Friday, January 30, 2015
Fundraising neighbors
In this feel-good story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, neighbors and a bank rally to help homeowner Aretha Robertson come up with a delinquent tax payment. Her neighbors held a rummage sale and barbeque to raise funds. The city of Milwaukee therefore does not have to seize their home and charge the family rent to keep living there.
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Broken Windows, Chicago Style
For several days
after 9/11/01, the United States grounded air traffic. Recognizing an unplanned
experiment, enterprising scientists studied the effects on air pollution and
temperature. In the weeks since the ambush murders of two police officers, New
York City has hosted another natural experiment. NYPD officers engaged in a work
slowdown. Although they still responded to major crimes, police stopped policing
low-level crime. With few arrests and parking tickets, the city can expect a
drop in revenue. The slowdown tests an assertion of Broken Windows Theory: do
major crimes spike when minor crimes flourish?
In 1982 scholars George Kelling and
James Q. Wilson argued in The Atlantic
that allowing small problems to go unchecked encouraged crime. Broken windows
signal a neglected place that is a good target for other malfeasance. Kelling
and Wilson also lamented the transformation of policing away from beat cops
maintaining local order, to officers in cars responding to 911 emergency calls.
Intuitively appealing, Broken Windows Theory prompted shifts in policing across
the US.
The New York Police
Department directed police officers to enforce quality of life ordinances. For
example, NYPD cracked down on “Squeegee Men,” street entrepreneurs who
pre-emptively washed drivers’ windshields and then demanded a fee. NYPD also
implemented its now-notorious Stop-and-Frisk policy. As is now widely
recognized, most people stopped under this program were black and Latino.
Chicago also implemented Broken Windows
Theory, but with a local difference. The Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy
(CAPS) put police on thousands of foot patrols. The idea was that beat cops and
residents would get to know each other, aiding crime prevention and resolution.
But CAPS also aimed to increase what sociologist Robert Sampson calls
“collective efficacy.” CPD’s version of community policing focused on getting
Chicagoans to work together on solving local environmental problems.
CPD employs dozens
of civilian community organizers to nurture block clubs, which the Chicago
Urban League introduced to the city in the 1910s. Block clubs decide which issues
matter most and do what they can to improve their surroundings. They beautify
parkways with flowers and throw BBQ “smokeouts” to deter drug dealing. At beat
meetings, CAPS liaison officers hear residents’ concerns about which buildings
have code violations and where broken windows threaten their sense of safety. CAPS
officers are charged with connecting local complaints to the right city
departments.
For the past two decades, New York
and Chicago have been running independent experiments in what Broken Windows
Theory means. In New York, police officers’ discretion to harass and arrest
pedestrians for victimless offenses has clearly inflicted costs on residents
and police-community relations. Tickets for disorderly conduct fill the city’s
coffers, make it hard for poor people to pay their other debts, and damage
community goodwill. Broken windows policing led to the arrest of Eric Garner,
which resulted in his death, the murder of two police officers, and the NYPD
slowdown.
In Chicago, residents get to identify which broken windows need boarding up. They can send the police after a bad landlord but ask them to leave the kids alone. This is not to say that Chicago policing is flawless, or that everyone in a neighborhood agrees which problems need addressing. But cultivating block clubs is a savvy public relations strategy for CPD. Block clubs help Chicagoans address real local nuisances and provide democratic input into allocating city resources. The results of New York and Chicago’s broken windows experiments are probably not different crime rates, which are down all over. Instead, look to police-community relations and the scale of outrage when something untoward does happen.
In Chicago, residents get to identify which broken windows need boarding up. They can send the police after a bad landlord but ask them to leave the kids alone. This is not to say that Chicago policing is flawless, or that everyone in a neighborhood agrees which problems need addressing. But cultivating block clubs is a savvy public relations strategy for CPD. Block clubs help Chicagoans address real local nuisances and provide democratic input into allocating city resources. The results of New York and Chicago’s broken windows experiments are probably not different crime rates, which are down all over. Instead, look to police-community relations and the scale of outrage when something untoward does happen.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Cannabis
In years of researching Chicago block clubs, I've seen evidence that block clubs discussed all kinds of local issues. Concerns normally include topics like traffic, abandoned buildings and irresponsible landlords, children, vacant lots, and taverns. But this is a new one to me: cannibis.
More than 60 members of the Winona Foster Carmen Winnemac (WFCW) Block Club voted to support the application of a medical marijuana dispensary to open up nearby. Historically, block clubs try to push out nuisances, so this is an important indicator about the social meaning of medical marijuana in the 21st century.
More than 60 members of the Winona Foster Carmen Winnemac (WFCW) Block Club voted to support the application of a medical marijuana dispensary to open up nearby. Historically, block clubs try to push out nuisances, so this is an important indicator about the social meaning of medical marijuana in the 21st century.
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