1/ I was really troubled watching @SRuhle, a journalist, defend @MikeBloomberg running not only as a billionaire but as someone who was a big proponent of the racist policy Stop & Frisk. She cited statistics that have been proven to not be associated with Stop & Frisk. Thread:
2/First, some history, & #39;Stop and Frisk& #39; was born out of & #39;Broken Windows& #39;. The genesis of this theory born in 1969. A psychologist Philip Zimbardo, left one car on a street in the Bronx and another on a street in Palo Alto, CA both with their hoods up and w/o license plates.
3/ The car placed in the Bronx was stripped within 24-hours. The car in California was untouched for a week. It wasn& #39;t until Zimbardo smashed its windows and hood with a sledgehammer that it invited vandalism. Zimbardo concluded that a broken window "encourages crime."
4/To Zimbardo a broken window denotes neglect and a lack of care. Without monitoring, it begets more crime. When political scientist James Q. Wilson & criminologist George L. Kelling read the results of this experiment, they extrapolated that our surroundings "communicates" to us
5/In their interpretation, u2018Broken Windowsu2019 symbolizes that a community lacks u201cinformal social controlu201d and is helpless or unwilling to care for and defend itself against an impending "criminal" element.
6/This theory was quickly picked up by incoming Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani called himself a u201cdiscipleu201d of the creators of the u2018Broken Windowsu2019 theory stating:
u201cThereu2019s nobody that understands Broken Windows theory as well as I do, except Police Commissionaire Bill Bratton."
u201cThereu2019s nobody that understands Broken Windows theory as well as I do, except Police Commissionaire Bill Bratton."
7/ When Bratton was newly appointed as police commish by Giuliani he viewed those w/o windows, the homeless, as "scourges to NYC". Bratton said u201cWe& #39;re going to flush [homeless people] off the street in the same successful manner in which we flushed them out of the subway system.u201d
8/Guliani was replaced by an Independent, Mayor Michael Bloomberg who would transform u2018Broken Windowsu2019 into the u2018Stop and Frisku2019 policy. This policy would disproportionately target Black & Latinx people at a ratio of 9 to 1; of which over 90% were found to be completely innocent.
9/After 3 decades of NYC jails filling up w/ petty & nonviolent crimes because of Broken Windows, it was finally debunked by NYU Sociologist David Greenberg, and Harvard, & Northeastern Universities as well as the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement.
10/While NYC leaders had boasted that historic drops in crime rates they had failed to explain why other cities around the country had the same drop of crime but did not have a Broken Windows policy. ( #Bloomberg2020? Hell no.)
11/ While NYC officials had bragged that "disorder" had become "order", the statics tell us a different story. While crime went down by 60%, police misconduct went up by 60%. Which are we defining as the u2018disorderu2019?
12/We can directly trace Eric Garner& #39;s death and Kalief Browder arrest and then suicide to NYCu2019s racist Broken Windowu2019s policy as petty crimes like selling single cigarettes and/or allegedly shoplifting were the cornerstone of the policy. So @MikeBloomberg apology NOT ACCEPTED.
13/ In conclusion, what lenses were these three men viewing these "Broken Windows" with? James Q. Wilson would join American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank as would George L. Kelling when he joined The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.