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In the course of doing a little writing about police abolition (I'm pro) I went back and read the original broken windows article ( https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/) . And wow is it a trip. A totally pissing on the rule of law trip. Some excerpts in a THREAD (1/10)
The authors start by identifying the enemy: "disreputable or obstreperous or unpredictable people: panhandlers, drunks, addicts, rowdy teenagers, prostitutes, loiterers, the mentally disturbed" (2/10)
The job of the police is to make up their own rules for behavior---who gets to sit down or lie down, that business owners always win in disagreements with customers---and give arbitrary orders to "sen[d a private citizen] on his way" if those rules are disobeyed. (3/10)
![The job of the police is to make up their own rules for behavior---who gets to sit down or lie down, that business owners always win in disagreements with customers---and give arbitrary orders to "sen[d a private citizen] on his way" if those rules are disobeyed. (3/10)](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EcSNtorXsAsZ7kR.jpg "The job of the police is to make up their own rules for behavior---who gets to sit down or lie down, that business owners always win in disagreements with customers---and give arbitrary orders to \"sen[d a private citizen] on his way\" if those rules are disobeyed. (3/10)")
Those rules, naturally, are enforced with arrests under vague "vagrancy" laws. And the authors openly admit---remember, this is the article that kicked off a revolution in american policing!---that these arrests aren't legal. (4/10)
Back in the good old days, the cops could just beat people up. (But just you wait! See below!) (5/10)
The authors were well aware that the charges under which the police arrested people were totally unbounded---that anyone can be arrested for vagrancy at any time, with no legal standards---and they saw this as a good thing (6/10 )
The open endorsement of "in a sense" injustice is also a cute look (7/10)
And here it is! When bullshit arrests for "vagrancy" aren't arbitrary enough, the authors gleefully endorse the police just "kick[ing] ass" instead! (8/10)
![And here it is! When bullshit arrests for "vagrancy" aren't arbitrary enough, the authors gleefully endorse the police just "kick[ing] ass" instead! (8/10)](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EcSPqapWAAUc-mI.jpg "And here it is! When bullshit arrests for \"vagrancy\" aren't arbitrary enough, the authors gleefully endorse the police just \"kick[ing] ass\" instead! (8/10)")
Due process and fair treatment are, naturally, out the (evidently in broken) window. (9/10)
So, the famous broken windows theory, that people like Rudy Giuliani used as an excuse to inflict endless violence on communities of scholar, was a mockery of the rule of law from the very start. The very idea was advocacy of unrestrained police thuggery. (10/10)
