Are you looking at this car and do you see two broken windows and shattered glass on the road?
Now, close your eyes - open them - rub your eyes and look again. Do you still see the broken glass on the ground and two broken car windows? Okay, now here's today's quiz.
* Did a index or non-index crime happen in front of Joe's office? Or, was someone just pissed off at the owner of the car in question?
5 comments:
Could this be Jomo's or Jan's car ?
Sent to me by a anon reader.
Interesting editorial that appeared in the Sunday Chicago Tribune.
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'Broken Windows' and crime
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May 6, 2007
Why do robbers prey on one middle-class neighborhood but avoid another? Can it be that criminals shop for victims as shrewdly as teens shop for denims at the mall? Consider:
Twenty-five years ago this spring, the edgy phrase "Broken Windows" provoked a debate among cops, crime researchers and community leaders that reverberates to this day. That title on an Atlantic Monthly article by two academics, James Q.
Wilson and George Kelling, quickly became code for the notion that when comparatively mundane laws (against loitering and littering, for example) go unenforced, neighborhoods invite attention from serious criminals who sense a vulnerability worth exploiting.
Virtually every big-city policy discussion of how to combat crime includes someone who praises or lambastes "broken windows." Those conversations often devolve into squabbles about the merits of two policing strategies:
New York's and Chicago's. The New York model can be exaggerated as, "Arrest everything that moves," says Wesley Skogan, a Northwestern University political scientist who has studied Chicago policing for two decades. The Chicago model boils down to, "Fix the broken windows."
Wilson and Kelling argued that urban dwellers fear violent criminals, but also fear "being bothered by disorderly people. Not violent people, nor, necessarily, criminals, but disreputable or obstreperous or unpredictable people:
panhandlers, drunks, addicts, rowdy teenagers, prostitutes, loiterers, the
mentally disturbed." Their metaphor for tolerance of these behaviors: "[I]f 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
run-down ones. ... [O]ne unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares,
and so breaking more windows costs nothing."
Disorderly behavior that goes untended leads to the breakdown of community controls: As
weeds go unmowed and more windows shatter, adults stop scolding one another's
rowdy children and people start drinking in front of the grocery store.
Law-abiding families move out, driven by the perception that crime is on the rise. Criminals sense weak social controls and pounce.
If that sounds obvious, it wasn't in 1982. The then-prevailing attitude was that crime resembled weather: a force to lament, not prevent.
Some academics challenged broken-windows theory in mind-numbing debates about its statistical underpinnings. But the most vigorous pushback has come from
ideological critics who say broken-windows theory criminalizes poverty: By urging intolerance of vagrancy, public drunkenness and other so-called
victimless crimes, they say, Wilson and Kelling stigmatized activities more common in poor neighborhoods.
One obvious retort to that argument: Neighborhood disorder offends poor people
as much as it offends rich people. Ask any Chicago alderman how often his or her constituents complain about too much police enforcement against loud, obnoxious or illegal public behavior.
The first U.S. mayor to parlay broken-windows theory into a citywide policing strategy was New York's Rudy Giuliani in the mid-1990s. It's a saga he loves to tell: how aggressive enforcement against "squeegee men" and subway turnstile
jumpers was followed by a precipitous decline in homicides and other serious crimes. But was broken-windows policing the cause of that truly remarkable effect? Or should the credit go to more imprisonment of convicts? Or to greater
employment as welfare reform pushed young adults into the workforce?The likely
answers are yes, yes and yes. But the worst fears of the critics didn't materialize: As broken-windows policing ramped up, crime plummeted -- and so did complaints against police and shootings by officers.
Chicago followed broken-windows theory to a less aggressive strategy, "community policing," in which city government rapidly removes gang graffiti, arranges beat meetings between cops and
residents, and follows up 311 calls to address frustrations -- rundown buildings, junk-strewn lots -- before they signal that nobody in a community cares about disorder.
Northwestern's Skogan sees the distinct New York and Chicago agendas as successful strategies. Local politics drove the local responses, he says. New York's politically assertive middle class was fed up with crime; Chicago's City Hall, wary of portraying crime as the fault of constituents, chose a more inclusive, team-oriented mix of community and police resources. Skogan's nine
surveys of Chicagoans from 1993 through 2003 suggested that this city's community-policing response to broken-windows theory resulted in decreased fear of crime, and increased public satisfaction with Chicago cops.
Chicago police have become more aggressive about flooding crime-prone areas to disrupt gang violence. Many citizens (and their aldermen) clamor appreciatively for more of those deployments -- and frequently praise pole-mounted police cameras that at least discourage drug dealing, gunplay and other street crime.
Broken-windows theory empowered neighborhoods to see themselves as something more than helpless victims, waiting for criminals to strike and then reactively dialing the police.
Or as Wilson and Kelling ended the article that remade crime-fighting in America: "Above all, we must return to our long-abandoned view that the police ought to protect communities as well as individuals. ... Just as physicians now
recognize the importance of fostering health rather than simply treating illness, so the police -- and the rest of us -- ought to recognize the importance of maintaining, intact, communities without broken windows."
Chicago's strategy of trying to involve local communities in protecting themselves has been a smart one. If that's also one reason why serious crime here has dropped over time, so much the better.
Excellent...this article has answered alot of questions for me and caught me up on issues and enlightened me. Where to next? I accept the need for keeping a handle on litter, fixing up broken windows and removing graffitti (because it's gang signs) I still have issues with using jail for non violent criminals or calling litter a crime, I'm against cops hassling loiterers and calling it a crime (which was upheld by the supreme court)and groups of kids, but intervening and arresting in the case of fighting, absolutely.
And forget the whole you have to mow the lawn crap. The lawn is an environmental catastrophe. People that want weeds and wild grasses have good reasons, I'd stick an educational sign about the great things about weeds on a vacant lot, even if it was just a lazy slob doing it and not an environmentalist with purpose.
And people that keep junk and broken stuff on private property, I'm still certain an individual has a right, but I'm open to the practical complaints of neighbors and pondering on a compromise.
I'm all for native grasses instead of weeds and lawns. There is a huge difference between a weedy lot and a lot with native grass. It takes a lot more than not mowing to make a plot of land eco-friendly. In fact, not mowing, while lessening the use fossil fuels, may be even worse than mowing. Invasive species, like garlic mustard and purple loosestrife, need to be controlled in some manner and if people aren't willing to pull them out then mowing is the next best option.
I am not a big fan of the manicured lawn either and have gradually been getting rid of my lawn and planting perennials, which provide shelter and food for birds.
Neglected yards are different and can provide a haven for rats too especially if trash is not secured.
I was just reading up on the broken windows theory myself last weekend. It makes sense to me.
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