Quality Of Life (QOL) Policing

Ron Clark describes situational crime prevention as ‘a pre-emptive approach that relies, not on improving society or its institutions, but simple on reducing opportunities for crime’. He identifies three features of measures aimed at situational crime prevention, firstly that they

Arguments have been made that the application of the Broken Windows style of policing leads to negative results for the poor and minority residents of the area impacted. The application of the Broken Windows style of policing did leads to negative results for the poor and minority residents of the area impacted. Fagan & Davies (2000) “When it comes to debating theories of crime and law, some people pretend that race does not matter at all, while others accord it undue, if not determinative, significance. There is now strong empirical evidence that individuals of color are more likely than white Americans to be stopped, questioned, searched, and arrested by police.” For example, according to Fagan & Davies (2000) “The OAG Report showed that stops were disproportionately concentrated in the city 's poorest neighborhoods, neighborhoods with high

Effective tactics and Strategies of enforcement that focus on visible street crime or “quality of Life” crimes.

There is recent controversy over police use of force, especially in minority communities such as in African American communities, Hispanic communities, and other publics with large populations of minorities. Increased levels of force among these communities have created challenges for police departments. These challenges include a lack of trust from the community towards law enforcement officers and an absence of respect creating situations that lead to police use of force. There are already various programs in place that attempt to decrease this challenge by educating the public, respecting one another, and giving those who were on the wrong track second chances. A combination of these solutions and the implementation of more of them would decrease the number of contacts between police and minorities that lead to the use of force (Roberg & Novak, 2014).

The adoption of this policy has exposed a great deal of racism existing in the police force. The worst disparities in arrests between African Americans and whites were in the crimes where officers were given the most discretion, including: possession of small amounts of marijuana, loitering and disorderly conduct. In a study of New Jersey police departments it was found that black people were two to six times more likely to be arrested for these low level crimes(3). When the amount of discretion officers are given goes up, it causes the disparities in arrests to increase. This means there is implicit bias in at least some police officers, against African Americans. While zero tolerance policing is nonsensical and horrific, what it has done is offer a crystal clear window showing the racism indisputably existing in the police force, and the necessity of

The Broken Windows theory is not a sound theory of crime because “the Supreme Court’s 1968 Terry v. Ohio decision established the “reasonable suspicion” threshold for stopping and questioning” (Kelling and Bratton, “Why We Need Broken Windows Policing”) during the Reagan administration which resulted in “a large percentage of those stopped were minorities, and critics and plaintiffs in federal court proceedings questioned whether all these stops could have been based on reasonable suspicion, especially when only 6 percent resulted in arrests” (Kelling and Bratton). Michelle Alexander noted that since the war on drugs, declared by President Reagan, there has been an increased number of whites imprisoned, but they only make up a small proportion compared to African Americans and Latinos (Selby, “The Color of Justice”). The Broken Windows theory is not supported by the stop and frisk enforcement because it led to bigger problems for minorities such as pretext stops to target people who fit the ‘drug-courier profile,’ forfeiture,

Based on the statistics of NYPD’s 2016 second quarterly reports, 1,862 people in the African American community are stopped versus 342 Caucasians (NYPD second quarter reports, 2016). Consequently, this implies policemen classify “blacks” as delinquent even though they are uninvolved in any unlawful acts the majority of the time. The product of racial discrimination furthers the understanding that the country still does not hold minorities equal next to the other ethnicities. This demonstrates just one example on how the Stop and Frisk law variously inflates negative predigest to further the understanding that “blacks” are synonymous with barbarous criminals.

The article “Report suggests NYPD’s ‘broken windows’ policing doesn’t work” discusses the study and report put together by the Department of Investigation that states that the extensive policing of low-level misdemeanors had no effect on the amount of felony crime. Furthermore, this study also found that broken windows policing also disproportionately impacts minority populations as black, Hispanic, and impoverished communities had much higher rates of misdemeanor arrests and court summonses than white communities.

While some argue that America’s police brutality problem is more of an individual issue than a systemic problem, many people find this difficult to believe for a number of reasons. To start with, minorities are unequally targeted by law enforcement due to racial profiling and an ingrained bias against people of color. For example, a black person is 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than a white person. However, marijuana use is relatively equal between whites and blacks. In 2010, 12% of whites and 14% of blacks stated that they had used marijuana within the past year (“Report: The War On Marijuana…”).

For many years in the past, marijuana has been made to look like a dangerous drug, linked to crime and addiction. In the early 1920s and ‘30s most people still did not know what marijuana was or had even heard of it yet. Those who had heard of it were largely uninformed. The drug rarely appeared in the media, but when it did it was linked to crime and even thought to be murder-inducing. A 1929 article in the Denver Post reported a Mexican-American man who murdered his stepdaughter was a marijuana addict (Baird 2011). Articles such as this began to form a long-standing link between marijuana and crime in the public’s mind. Soon, laws against marijuana began coming into place. In 1970, Congress classified

“During the raid, APD officers made anti-gay slurs and forced 60 to 70 men to lie face down on the floor in “spilled beer and broken glass,” “pressed their boots into the back of certain patrons,” and handcuffed some and kicked others” (Geraghty and Velez 2011, 466). What is particularly evident in both cases is that it evolves members of the minority community. The Red Dog unit’s aggressive tactics targeted so called adverse groups deemed by the police department as troublemakers. This is clearly the ideology of broken windows theory. To put it another way, law enforcement believes “members of the lower class have a higher propensity to commit crimes because they disproportionately value the immediate gains and discount future penalties” (Trettien 7,

Discrimination is a known concept that happens everywhere, yet police and prosecutors are blind to it. Their ways of preventing crime are discriminatory in every sense of the word and they categorize people based on their skin color and where they reside. The disproportionate minority contact with the stop and frisk method is one of the ways that discrimination can be seen. “Code of the Street” and “Law and Disorder in Philadelphia” help dissect why discrimination is not seen by police and their agencies and also how police officers and their administration go about ways of preventing crime. The pressure within the police, community, and courts create inequalities for the individuals going through the Criminal Justice System.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss the three different policing strategies known as, broken windows, zero tolerance, and problem oriented policing. Each of these strategies have both their pros and cons throughout this paper I will be describing each of these strategies along with discussing a few articles in relation to these strategies. In light of the recent tension between law enforcement and the community, specifically minorities ill also be discussing how these strategies have either helped or hurt communities.

Situational crime prevention constitutes primary crime prevention measure. This is to say that it is aimed at deterring crime before it occurs. Situational prevention, like other similar primary prevention measures, focuses on subduing crime opportunities instead of the attributes of criminals or even potential criminals. It seeks to curtail opportunities for certain groups of crime by increasing the risks and difficulties associated with them and significantly reducing the rewards. Situational prevention is made up of three key elements: a sound theoretical framework, an authoritative methodology for dealing with specific crimes, and a collection of opportunity-reducing approaches (Felson & Clarke, 1997).

The focus of this paper will be based upon different crime prevention strategies implemented by members of the communities, local and government authorities.