Broken Windows Discriminates When crime rates were high, the New York City Police Department adopted the policing strategy known as “Broken Windows” or “Zero Tolerance.” This strategy was paired with...

Broken Windows Discriminates

When crime rates were high, the New York City Police Department adopted the policing strategy known as “Broken Windows” or “Zero Tolerance.” This strategy was paired with ComStat (Compare Statistics) in which officers were held accountable for the number of arrest statistics produced. This strategy appeared to work as the crime rate fell to record lows. As the crime rate fell, it became necessary for officers to look for even the most minor violations to meet the expectations of ComStat goals. Today, with the decline of violent crime, the criticism is that in predominately black neighborhoods, officers are making arrests for offenses with little or no impact upon the crime rate but with great impact upon the lives of those arrested. For example, in predominantly black BedfordStuyvesant, Brooklyn, officers issued more than 2,000 summonses a year between 2008 and 2011 to people riding their bicycles on the sidewalk. In Park Slope, a predominately white neighborhood, police issued eight bike tickets a year. Overall, blacks and Hispanic people were more than four times as likely as whites to receive summonses for minor violations.²³
Should zero-tolerance strategies be abandoned when the crime rate is low?