Analysis finds racial disparities in summons for minor violations in 'broken windows' policing
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/summons-broken-windows-racial-disparity-garner-article-1.1890567
EXCLUSIVE: Daily News analysis finds racial disparities in summons for minor violations in 'broken windows' policing
Summons for petty infractions are an element of 'broken windows' policing — and roughly 81% of the 7.3 million people hit with violations between 2001 and 2013 were black and Hispanic. Charges that the NYPD's execution of the policy is racially biased have intensified again since Eric Garner was killed July 17 during an attempted arrest for selling loose cigarettes.
BY Sarah Ryley , Laura Bult , Dareh Gregorian
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, August 4, 2014, 2:00 AM
Every morning, hundreds of people line up at the city’s dingy summons courts, clutching pink tickets for such petty infractions as walking through the park after dark, bicycling on the sidewalk, drinking on the street and even spitting.
They are the human faces of the most prevalent but underscrutinized element of “broken windows” policing, a controversial crime-fighting strategy implemented in the 1990s that focuses on aggressively enforcing quality-of-life offenses to deter more serious ones. And these faces are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic men, a Daily News analysis of first-ever released summons statistics has found.
The number of summonses issued each year has soared since “broken windows” was implemented in the early 1990s — from 160,000 in 1993 to a peak of 648,638 in 2005. Although that number has fallen in recent years — to 431,217 last year and down an additional 17% so far this year — writing out violations still remains the most frequent activity of the New York City Police Department, far surpassing felony and misdemeanor arrests combined...
= new reply since forum marked as read
