Broken Windows

So I have been doing an awful lot of thinking of late about a few things seeming to be tieing themselves together to some extent. I had a long conversation with a beat cop working in Bed-Stuy, and some other less lengthy conversations with multiple other cops throughout the city. I've also paid a decent amount of attention over my life to criminality and poverty issues. One of my best friends is a vice cop in Manhattan north, my stepfather is a retired corrections officer. etc. I have at times in the past, and am now spending all this time on the ground now watching and talking to people in areas of high crime and/or policing, not to mention seeing the crack down on Occupy by the police first hand.

In the 1990's Rudy Giuliani implemented a “broken windows” policy where even the smallest crime went punished – the squidgy guys for example - and the slightest blemish in a neighborhood was strictly brought to justice. To most people this was a great success. Crime in NYC is incredibly lower than it was in the 1980's and early 1990's (as it is in most of the country), and of course it's tough to argue that policing did not play some role in that. Obviously there are countless factors playing in on this, from the war on drugs, to mass incarceration, to the economic booms of the late 1990's, etc.  But that is for another time, what I am interested in in this sense is strategy and balance. I should also say that I am no professional criminologist. I have done some academic work through my sociology degrees to familiarize myself with the field and concepts. That being said, I am not going to try to raise a sound critique of the broken windows campaign, as I do not have the knowledge at this time to really do that. But what I would like to do is raise some questions and make some observations on what I'm seeing right now. While I see this policy at work in communities such as Bed-Stuy and the South Bronx, I also see this policy at work with Occupy Wall St. The police force seems to identify targets - “impact zones”, high risk areas, or times/people they seek to target and they make an emphasis on their policing of those people/places. They apply this "broken windows" strategy pointedly in these areas, where they believe even the smallest thing - such as a broken window - can lead to a general feeling of lawlessness or lack of local pride.

Now of course it makes complete sense to put more attention and policing in areas of high crime, especially given current discourse and crime prevention theories. But I would love to see a little awareness of what their tactics and strategies mean for these neighborhoods, not to mention that using them as the sole tactic is grossly incomplete. When 93 out of 100 people surveyed in Brownsville, Brooklyn have been stopped and frisked, yet you can stand on any corner in the West Village in Manhattan and never see it, there is something drastic happening. According to the NAACP's fact sheet:

• About 14 million Whites and 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug

• 5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites

• African Americans represent 12% of the total population of drug users, but 38% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 59% of those in state prison for a drug offense.

• African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months). (Sentencing Project)

With such glaring disparities - and drug use/selling being colorblind - something truly odd is happening.  You mean to tell me there aren't many drugs in Greenwich Village?  

These tactics are targeting an entire geographic area and assuming that simply by living there that a person is a criminal. Yes, this may come to paper in terms of probability, but it comes to people's lives as them being assumed to be criminals. And yes, there is certainly a racial component to this as well, or at least a profiling component. I live in bed-stuy for the most part right now. I go out at night, I walk around, I've never been stopped and frisked. No one every gives me a hard time. I'm white, clean cut enough, and dressed in a manner that doesn't seem to draw the ire of the police. I don't have to worry about my safety or my freedom as I walk down the street. Not because of anything I've done, but who I am, what I am. There is something inherently wrong with this. Are you policing high crime neighborhoods? Are you policing individuals? Are you policing appearances? Are you simply policing profiles?

Sure this is the way police work gets done, you work on hunches, on suspicions, and yes, on profiles and probabilities. And yes, I am well aware that these hunches can suppress crime. But what else are the suppressing?  Whole communities?  What are they doing to society and specifically to the specific societies that are being heavily policed?

The black and brown communities have been dealing with this for an eternity, and now I can see it in Occupy Wall St. No one cared at all about the cops when we got down to the park. I talked to cop after cop, chatted with anyone. I even saw other occupiers that seemed to have a really strong distaste for the cops as being so militant, shouting them down.  the saw them as against the people and the movement. I didn't see it. I now see where they were coming from. Most of the people I saw doing this I now know to be long term activists, they had seen what I and we were about to see.

We became targets of heavy policing. And with this, my perception of the police changed. Yes, I always had a real problem with police abusing their power. But I always saw it as individuals and power, and control. With a badge some people would take advantage. I hated those people, I hated aggressive abuse of power policing. But that was the few. Now I have seen that this can be systemic. Once we were kicked out of the park, it was the police's job to suppress us, to keep us from going places, doing things, and having much of a voice. It was at this point that it seems to me, that the NYPD started using broken windows styled tactics against us.

We were now for whatever reason lumped in to that criminal category that anyone in a high crime area, or seen fit to be targeted (i.e. muslims) would and has experienced for decades and even centuries. Broken windows. Everything is scrutinized, every movement watched, provocateurs, undercovers, anyone and everyone that has reason to disrupt us has seen fit to. The police are no different. They have a strategy and they are implementing it. Accusing us of being terrorists, or attempted terrorists. Acting like they would even have a country if it wasn't for protesters such as those that went to the Boston tea party and voiced their frustration at a lack of democratic voice. What are we talking about today? A lack of a democratic voice. Corporations and wealthy individuals have taken it from us, just as the wealthy aristocracy never gave it to the colonists. But, yeah here we are, we're working on taking our democracy back. But unfortunately we're running up against some broken glass that we didn't break, but we're getting blamed for. Yes, you. You one percenters. You in positions of power, you puppet masters. We have had enough and we are tired of not only cleaning up your broken glass, but getting blamed for it. It is not us, it is not our system. It is yours, and we're not gong to take it anymore.      

Local Development

So on Wednesday night I met for nearly two hours with Ed Lynch the city of Newburgh's Director of Planning and Development.  It was quite a good conversation.  He is a former Peace Corps volunteer that has done a decent amount of work in South America (which immediately put us on the right page).  He most recently spent 17 years in a similar position in New Rochelle and seems to have turned that city in a positive direction in terms of crime, quality of life, and economics - this includes a 40 story Trump tower there.  When I was growing up, New Rochelle did not have a good reputation, yet it seems to now.  So if blanketed results are the measure of "success", he seems to have been successful in "New Ro".  I am not sure of the specifics of how it was done, and who flourished and/or was marginalized in the process, but he has a record of change. 

While Ed did have some very interesting thoughts and ideas regarding my work in Africa, we spent most of the time on Newburgh.  Just to put a few things out there, the city had a 25% tax increase in 2010, and will have anywhere from a 61-74% tax increase this year.  The city had to borrow millions of dollars from New York State just to pay the salaries for its workers for the end of 2010.  Also (and I heard this elsewhere), there is also discussion of dissolving the City of Newburgh entirely.  Yes, just shutting the whole thing down.  It would then have to be absorbed into the Town of Newburgh - which doesn't seem to be very interested in taking over this disaster.  There has been previous mismanagement of state and federal money's due to lack of manpower and maybe even incompetence to the point that some of this money may have to be given back.  Ten's of thousands of dollars of money being wasted on national searches for individual positions, and then local behind the scenes hirings from the old-boy network.  Corruption or the implication of it, seems to be either a common perception or an assumed undercurrent in everything.  There is no supermarket, there is no pharmacy, public transport is minuscule, the streets are dilapidated, the underground economy is rampant, yesterday saw 31 gang members indicted - including three on separate murder charges, and there is no money to do anything about any of it, never mind hope.  Suffice it to say, "Newburgh" gets worse every day...  I can't even fathom how a city like this can provide virtually no services to its citizens.  It is amazing.  

Maybe we should set up a plywood factory? :(

So what next?  The city has brought in new blood to try to right the ship.  Ed is among many new faces.  He claims that 60-70% of the department heads are new and they are trying to change both the culture of the administration and a gross history of financial mismanagement.  They mostly seem to be coming from successful areas in the lower Hudson Valley.  Ed, seems to me to be a person that has a good head on his shoulders and some quality experience to lean on.  Word on the streets about him though is quite skeptical (but then again, pretty much all the words on the street in Newburgh are skeptical).  He has been in office for seven months and it is claimed by some that the stances he seems to be taking don't necessarily back up some of my initial perceptions of him.  But everyone has a point and an agenda, and Ed's position is one of trying to balance all of these.  There are inherently going to be people that don't agree with what is done.  He is part of an institution, a bureaucratic and deeply ingrained developmental institution that resonates throughout the entire US and world socio-economic system.  I for one, as most readers here know, am interested in alternative ideas and new ways of thinking.  

As with anything, I am not going to jump in and use other's interpretations to run with. Time on the ground and local interaction is the only true to way to come to independent conclusion.  There is always a million ways to do things, and within them there is never a "right" answer.  So Newburgh, I will continue to learn all I can about you, your people, and your culture...  It is going to be a fun ride. 
 

Back on the ground and walking...

So I've written this once, and thanks again to blogger, lost it all.  So we'll have to write it again, and with less time for it. 

I spent the day yesterday in Newburgh.  It was so nice to get back on foot, learning at the real pace of life...  I had a meeting set up in the afternoon and sandwiched some other informal discussion and touristing around it.  I started with the library where I was hoping to find some information or statistics on local situations, economics, crime, etc.  They really don't have anything of the sort, only a local history section, and in fact the city doesn't even have anything either.  I did however get sent to talk to the library's two people that work on outreach programs.  I had a very nice informal chat with them about the city and the goings on.  They recommended a few places worth looking into that I will get into later today or tomorrow as I have meetings over there both days.  I also met another gentlemen that works with Latinos Unidos and came to visit one of the Library workers that works with them.  They rent office space for under $300 dollars a month on broadway there in Newburgh.  They said the incorporation process was long, like five years for them.  I can't see how that is, but they are all volunteer so maybe it took a while longer. 

From there I went to my meeting with Community Voices Heard.  This meeting went quite well despite the standard overworked and no time having staff that you tend to find in non-profits.  I really liked what they are doing, trying to bring the community closer together in terms of political voice.  Some of the things that they want to do in terms of material outputs and opportunities are things that I had already been thinking about.  They could certainly be someone worth communicating and cooperating with regularly.  But I will be careful not to align myself with anyone, especially in the beginning.  From all discussion thus far it seems that sides have been taken and things are quite obstinate there.  On a positive note, I also did get to speak to two of the members of Community Voices that came in during the discussion, and while the meeting did leave many of my questions unasked, I got a little more back in terms of community input than I expected.  The meeting left a lot wanting, which is a good thing...

On the way to that meeting though I had a chance to wonder the streets a bit.  I tell you what...  Newburgh is a disaster.  I would not feel it to be a stretch at all to say that  every third building is boarded up and vacant where I was.  At Community Voices they said that the city owned something like 200 vacant properties - in a city of 4 square miles!  This doesn't even include derelict privately owned buildings.  It shows.  The streets are all but vacant (at least until it got dark), and there is this air of hopelessness that wafts through the air.  There is so much to be done.

I stopped and chatted with a cop for a few minutes as well, speaking of hopelessness.  Now, I would expect a cop to be cynical, but he said flat out: "not gonna happen, never."  He'd been working for 17 years in Newburgh, and sees no hope: "They don't want to make it better, they like the lifestyle."  "They want their handouts and they will use violence to get them".  Amazing, yet unsurprising.  Can anyone find me a cop in any city in the world that is optimistic?!  They are surrounded every day by the criminals of society, so they don't see the hope.  But everyone has it somewhere.  He did say though that, within a four block radius of where we were standing that there had been 8 murders in three years.  "Blood alley" he called it.  The street we were standing on was where they FBI made most of its arrests in the 76 person gang sting last year. 

So after those and some other words of warning, I headed on my way - wondering how in the world they would ever get people or business to locate in the city with a sales pitch like that!  This was a general theme of a lot that day.

There was however one certainly amusing moment for me on my way back to the car.  I walked by a group of youngish guys in front of a store.  I of course made my friendly eye contact and a nod.  One kid then came running over with a bootleg DVD, "The Mechanic" with my brother from another mother Jason Statham in the leading role.  I laughed, and said with a smile, yeah but do you accept EBT?  He looked at me with this puzzled look of incomprehension on his face.  Food Stamps... I said, breaking him away from his puzzlement.  A startled shiver came across his face, like, wait, but this doesn't make sense, this dude's white!!  lol!!  Yes my friend, we're all poor in one way or another these days...        

Danger!!!!

So I have slowly been getting an increasing number of questions about safety and the impending 'danger' I will be facing.  I just thought I'd make a few comments on some of this.  Yes, it is West Africa.  Yes, Sierra Leone has had an absolutely brutal civil war recently.  But it is over and has been for eight years now.  The country is progressing quite well by developing country standards.  Violent crime is not a particular issue and I am not overly concerned about anything of the sort.  There is of course property crime, such as burglaries, muggings, pick-pockets, etc.  But we can find all this right here in the US.  The south Bronx?  Even right here in teh Hudson Valley, Newburgh, NY is a disaster.

However, if proof you desire, proof we have!!!  Not only did the UN greatly scale down its peacekeeping presence over the last several years, and the 2007 elections were generally viewed as fair by international observers, but we also have the Global Peace Index which tracks global safety by country.  Sierra Leone is ranked number 53 int his study, ahead of China (80), Brazil ((83), and.... yes, you guessed it... the United States at 85th!!  For the most part Sierra Leone is ranked in good standing throughout the study.  It certainly has a few laggards though.  With violent crime Sierra Leone is in the third out of five tiers, but it shares this with that "last on the list" American and German tourist destination... Italy!?!  ;)  In relation to the 'perceived' criminal threat in society it is again in the third tier, along with much of southern Europe, Spain, and Great Britain.  Of the other indicators, political instability and ease of access to small arms are the only ones really that are not in the first or second tiers.  And to put that in context, for access to small arms it is the same as the United States (though that doesn't say much).  You can download the full report here, or click here for a more fun interactive experience...

There is another indicator that bring us a bit more to some of the negative realities the country faces, but is more about possibilities than realities.  The Failed States Index for 2010 shows Sierra Leone as between the 29th and 32nd least stable country in the world.  The main issues faced are those common throughout the developing world: population pressures, economic decline, lack of public services, and uneven development.  All of these can put pressure on petty crime and property crime and should in no way be diminished by my playful tone in this post.  People in Sierra Leone are struggling, hence their Human Development Index of 180 out of 182, but in recovering from the war this has not translated directly into oppressive crime statistics like you see in many other less stable or economically depressed countries.  

Would you steal from him??

Basically, I see it as this, it is not going to be the worst or best place I've ever been, though it will certainly be the poorest.  It is most likely going to be closer to the worst though, but if you are savvy, pay attention to what you are doing and your things, there will not be a problem.  And what is the difference between having to do that there or any other place in the world?  Yes, I will be a target as a white person, but I am certainly not going to be looking like a high roller - what with my backpack, straggly clothes, Vibram 'barefoot' shoes, and general disinterest in and/or lack of the means to be the cleanest guy around.  In Freetown, in the bad sections, yeah, it wouldn't be smart to wonder around at night like I had money and no worries.  I will need to watch me things and back as I would anywhere.  But I could just as easily be an interesting novelty as I could be a target.  I straggly dirty looking white guy from New York?  These things sometimes endear people to you and their own curiosities take over.  Maybe... just maybe... I'll just be so damn friendly and interesting that everyone will want to be my friend!!!  LOL!!!!