No breaks for skid row

THERE IS AN EMERGING CONSENSUS, long overdue, that the police should aggressively enforce the law on skid row. The question is how aggressively. Police Chief William J. Bratton is considering two proposals. One would sweep thousands of homeless people from their tent-and-box cities; the other would allow them to remain but would arrest those who commit even the most minor crimes.

The first idea -- call it zero tolerance for street living -- is unrealistic. Bratton tried this approach when he arrived in 2002, attempting to get people off the streets by removing their shelters, but the effort was entangled in litigation with the American Civil Liberties Union. We disagree with the ACLU’s claim that people have a right to sleep on the sidewalk, but we sympathize with the argument that in the absence of enough shelter beds and services, throwing thousands of homeless people in jail isn’t the solution.

The second plan on Bratton’s desk, based on Rutgers University criminologist George Kelling’s “broken windows” approach, is more narrow. The approach -- essentially, going after those who break windows or commit other minor offenses before they “graduate” to more serious crime -- became popular in New York City in the 1980s and ‘90s. The plan calls for cracking down on lawlessness by flooding downtown with police officers (and surveillance cameras) and establishing a zero-tolerance mind-set -- not for homelessness but for the crime associated with it.

Skid row’s anarchy is a menace not only to the homeless population but to the area’s downtown neighbors. That’s one reason the business community, the mayor and, yes, the ACLU have signed on to Kelling’s proposal. Bratton may have to give up on any notion of rolling up the homeless problem overnight and settle for this more focused approach.