Bratton Vital
To Green's Chances
Sensing he might be in a trap, you could almost see Mark Green's mind working as he talked about public safety with a group of Daily News journalists last week.
The question was simple: How would Green's management style affect the Police Department if he becomes mayor?
As a self-described liberal, Green has long suffered the perception that he's soft on crime — a tag you don't want if you want to be mayor. So Green has spent the past year insisting that he "understands and appreciates" what Mayor Giuliani has done to make New York safer than it's ever been.
"I would never, ever do anything that would take us back to when people were afraid to walk the streets," Green told me six months ago, a point he was eager to hammer again when he spoke at The News.
"I'm a hands-on manager," Green answered reflexively. But then, detecting the collective wince, he backpedaled. "I'll be setting the policies," Green said. "I believe in delegating responsibility to good managers and holding them accountable after I have set the direction."
However he might actually operate as mayor, the "good manager" Green has enlisted to advise him about crime is Bill Bratton, Giuliani's first police commissioner and the man nearly everyone expects Green to tap for a second tour if he wins....
US Exports Zero Tolerance Penal 'common sense' comes to Europe Loïc Wacquant Le Monde Diplomatique / The Guardian Weekly, April 1999, pages 1, 10-11. Translated by Tarik Wareh
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The Manhattan Institute was soon consecrated as the premier "idea factory" of the New American Right, federated around the triptych of free market, individual responsibility and patriarchal values. In the early 1990s the institute organised a conference on "the quality of life". Its dual premise was that the "sanctity of public space" is indispensable to urban life, and that the "disorder" in which the poorer classes revel is the natural breeding ground for crime. Among the participants in this "debate" was the star prosecutor of New York City, Rudolph Giuliani, who had just lost the mayoral elections to the black Democrat David Dinkins, and who would draw from it the themes of his victorious campaign of 1993. In particular, he adopted the guiding principles of the police and criminal justice policy that would turn New York into the world showcase for the doctrine of "zero tolerance" that gives the forces of law and order carte blanche to hunt out petty crime and drive the homeless back into dispossessed neighbourhoods.
Again it was the Manhattan Institute that vulgarised the "broken window theory" formulated in 1982 by James Q Wilson and George Kelling in an article published by Atlantic Monthly magazine. A derivation of the popular saying, "He who steals an egg, steals an ox", this so-called theory maintains that by fighting inch-by-inch the small disorders of every day, one can vanquish the large pathology of urban crime. The Manhattan Institute's Centre for Civic Initiative, whose objective is "to research and promulgate creative, free-market solutions to urban problems", financed and promoted the book by Kelling and Catherine Coles, Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities.[3] This theory, though it has never been validated, served as a criminological alibi for the reorganisation of police work spurred on by police chief William Bratton.
The primary aim of this reorganisation is to soothe the fears of the middle and upper classes -- those who vote -- by continually harassing the poor in public spaces. Three means are deployed to achieve this goal: large increases in the manpower and equipment of the police, the devolution of operational responsibilities to local superintendents with mandatory target goals, and a computerised monitoring system that allows the ongoing redeployment and almost instantaneous intervention of police forces. This results in an inflexible enforcement of the law, particularly against such minor nuisances as drunkenness, disturbing the peace, begging, solicitation and "other anti-social behaviours associated with the homeless", according to Kelling's own terminology.
City authorities and the media credit this new policy for the decline in the crime rate posted by New York City in recent years. In doing so they ignore two salient facts: the decline preceded the introduction of these police tactics by three years, and crime has also dropped in cities that have not applied these measures. Among the "lecturers" invited last year by the Manhattan Institute to a forum to enlighten the upper crust of politics, journalism, and philanthropic and research foundations on the East Coast was former police chief Bratton, promoted to "international consultant" in urban policing. Bratton has cashed in on the glory of having "reversed the crime epidemic" in New York City with his autobiography, in which he preaches the new credo of "zero tolerance" to the four corners of the globe[4] -- beginning with the United Kingdom, the first country to welcome these policies on their way to the conquest of Europe.
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[4]Knobler and Bratton, Turnaround: How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic, Random House, New York, 1998.