Brutality in the Name of Public Safety

Shortly after New York City police officers were accused of torturing a handcuffed Haitian immigrant in a police station bathroom, New York Police Commissioner Howard Safir and his predecessor, William J. Bratton, labeled the incident an “aberration.” The police commissioners’ words eerily echoed those of Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates’ in 1991, when he was asked to respond to a videotape showing some of his officers brutally beating Rodney G. King. Yet, given the culture of both police departments at the time of the incidents, no one should be surprised that some cops were out of control. In-your-face policing is more likely to increase complaints against the police than it is to generate the citizen support needed to prevent crime.

The flippancy of Safir’s and Bratton’s characterizations of the alleged NYPD beating is cousin to the negative police mentality that leads many officers to define certain people as the “enemy.” This tendency to stereotype people is exacerbated by the quality-of-life style of policing that is currently the rage in police circles and is credited by New York officials and cops for significantly reducing serious crime in their city.

The seed of this policing approach was planted in a 1982 Atlantic Monthly article, written by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, titled “Broken Windows.” The authors contended that broken windows, litter, graffiti and other signs of “disorder” sent a signal to predatory criminals that it was safe to strike. If the laws against these signs of disorder were aggressively enforced and a sense of public safety restored, went the theory, the hardened criminal would think twice before breaking the law.

At a three-day conference in May hosted by the NYPD (L.A.’s new police chief, Bernard C. Parks, was there), the New York police brass boasted how their cops constantly watched for people riding bicycles on sidewalks, jaywalking and committing other citable offenses so they could arrest them. Police intuition told them that these petty arrests ultimately were responsible for lowering murders, robberies and other serious crime in the neighborhood. But they offered no data--sentencing reports, the number of guns confiscated during arrests, for example--to support their intuition.

It is was not difficult to imagine how this zero-tolerance management philosophy could ferment in the minds of some officers, turning ordinary people walking the street into potential criminals who must be controlled. Because cops live in a tough world of criminals and violence, they need frequent reminders that the overwhelming majority of people are law-abiding. But the NYPD brass seemed to be saying the opposite.

Nevertheless, so dramatic has been the fall-off in crime in New York City that this policing model has attracted the attention of mayors and police chiefs across the country, including L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan. The LAPD abandoned its historically aggressive patrol style soon after the King beating. Although arrests declined in L.A., crime also went down. Indeed, crime was falling in most large cities before police departments across the country began fixating on the New York “miracle.”

In addition to quality-of-life enforcement, Bratton, while commissioner, supplied computerized crime information to local police stations and altered patterns of police deployment and investigation. Thus, there is no clear way of knowing if these and other improvements affected the crime rate as much as or more than quality-of-life policing. Police chiefs and mayors like to blame increases in crime on changing demographics, the breakdown of families, problems in education, the economy, high unemployment, lack of federal grant money and so on. But these same officials say falling crime rates are not the byproduct of, let’s say, a strong economy or low unemployment. Instead, they credit political leadership and police tactics.

We do know that most crime is not reported to the police, and, obviously, the police cannot prevent crime they do not know about. We know that citizens hostile to the police will not report crime or come forward to provide evidence against criminals. And we know that juries who believe the police are racist or lack integrity are likely to acquit defendants regardless of the evidence presented. In short, to do their job, the police must have the trust of the community, especially minority communities.

But the kind of policing embraced by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani in New York inevitably comes down hardest on poor and minority citizens. Such policing causes constant tension between minorities and the police and can often lead to violent encounters stemming from police overreaction to petty incidents.

Incidents like the NYPD’s alleged torture of a Haitian naturally reinforces minority citizens’ distrust of the police. This mistrust has been boosted of late by numerous television videotapes showing police officers beating up unresisting citizens. In most cases, the cops were white and those on the receiving end of their clubs were black or Latino.

Mayors and police chiefs thinking of emulating NYPD’s quality-of-life enforcement should realize that the approach tends to create an enemy class in the minds of many officers. People who are “different” are treated roughly. The homeless, panhandlers, prostitutes, the “eccentric” and, in some cases, the nonwhite can easily be regarded as a problem by cops who have been encouraged to seek out and eliminate signs of disorder.

Ironically, the best argument against importing the quality-of-life enforcement model is New York City. Despite Bratton’s plea that the department not pull back from its zero-tolerance approach--the exact opposite of community policing--Giuliani sounded the retreat. In an effort at damage control, he announced a six-month “discussion” period between city residents and the NYPD on community relations. What the cops and city hall will hear loud and clear from the residents is, “New York City isn’t a police state. We want respect, not harassment from cops.”

Presumably, Giuliani’s learning curve has reached the point where he realizes that the actions of out-of-control cops have a lot more to do with quality of life in poor neighborhoods than crackdowns on littering, jaywalking and bicycle-riding on sidewalks. The rest of the nation should take note.