Which great thinker has done the most to make life better for the people of most modest means? In my view, it is not anyone in the progressive pantheon. It is George Kelling, whose work on policing, where adopted, has made formerly unlivable neighborhoods livable again.
George and James Q. Wilson collaborated writing the original "Broken Windows" article. George stayed with the public order theme, working with enlightened police departments and taking on political groups that claimed to be concerned about the poor but were actually working to make their neighborhoods into hellholes.
George passed away yesterday. I am honored to have worked with him, to have made a small contribution to his noble effort, and to call him my friend. Heather MacDonald has this obituary in the City Journal.
George Kelling and Jim Wilson were members of our Foundation's Academic Review Board for the very reasons expressed in Heather MacDonald's excellent tribute. They ignored politics and followed the data. While they were roundly criticized by academia, professional law enforcement saw the wisdom in public order policing and law abiding residents and shop owners in high crime districts benefited as their neighborhoods were transformed. The squalor on the streets of LA, Seattle, New York, and San Francisco is the result of abandoning public order policing, and serious crime is increasing in these places. Just like George Kelling said it would.
Aren't crime rates are record and historic modern lows in NYC? Here is the start of a recent NY Daily News article:
Crime in New York dropped in all seven major categories in March, helping push the city’s overall crime rate to an all-time low for any quarter in at least 25 years, the NYPD said Tuesday.
Every reported index crime — murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny auto — fell last month compared to March 2018. Overall crime was down 6.2%, making it the lowest rate for any March since 1994, when police started tracking crimes using the CompStat system
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-pol-nypd-crime-statistics-repeat-offenders-20190402-3go5imi6fzfnzfv6tx76tj6rn4-story.html
My understanding is that crime in up out west, but the data does not seem to support the assertion that "abandoning public order policing" has led to any increase in serious crime in NYC.
Has public order policing in fact been abandoned in New York to the extent it has in San Francisco? As noted at the end of MacDonald's piece, some controversial practices were erroneously conflated with public order policing, Kelling himself strove to disassociate Broken Windows from them, and the abandonment of those does not constitute abandonment of public order policing.
However, she says, "worrisome signs abound that the NYPD, beaten down by a determined, tireless opposition, is losing its previously unwavering determination to nip street incivility in the bud." That is quite different from an assertion that public order policing already has been abandoned, and that is was long enough ago to be showing up in crime statistics.
There are lags between policy changes and effects, and that is especially true where the changes work indirectly though changes in the culture. NYPD's culture was deeply changed in the Kelling/Bratton/Kelly years, and those changes won't be erased overnight even with a fool atop NYC's government. Broken Windows policing, in turn, works through a change in the local culture of the neighborhood. If MacDonald's concerns come to pass, we will likely see an increase in crime in New York, but we won't see it overnight.
You might be right Douglas, the March numbers reported by the city may be the start of a longer term drop in crime, but the FBI Preliminary Crime Report for 2018 I was looking at paints a different picture, reporting that violent crime in NYC was up, including murder, rape, and aggravated assault, with property crime up as well. Now that report only covers the first six months of last year but it is complemented by multiple stories of increased crime on the subway which was a harbinger for the city 30 years ago. Like the other places I mentioned, now that public order offenses are no longer punished, the population of vagrants is increasing dramatically, another harbinger for rising crime. Time will tell us if these signals predict what they did when Professor Kelling identified them.