As Kent noted in yesterday's post, San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system has become a dangerous place for law abiding commuters. Today, Jenna DeAngelis of CBS New York reports that crime is rising in that city's subway system. The NYPD reported a 10.9% increase in assaults on subways over the past year. Over the past three days there were six violent assaults including an attack with a hammer and two stabbings. The city's Transit Workers Union logged a 40% increase in reported assaults on transit employees. Political leaders In both San Francisco and New York have abandoned "broken windows" policing, which had allowed police to crack down on vandalism, drug dealing, turnstile jumping, and other misdemeanors. The logic is quite simple; when you stop enforcing laws against crime the result is more crime.
The distinction drawn by progressive policing advocates between low
level offenses which they believe should not be punished and violent offenses which
most believe should be, ignores the fact that places where
quality-of-life-offenses are tolerated suffer from more violent crime.
Most criminals do not specialize, and while most misdemeants will not
become violent criminals, most serious and violent criminals have
histories of committing misdemeanors. The 1991 crackdown on
farebeating, vagrancy and other misdemeanors in New York's subways
resulted in subway robberies dropping by 55% by 1995. Similar results
followed the implementation of proactive "broken windows" policing on
the streets of New York. Today it has become politically incorrect to
provide the same level protection to law abiding people living or working in most
big American cities. Unfortunately this new normal impacts first and hardest on
the people with no alternative to using public transit.
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