NYPD engaged in effective work slowdown; results are awesome

[© tweed]

since the killing of the two officers, NYPD has taken to operating with extreme discretion.  or put another way, The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association has warned its members to put their safety first and not make arrests “unless absolutely necessary.”  

 graphic from the NY Post:




of course, this is wonderful for the general public, and is what policing should entail in a supposedly civilian-controlled democracy. but in calling off the eternal treasure hunt for traffic violations and drug possession, the NYPD is hitting the City government's finances:

Drug offenses, parking violations, traffic citations; these are not so much crimes as they are streams of revenue for the city.


..and, if the slowdown continues, it'll be a disaster for the "criminal-industrial complex": defense attorneys, correctional officers, and so forth.   all those prisons built under Cuomo I were built to be filled with black and brown bodies shipped up North from NYC ghettoes.


the great irony of this is that it provides an ideological opening for those hostile to the criminal justice machinery: an "inadvertent attack on broken windows theory": The NYPD is Essentially Refusing to do Its Job and Yet New York Hasn’t Collapsed into Chaos

[traininthedistance]

Reposted from a Facebook comment I just made:

This is a good thing on balance, given the immense and discriminatory human cost of the drug war, but I do fear that non-enforcement of parking/traffic violations will both feed the all-too-typical motorist sense that they are "above the law," and possibly endanger pedestrians and cyclists. Vision Zero is something worth enforcing.

(And, FWIW, the lost revenue doesn't really play into my calculus at all in either direction.)

[Nhoj]

Reposted from a Facebook comment I just made:

This is a good thing on balance, given the immense and discriminatory human cost of the drug war, but I do fear that non-enforcement of parking/traffic violations will both feed the all-too-typical motorist sense that they are "above the law," and possibly endanger pedestrians and cyclists. Vision Zero is something worth enforcing.

(And, FWIW, the lost revenue doesn't really play into my calculus at all in either direction.)

Chances are they are also fining less cyclists and pedestrians, of course that doesn't help safety either.

[traininthedistance]

Reposted from a Facebook comment I just made:

This is a good thing on balance, given the immense and discriminatory human cost of the drug war, but I do fear that non-enforcement of parking/traffic violations will both feed the all-too-typical motorist sense that they are "above the law," and possibly endanger pedestrians and cyclists. Vision Zero is something worth enforcing.

(And, FWIW, the lost revenue doesn't really play into my calculus at all in either direction.)

Chances are they are also fining less cyclists and pedestrians, of course that doesn't help safety either.

Well, pedestrians should basically never be fined, period.  Obviously cyclists should be from time to time (especially for red-running), but enforcement should be proportional to the amount of potential harm that negligence can cause, and some of those cyclist fines are actually based on misinformation/bad design and shouldn't be given out (for example, riding in the street rather than in a bike lane that's being blocked by parked cop cars ).  The larger/faster/heavier the vehicle, the higher the standards and stricter the enforcement should be.

[Indy Texas]

The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association has warned its members to put their safety first and not make arrests “unless absolutely necessary.”  

So they were making unnecessary arrests before?

Send Scott Walker's minions up to New York to crack some union thug skulls.

[Nhoj]

Reposted from a Facebook comment I just made:

This is a good thing on balance, given the immense and discriminatory human cost of the drug war, but I do fear that non-enforcement of parking/traffic violations will both feed the all-too-typical motorist sense that they are "above the law," and possibly endanger pedestrians and cyclists. Vision Zero is something worth enforcing.

(And, FWIW, the lost revenue doesn't really play into my calculus at all in either direction.)

Chances are they are also fining less cyclists and pedestrians, of course that doesn't help safety either.

Well, pedestrians should basically never be fined, period.  Obviously cyclists should be from time to time (especially for red-running), but enforcement should be proportional to the amount of potential harm that negligence can cause, and some of those cyclist fines are actually based on misinformation/bad design and shouldn't be given out (for example, riding in the street rather than in a bike lane that's being blocked by parked cop cars ).  The larger/faster/heavier the vehicle, the higher the standards and stricter the enforcement should be.

Not even for jaywalking in obviously dangerous areas? I know I am guilty of jaywalking so im fine with it not being a fine. But am interested in your view.

Also indy Scott Walkers thugs aren't even good at busting police unions, since they specifically exempted them.

[Silent Hunter]

The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association has warned its members to put their safety first and not make arrests “unless absolutely necessary.” 

So they were making unnecessary arrests before?

I'm reading that as "necessary for public safety"; if someone is smoking pot, leave them alone, if they're shooting someone, step in.

[traininthedistance]

Reposted from a Facebook comment I just made:

This is a good thing on balance, given the immense and discriminatory human cost of the drug war, but I do fear that non-enforcement of parking/traffic violations will both feed the all-too-typical motorist sense that they are "above the law," and possibly endanger pedestrians and cyclists. Vision Zero is something worth enforcing.

(And, FWIW, the lost revenue doesn't really play into my calculus at all in either direction.)

Chances are they are also fining less cyclists and pedestrians, of course that doesn't help safety either.

Well, pedestrians should basically never be fined, period.  Obviously cyclists should be from time to time (especially for red-running), but enforcement should be proportional to the amount of potential harm that negligence can cause, and some of those cyclist fines are actually based on misinformation/bad design and shouldn't be given out (for example, riding in the street rather than in a bike lane that's being blocked by parked cop cars ).  The larger/faster/heavier the vehicle, the higher the standards and stricter the enforcement should be.

Not even for jaywalking in obviously dangerous areas? I know I am guilty of jaywalking so im fine with it not being a fine. But am interested in your view.

Also indy Scott Walkers thugs aren't even good at busting police unions, since they specifically exempted them.

If you're putting yourself in danger with your jaywalking, that ought to be a sufficient deterrent/punishment.  If a pedestrian isn't paying attention and hits somebody, that's not going to cause any serious harm to the victim; whereas the same can't be said for other modes.

It's also worth keeping in mind that not every intersection has a crosswalk; in many cases pedestrians are forced to go far out of their way, in situations which are actually functionally less safe– crossing a lightly-used side street in the middle of the road (after looking both ways, of course!) is frequently safer for everyone involved than having to go down to a major intersection where there might be turning cars who aren't paying attention.  (And I'm not even getting into the hostile designs of many arterials here, which is a whole nother can of beans.)

I will admit to being a hardened career jaywalker, so if you wanna label my position as self-serving perhaps you are right.  But there's a solid principle behind it, too.

...

ETA: To re-rail this discussion... it occurs to me that most traffic offenses aren't arrestable anyway?  So it's not like this action is perfectly in line with their rhetoric.

[Lief 🗽]

Wonderful news! Hopefully De Blasio begins the mass firings now, as the cops have proven that they are unnecessary.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Reposted from a Facebook comment I just made:

This is a good thing on balance, given the immense and discriminatory human cost of the drug war, but I do fear that non-enforcement of parking/traffic violations will both feed the all-too-typical motorist sense that they are "above the law," and possibly endanger pedestrians and cyclists. Vision Zero is something worth enforcing.

(And, FWIW, the lost revenue doesn't really play into my calculus at all in either direction.)

Chances are they are also fining less cyclists and pedestrians, of course that doesn't help safety either.

Well, pedestrians should basically never be fined, period.  Obviously cyclists should be from time to time (especially for red-running), but enforcement should be proportional to the amount of potential harm that negligence can cause, and some of those cyclist fines are actually based on misinformation/bad design and shouldn't be given out (for example, riding in the street rather than in a bike lane that's being blocked by parked cop cars ).  The larger/faster/heavier the vehicle, the higher the standards and stricter the enforcement should be.

     If cyclists were fined for running red lights, the police wouldn't be doing anything but writing tickets.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Cops: 0
Sanity: 1

[Silent Hunter]

A lot depends on how long it lasts and what the criminal population of NYC do; if they feel that they can get away with stuff, then we could see the city go back very quickly to the 1970s.

[Brittain33]

A lot depends on how long it lasts and what the criminal population of NYC do; if they feel that they can get away with stuff, then we could see the city go back very quickly to the 1970s.

Crime has fallen to a tiny fraction of what it was 40 years ago. I don't think there is a "criminal population" that has been waiting, dormant, for the police to back off. Too much has changed structurally and individually.

[The Mikado]

Yeah, the collapse in crime is a national thing, not a New York thing.

[© tweed]

A lot depends on how long it lasts and what the criminal population of NYC do; if they feel that they can get away with stuff, then we could see the city go back very quickly to the 1970s.

Crime has fallen to a tiny fraction of what it was 40 years ago. I don't think there is a "criminal population" that has been waiting, dormant, for the police to back off. Too much has changed structurally and individually.

of course the collapse of crime rate has not resulted in a fall in incarceration rate (though we have seen a tiny fall in the past few years).

the problem is not that crime will explode, but that the multibillion dollar prison industry needs bodies, and the only way to get those bodies is through aggressive policing -- the lower the crime rate, the more aggressive the policing needs to be, to sniff out an unregistered handgun here or a half-gram of heroin there.

[Silent Hunter]

Yeah, the collapse in crime is a national thing, not a New York thing.

How many people were murdered in the US last year?

[King]

Yeah, the collapse in crime is a national thing, not a New York thing.

How many people were murdered in the US last year?

14,196. Lowest total murder total and the murder rate of 4.5 per 100,000 citizens is actually the lowest since the government began keeping track of the statistic.

[Silent Hunter]

That's still four times higher per 100,000 than the UK.

[Deus Naturae]

That's still four times higher per 100,000 than the UK.

Congratulations? How does that relate to this?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yeah, the collapse in crime is a national thing, not a New York thing.

How many people were murdered in the US last year?

14,196. Lowest total murder total and the murder rate of 4.5 per 100,000 citizens is actually the lowest since the government began keeping track of the statistic.

Out of curiosity, when did the government begin keeping track of the statistic?

[King]

Yeah, the collapse in crime is a national thing, not a New York thing.

How many people were murdered in the US last year?

14,196. Lowest total murder total and the murder rate of 4.5 per 100,000 citizens is actually the lowest since the government began keeping track of the statistic.

Out of curiosity, when did the government begin keeping track of the statistic?

I'm not really sure. Sometime around Prohibition era when crime became a national issue I imagine. I can find some sites with data back to 1900 but I don't know if those old numbers are government data or independent. The 1900-15 murder rates are comically low (~1 murder per 100,000) before jumping to 6-8 so I imagine that's poorly gathered independent data not government and government data began around the Wilson Admin.

[they don't love you like i love you]

The best time to start looking at such figures would be 1924, that's when the BOI, predecessor to the FBI was established.

[The Mikado]

A relevant map.

[Simfan34]

The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association has warned its members to put their safety first and not make arrests “unless absolutely necessary.” 

So they were making unnecessary arrests before?

Send Scott Walker's minions up to New York to crack some union thug skulls.

You people keep on saying this, so can we crack all the union skulls or just the cops?

Yeah, the collapse in crime is a national thing, not a New York thing.

Crime fell more in NY than most other major cities, though. National trends only can account for so much. Did you make the map? Also, here is a useful chart, maybe:

[Silent Hunter]

The best time to start looking at such figures would be 1924, that's when the BOI, predecessor to the FBI was established.

Data on murder stats historically has the caveat that it was harder to detect in some cases (i.e. poisonings).