THE UNTIPPING POINT :

Graffiti, Rats Make Comeback as Quality of Life Starts Sliding : "It's 1989 All Over Again"
(BENJAMIN SMITH, NY Sun)

Graffiti is a symbol of urban blight, and the paint-covered subways of the 1970s and 1980s became a dominant image of New York's slide toward chaos. Now, with the city's finances uncertain and its longtime enforcer of public order, Rudolph Giuliani, out of office, some have pointed to new scrawls popping up from the South Bronx to Bay Ridge to raise the specter of a new descent.

Leading the doomsayers is Martin Golden, a Republican member of the City Council from Brooklyn who, with Council Member Michael Nelson, introduced a resolution calling on the state to reclassify graffiti as a felony.

"Graffiti is on the move, and it's not being acted on," Mr. Golden said. "It's starting to get out of hand, and if this crime is going to get out of hand, then there are going to be others that get out of hand."

"It¹s 1989 all over again," Mr. Golden said, noting that putting graffiti writers away for hard time would "send a message." [...]

Quality of life is notoriously difficult to measure, and despite a plan to start computerized tracking of minor violations, there is no reliable index of New York's graffiti levels.

Mr. Bloomberg, who has been careful to maintain the impression that he is holding the line on Mr. Giuliani's "quality of life" approach to government, picked up a paint roller and splattered the cuff of a well-cut pinstripe suit last month at a press conference in Greenpoint to draw attention to his anti-graffiti task force.

"Graffiti is not just an eyesore; it is an invitation to criminals and a message to citizens that we don't care," Mr. Bloomberg said.

There was a 34% decline in graffiti arrests--meaning, perhaps, a decline in enforcement, in the months after September 11, according to the mayor's management report. And Bruce Penkner, the president of a company that removes graffiti, Graffiti Answers, says he¹s also registered the change.

"There's definitely been more graffiti in the last 10, 11 months," Mr. Penkner said.

Maybe one of the problems with an idea like "broken-window policing" is that it is so simple that people just refuse to believe the magnitude of the change it can cause. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 6, 2002 8:22 PM