New Yorkers have had it pretty good for the past few years. Largely due to the success of the “broken window” theory of crime prevention implemented by former mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his original police commissioner, William J. Bratton, New York City has seen a stunning drop in crime from the early 1990s through today. In 1990, the City saw 2,605 murders. Last year, the number was just 540.
For the uninitiated, the “broken window” theory of crime fighting comes from James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, who argued in the early 1980s that in order to effectively reverse high crime rates, police departments must focus on the smallest crimes. By aggressively targeting the little things, you can keep the bigger crimes from ever happening.
“Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside,” wrote Wilson and Kelling in an article in The Atlantic Monthly, where they outlined a plan that would help guide major police departments across the world.
Giuliani and Bratton both ate it up, and implemented it across the city once Giuliani became mayor in 1992 (Bratton had already begun using the “broken window” theory as head of the transit police several years prior). Fighting crime in New York City no longer meant searching for criminals after the fact, but hunting them down before they acted as well. The NYPD began arresting panhandlers, vandals, turnstile jumpers and, most famously, squeegee men.
The squeegee men were of particular interest to Giuliani, who held them up as a sign of all blight facing the city. Their particular brand of extortion, harassing drivers in traffic to pay them to go away, became the stereotype on which Giuliani would base his focus on quality of life crimes. Gone were the once ubiquitous squeegee men, along with their fellow criminal ilk.
Or are they? At the Fordham Road exit of the Major Deegan Expressway in The Bronx, a crew of squeegee men (usually two or three) work the crowded off-ramp almost every day. And they are not alone. You can find their fellow travelers in Midtown and Upper Manhattan as well. They are at the Madison Avenue Bridge, and a few are reappearing at the Queensboro Bridge.
All around, quality of life crimes seem to be on the rise. A great stink was raised last week when various news outlets revealed that an open-air prostitution market has returned to Hell’s Kitchen, which has been renamed Clinton in an effort to gloss over the neighborhood’s days-gone-by character. Beggars can be found on just about every subway train, informing passengers that they are just hungry, and then guilt-tripping riders to pay them. Walls that were once bare now have graffiti. The city, however slowly, seems to be returning to a time many New Yorkers would like to forget.
Are quality of life crimes on the rise? Statistics say no. Crime is down 5.5 percent citywide so far this year, and most crimes are following that trend. But two major crimes, murder and rape, are up so far. Murder is up just over 9 percent, and rape has risen close to 5 percent this year.
How can crimes that once seemed to be gone forever be coming back? Maybe its because we have fewer crime fighters. The NYPD was never bigger than in 2001, at the end of Giuliani’s eight years in office, when its numbers swelled to 40,700. But lower salaries, retirements after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and other factors have conspired to bring down those numbers. This year, there are 37,000 cops on the force, and analysts predict that future budgets will force those numbers down even more in coming years. Though Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced in March a plan to hire 400 more civilians to replace cops at desks, the president of the police officers union does not think it is enough, calling the plan a “band-aid.”
“Civilianization will not solve the NYPD’s recruitment and retention crisis,” said PBA President Patrick Lynch when the plan was announced. “With nearly 3,000 members quitting or retiring each year, the NYPD recruitment effort is struggling to try and keep up with attrition.”
More cops require more money, and salaries for police in neighboring counties dwarf those here in the city. Logically, fewer police officers would mean an increase in crime. Lynch has repeatedly said that to bring in more police officers, the city needs to pay a much better salary than they do now, which sits at a dismal starting salary of $25,100.
Money doesn’t grow on trees. But without more police, the smattering of squeegee men and their quality-of-life destroying compatriots could sprout up all over the city, bringing with them a return to the old days before super-rising rents and a Disney-fied Times Square.
