhem unleashed by the marauders and quisling politicians ends the argument about whether James Q. Wilson and George Kelling got it right. The national disaster unfolding before our eyes validates their conclusions about human nature and common sense.

Wilson and Kelling introduced the idea that would revolutionize law enforcement in 1982 in The Atlantic magazine with this famous summary: “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. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones.”

The implication was that public disorder and petty crimes — litter, graffiti, vandalism — would multiply if left uncontested and metas­tasize into robbery, rape and murder.

New York under Rudy Giuliani, elected mayor in 1993, and his police commissioners, starting with Bill Bratton, put the theory into practice. The resulting drops in crime of all kinds were so dramatic that cities across the country recruited New York commanders to bring the magic to their jurisdictions.

There was no magic. Rather, just as Thomas Edison described genius — 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration — broken-windows policing involved an exhaustive attention to detail. Giuliani and Bratton talked about taking back the city “block by block” and, aided by developing technology, put NYPD precinct bosses on the spot by showing them what crimes had been committed, when and where.

Giuliani’s fixation on squeegee men was easy to ridicule and yet reflected the essence of the approach. The aggressive panhandlers trapped people in their cars and made them feel unsafe.

In a memorable moment shortly before he was elected, Giuliani told an editorial-board meeting he cared about statistics, but the real measure would be whether people actually felt safer. That, he said, was the ultimate test of policing and political leadership.

He said that in 1993, when New York was averaging 2,000 murders a year. During the previous quarter century, as annual murders rose from 600 to more than 2,200 in 1990, not a single police commissioner had been fired because of bloodshed. So accountability would play a major role in the new policing.

Four years later, here’s how The New York Times reported the results for 1997: “The crime rate in New York City fell 9.1 percent last year, with murders dropping to their lowest level since 1967.”

The murder total was 767 that year, a 60 percent decline from 1993. It was miraculous, but even that would soon be seen as far too high.

Giuliani and his successor, Michael Bloomberg, kept the pressure on, as did their commissioners. In Bloomberg’s final year, 2013, the city, with a population of 8.5 million, had 333 murders.

By comparison, Baltimore, with 620,000 people, had 235 murders.

Although there were periodic controversies and cases of outright police brutality, New Yorkers widely celebrated the gains against crime. In early 2013, a poll found enormous support for NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, who held the post for all of Bloomberg’s 12 years. The public approved of his job performance by an incredible margin of 75-18 percent, including majorities in every major ethnic and racial group.

Giuliani and Bloomberg argued, correctly, that a focus on both minor and major crimes had saved thousands of lives, most of them young black and Latino males. In addition, New York’s prison population declined because fewer crimes were being committed.

In many ways, 2013 marked the high-water mark of broken-windows policing. New York was the safest big city in America and Kelly was viewed as heroic. Sen. Chuck Schumer hoped Kelly could run the FBI and President Obama considered making him head of Homeland Security.

And then came Bill de Blasio. His campaign for City Hall that year exploited an anti-police sentiment among far-left activists and much of the media. Using his biracial family in ads, de Blasio essentially called the NYPD racist and promised to sharply curtail the stop, question and frisk tactic that had been a prime anti-gun strategy.

With a low turnout in the Democratic primary and the general election, de Blasio swept into office with a tenuous mandate. Despite his anti-police campaign, he brought Bratton back as commissioner, a signal he would reform the NYPD without breaking it.

In the beginning, he did that, and major crime, despite occasional spikes, generally stayed low. In 2018 there were 289 murders, the fewest in 70 years.

But de Blasio never really believed in broken windows and he and an increasingly radical City Council began to handcuff the cops. They undercut enforcement of petty crimes and decriminalized turnstile-jumping and public urination, among other quality-of-life offenses.

District attorneys made matters worse by often refusing to prosecute misdemeanor cases, especially those involving marijuana and small amounts of cocaine. The state Legislature, ever more left-leaning, “reformed” the bail system in ways that made it almost impossible for judges to remand even repeat ­offenders.

Increasingly, laws and rules restricted the police, often making it seem as if they were the problem instead of criminals.

All that leniency and anti-police sentiment amounted to dry tinder when the George Floyd homicide in Minneapolis shocked the nation and set off riots everywhere.

Three long months later, shootings, arson and attacks on police are routine. Cops, abandoned by mayors and governors, virtually all of them Democrats, have become more risk averse out of self-protection.

So broken-windows policing is effectively dead. As a direct result, so are lots of Americans.

Murder is up everywhere. Through Aug. 9, New York recorded 244 homicides, an increase of 55 deaths, or 29 percent, from the same period last year.

Across the country, hundreds of people who were killed would be alive if the political class hadn’t surrendered to the mobs.

So we have twice proven that broken-windows policing works, first by using it and then by abandoning it.

We should have taken yes for an answer the first time.

Oh, perish the thought!

An e-mail offer that’s easy to refuse.

“Hillary Clinton: What I’ve been thinking about this summer”

The ABCs of solving the voting mess

Trying to settle the fight over how best to vote, reader Arthur Wiegenfeld writes:

“Let’s extend Election Day to two days. People whose last name begins with odd letters, such as A and C, could vote on Tuesday. Those with even letters, such as B and D, would vote Wednesday.

“This would calm everyone, allow social distancing and reduce lines.”

$ounding off

The exodus from New York is leaving vacant apartments and falling rents, though the average two-bedroom unit still goes for $4,620, The Post reports.

That’s high, but the sounds of gunfire and sirens are free.