A hot-button Department of Investigation report released Wednesday contradicts the NYPD’s claim that “broken windows”-type arrests drive down more serious crime.
The rate of summonses and arrests for minor quality-of-life crimes like disorderly conduct, public urination and open-container violations had no real impact in driving down felonies over the past six years, the report found.
The report strikes at the heart of a heated debate over the broken-windows theory embraced by Police Commissioner Bill Bratton that claims serious crime increases when cops don’t crack down on minor infractions.
Critics of this theory claim it unfairly targets minorities — and the DOI report backed that up.
Looking at 2015 data, the report found the NYPD’s quality-of-life enforcement disproportionately hit precincts with high numbers of black and Hispanic residents, NYCHA households and young men.
Precincts with high rates of white residents had much lower levels of quality-of-life enforcement, according to the report by Investigation Commissioner Mark Peters and NYPD Inspector General Philip Eure.
Bratton’s critics immediately used the findings to attack “broken windows.”
City Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Queens), sponsor of reforms signed by the mayor last week that decriminalized a slew of infractions, said the report proves broken windows “is itself broken.”
Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito (D-Manhattan) said the report “confirms the premise” behind those reforms, known as the Criminal Justice Reform Act. The measure was signed by Mayor de Blasio on June 13.
Monifa Bandele of Communities United for Police Reform said the report makes de Blasio and Bratton’s “championing of policing policy based on this conservative, race- and bias-based ideology that harms black, Latino, homeless, low-income, immigrant and LGBTQ New Yorkers all the more disgraceful and perplexing.”
Police Reform Organizing Project Director Robert Gangi, a longtime Bratton critic, said the DOI report puts de Blasio — who has consistently backed Bratton on this issue — “in a crossfire” in which agents of his own administration “undermine the claims of his police commissioner.”
De Blasio did not respond to the DOI report, but Bratton’s spokesman Peter Donald called it “deeply flawed,” asserting that it “fails to acknowledge what all New York City residents know: that every community in the city is safer and has a better quality of life due in large part to the extensive quality-of-life enforcement” by the NYPD since 1994.
Donald noted, for example, that the report examines only summonses and misdemeanor arrests, not the NYPD’s response to quality-of-life complaints from the public that don’t result in charges.
The Investigation Department findings run contrary to an NYPD report last year claiming quality-of-life crackdowns have led to less felony crime in the city.
The study looked at 1.8 million low-level “C” summonses and 650,000 misdemeanor arrests between 2010 and 2015, noting a significant drop in quality-of-life enforcement during that time with no resultant increase in felony crime.
In fact, during that time, felonies also dropped off, leading the DOI to conclude that there’s “no evidence to suggest that crime control can be directly attributed to issuing quality-of-life summonses and making misdemeanor arrests.”
“The results of our investigation call into question some long-held assumptions about the systemic impact of certain tactics and therefore provide a starting point for the NYPD to more fully employ statistical analysis to evaluate these tactics,” Peters said.
The 84-page report highlights a key flash point in the broken-windows debate — that the NYPD’s quality-of-life enforcement disproportionately affects black and Hispanic New Yorkers.
Precincts with a high percentage of black and Hispanic residents, tenants of public housing and males ages 15 to 20 were more likely to see high rates of quality-of-life citations.
“As the representation of these populations increased in a given area, the rate of quality-of-life summonses and misdemeanor arrests also increased,” the report found.
In contrast, precincts with a high percentage of white residents saw a far lower rate of these summonses and misdemeanors, the report found.
The data showed a consistent dropoff from 2010 to last year in summonses for public urination, disorderly conduct, riding bikes on the sidewalk and open-container violations.
Low-level marijuana possession arrests at first rose dramatically, but then dropped off starting in January 2012 after then-Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly ended busts for small amounts of pot.
WITH CHAUNCEY ALCORN