Heh, no endorsement implied of the odious, pencil neck geek w/ bow tie, George Will, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/29/ED18841.DTL , since I'd rather take the policy advocacy of say, Jerome Skolnick, http://www.prospect.org/print/V11/10/skolnick-j.html who was one of the radical criminologists who wrote, "The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove, " in the 70's.
> ...Between 1991 and 1999, more professional policing, with an assist from
> demography (fewer young males), reduced violent crime nationally more
> than 25 percent. In New York City between 1993 and 2001, thanks largely
> to measures instituted while Bratton was Mayor Rudy Giuliani's police
> commissioner between 1994 and 1996, crime was reduced 64 percent --
> including a 75 percent decrease in gun homicides.
This change, of a magnitude that social science rarely records, primarily benefited low-income minorities living in neighborhoods infested with predators -- mostly minority predators preying on minorities.
But successful policing, which led to "disparate" arrest patterns, produced complaints about police. Complainers cited the disparities as prima facie proof of racial profiling. But the racial profile of the beneficiaries of better policing is mostly minorities, released from imprisonment in their homes, free to venture into the streets.
Last October Bratton came west, and he is "amazed at how much goes on out here." This is the most lightly policed of America's major cities -- 470 square miles policed by 9,309 officers. To match New York City's ratio of police to population, LAPD would need 18,000 officers. Divide LAPD's uniformed force into shifts, allow for administrative duties, vacations and sick leave, and only 500 to 600 officers, and fewer than 170 patrol cars, are on the streets of this horizontal metropolis at a typical moment. Hence the always two and often three police helicopters constantly in the air, coordinating ground patrols.
Counterterrorism responsibilities consume up to 30 percent of Bratton's time as he helps police a region that is a also a simmering stew of ethnicities that give rise to gangs that have 100,000 members in Los Angeles County...
-- Michael Pugliese