Some of you may have noticed a pattern in our "national conversation about race" in which the focus of attention has shifted from racist cops to institutional racism of police departments and now, is focused squarely on the "broken windows" theory of policing, so-named for an article in the Atlantic Monthly by Harvard Prof. James Q. Wilson, based on his research of many years on the tolerance of petty crime in urban areas. There has been a blizzard of articles like this one over the last two weeks, executed on cue. Be prepared to hear [these] arguments in Derrick Jackson's piece over and over, in the media and on FB.

Having lived in Boston and later in NYC during both the late Koch years through Giuliani's first term, I saw this proactive method of policing introduced, and it produced results within one year. Most people, however, have no memory or knowledge of what it was like to live in a place where every public park, train, wall was defaced with graffiti and gang markers, where tot lots were used for drug deals in the open daylight, where muggings were a routine occurrence and the victim was blamed for "being there at that hour of night" or for "what she was wearing," etc. People don't remember putting the "NO RADIO" sign in your windshield after you'd lost several of them already and had given up replacing them.