July 31, 2006
AN HONEST TO GOODNESS MIRACLE WORKED BY THE THIN BLUE LINE:
New York Cops: Still the Finest (Heather Mac Donald, Summer 2006, City Journal)
New York City has shattered criminology’s central myth, but criminologists remain in denial. Policing, they still insist, can do little to lower crime. Economic inequality, demographic trends, changing drug-use patterns—these determine crime levels, they say, not police tactics. Nevertheless, since 1994, New York City has enjoyed a crime drop unmatched in the rest of the country—indeed, unparalleled in history—and only Gotham’s revolutionary style of policing can explain it. Yet rather than flooding the city to study this paradigm-breaking phenomenon, most criminologists are busy looking the other way.
The dimensions of New York’s crime rout are breathtaking. From 1990 to 2000, four of the seven major felonies—homicide, robbery, burglary, and auto theft—dropped over 70 percent. Crime fell across the country during this period, but in New York it plummeted at twice the national average. By 2000, New York’s crime profile looked more like that of a small suburb than a big city, notes University of California sociologist Frank Zimring, whose forthcoming The Great American Crime Decline is the only major study so far that acknowledges the significance of the city’s crime turnaround. Gotham’s homicide rate in 2000 was half that of the big-city average; its robbery rate, which started out 50 percent higher than that of other big cities in 1990, was 10 percent below the average.
The national crime decline flattened out as the new century began. Some cities that were darlings of the media and the criminologists in the nineties have seen sharp increases in murder. Boston, lauded by the New York Times and others as the kinder, gentler corrective to New York’s allegedly overaggressive policing approach, has suffered its highest murder rate in a decade this year. Milwaukee and Memphis had double-digit homicide spikes in 2005. Philadelphia, Houston, San Francisco, and Kansas City are also seeing their nineties crime gains erode.
Not New York. From 2000 to 2005, the city’s crime rate fell another 30 percent. New York’s twenty-first-century experience is distinctive in the breadth and the depth of the continued decline. Even San Diego, the other favorite un–New York policing success story of the nineties, has not kept up with New York. While Gotham’s crime rate clocked in at 71 percent below its 1990 level in 2004, San Diego mustered a 55 percent decline. “Something qualitatively different is going on in New York,†says Zimring.Posted by Pepys at July 31, 2006 8:22 PM
What a worthless blog. All you clowns do is cut and paste. It'd be nice if you two bozos would put those jelly-filled back on the tray and write some commentary. Bloggers are supposed to be able to write. Right?
Posted by: Dale Andersen at July 31, 2006 8:52 PMHe must be talking about you guys. I haven't had a jelly donut in days.
Posted by: David Cohen at July 31, 2006 9:21 PMGee, tell someone his life's work is a complete waste of time and he takes it personally.
Posted by: David Cohen at July 31, 2006 9:43 PMDo a post about cops, you get a donut reference (of course if it was Los Angeles and Mel Gibson, he'd think they were hanging out at the bagel shop...)
Posted by: John at July 31, 2006 9:45 PMNot "a complete waste of time". It's a scam so that those educated beyond their intellegence can live off of grants instead of having to go out and discover that no one will hire them for a real job. Oh, and I prefer "Chocolate Covered Donettes".
As for the crime drop, two other factors should be mentioned: being so high, New York had higher to fall than most other cities (which is no longer the case), and that it had leadership at the top, in the form of Guiliani, unlike cities like Seattle which seem determined to become what New York was in the '80s.
Billions and billions of blogs to troll, and yours, an average blog in an average solar system on a nondescript spiral arm in an ordinary galaxy in the blogosphere, gets picked. This couldn't possibly have happened by chance, could it?
Posted by: joe shropshire at July 31, 2006 11:30 PMHmmm...what I believe to be my only utterance on this blog about SETI is tenuous and wimpy. I've decided he's referring to you other bozos.
Posted by: Matt Murphy at July 31, 2006 11:33 PMI'm an Apple Fritter kind of guy.
Posted by: Pepys at July 31, 2006 11:55 PMI hope this guy stalks me. It'd be great having him follow me around demanding more of my opinions.
"I demand that you tell me what you think of Katherine Harris' chances!!!"
Posted by: Pepys at August 1, 2006 12:01 AMThis outburst is what he means by "happy childlike role"?
And it's copy and paste, not cut...
Posted by: Jorge Curioso at August 1, 2006 12:03 AM"New York City has shattered criminology’s central myth, but criminologists remain in denial. Policing, they still insist, can do little to lower crime."
Where do the criminologists actually insist this? I was under the impression that they insist than policing is less cost-effective and less humane than targeting social problems with softer measures.
Posted by: Mörkö at August 1, 2006 2:58 AMI had someone the other day tell me that the reason why crime has been dropping is because of all the abortions and that's why abortions are just so darned awesome. Oddly, this person is against the death penalty.
Posted by: Bryan at August 1, 2006 6:35 AMEven worse, Bryan, is that what they meant was abortion of black babies, but just try telling them that they are genocidal fascists.
Posted by: David Cohen at August 1, 2006 7:54 AMOther Brother:
Oddly enough, it was Freakonomics that brought up both discussions. Thanks for the link to the archive - there's a lot of stuff in there that I need to refresh myself on.
You know, I'd kill, steal, burgle, and commit auto theft for a good jelly donut, but there doesn't seem to be one found in the Sunshine State.
Posted by: erp at August 1, 2006 9:40 AMAlthough thrust into the limelight by the Red Sox's World Series win in '04, it remains America's premier Second-Banana city. Its tunnels may be collapsing, but murder is booming. Take that, Gotham!
Posted by: Ed Bush at August 1, 2006 10:28 AMI haven't thought about David Dinkins in years.............
Posted by: ed at August 1, 2006 5:31 PMTrackBack
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From a great article in City Journal (Thanks to Pepys) New York City has shattered criminology’s central myth, but criminologists remain in denial. Policing, they still insist, can do little to lower crime. Economic inequality, demographic trend... [Read More]