Confirmed Professional Agitator: Fun fact, the one element of "broken windows" that has legs is that public retreat from communal spaces because they are unpleasant reinforces that erosion. The biggest problem is that police operating under this theory inevitably serve as their own "broken window" themselves

Fun fact, the one element of "broken windows" that has legs is that public retreat from communal spaces because they are unpleasant reinforces that erosion. The biggest problem is that police operating under this theory inevitably serve as their own "broken window" themselves

I don’t think people appreciate that increasing the number of people on sidewalks does more to reduce crime than cops.

Even where police can have a public safety role or a role in reducing nuisances, harassment and violence against residents undermine and even reverse any value there. Stop and frisk was its own broken window.

I worked in community development for one year and in that time I saw police repeatedly sabotage years of community policing initiatives and relationship-building by, for example, standing by and letting fascists with bats attack community members. www.inquirer.com/news/fishtow...

Philly police stood by as men with baseball bats ‘protected’ Fishtown. Some residents were assaulted and threatened.www.inquirer.com “We tolerated it last night for too long, and that was a mistake," Mayor Jim Kenney said Tuesday.

A *long* time ago, I thought I supported the broken windows argument. That was when I thought it was actually about fixing broken windows (and empty store fronts, abandoned cars, trash, etc.), rather than police being given free rein to harass minorities.

Yeah, same.

It’s an unfortunate term but “defensible spaces” in urban design are those that naturally attract people. The point is that well-designed cities need less police. Here’s an article that talks about the link between Jane Jacobs and how her theory was perverted by George Kelling into “broken windows.”

Jane Jacobs, Broken Windows and the Battle Over Public Spacecitylimits.org Both conservative law-and-order and liberal-minded urban planning leave poor communities of color in the crosshairs. Public spaces, a theoretically shared space, become battlefields.

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