Senator Jesse Hamilton Calls on City to Reform Broken Windows

Councilmember Carlos Menchaca
Chair, Committee on Immigration
New York City Council

Dear Councilmember Menchaca:

I write to urge you to do everything in your power, including holding hearings and authoring legislation, to end broken windows policing. The urgency of policing reform is that much more critical due to the unjust, unwise, and unconstitutional policy undertakings of the Trump administration. Broken windows policing, really the over-policing of minor offenses, has particularly harmful consequences in vulnerable communities, including communities of color and our immigrant communities. Communities of color already have a fraught history with police and broken windows is rubbing salt in an already unhealed wound.

The horrible broken windows policy led police to put Rosan Miller, a seven-months pregnant woman initially approached for grilling outside her home, into the same banned chokehold that had led to Garner’s death.

We must work together with the state to Raise the Age and with the City to end broken windows policing. The vast majority of youth arrests are for minor crimes (74 percent are misdemeanors) including not paying fare (turnstile jumping) for a subway or bus. Over 90% of turnstile jumping arrests in 2016 involved people of color.

Set on a bigoted witch-hunt against immigrants and Muslims, the Trump administration could use broken windows policing as an aid in furthering its deportation agenda and harming our vulnerable New York immigrant communities. In your capacity as Chair of the Committee on Immigration, I believe you are positioned to forcefully make the point on the dangers to our immigrant communities to your colleagues across government.

As I am sure you are aware, broken windows policing has its roots in the Giuliani administration and has been controversial from the outset. An analysis of recent years by the Office of the Inspector General for the NYPD (OIG-NYPD) found “no empirical evidence demonstrating a clear and direct link between an increase in summons and misdemeanor arrest activity and a related drop in felony crime.” OIG-NYPD further found, “Between 2010 and 2015, quality-of-life enforcement rates – and in particular, quality-of-life summons rates – have dramatically declined, but there has been no commensurate increase in felony crime.” The June, 22, 2016 report, “An Analysis of Quality-of-Life Summonses, Quality-of-Life Misdemeanor Arrests, and Felony Crime in New York City, 2010 to 2015,” vindicates the insightful critique leveled at broken windows policing.

Though the OIG-NYPD report, diplomatically, says the NYPD need “carefully evaluate how quality-of-life summonses and misdemeanor arrests fit into its overall strategy for disorder reduction and crime control,” I submit to you that the communities the NYPD serves have already deliberated on the balance of consequences and costs. The community has reached a determination – as expressed in meetings both private and public, at town halls, at precinct-community councils, and elsewhere – and that determination is to end the flawed policy of broken windows policing. I hope you will join us in this important effort to ensure safety and security for the millions of New Yorkers feeling less safe and less secure under an ideology on policing whose values do not match the inclusive New York City we hope to advance.

With Action,

Senator Jesse Hamilton