New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton is defending his department’s use of the “broken windows” strategy which, as Al Jazeera reports, is “the practice of cracking down on minor offenses” because if they go unchecked, the argument goes, “they create visible signs of public disorder that encourage more serious crimes.”
Bratton co-authored a 4,500-word essay for City Journal backing the tactic, but critics are still not convinced that it’s fair game. Reform groups are concerned that the strategy actually reinforces the racial biases in law-enforcement because African-American and Hispanic people are often the targets of this kind of policing.
Joo-Hyun Kang, the director of Communities United for Police Reform (CPR), e-mailed a statement to Bratton, and the essay’s other co-author, Rutgers University Professor George Kelling, to communicate these concerns.
“Misdemeanor arrests that disproportionately target people of color for the lowest-level offenses have severely strained relations between local communities and the police,” Joo-Hyun Kang wrote to Bratton and Kelling.
Source: The Root |
