The Justice Department has criticized a string of police departments nationwide for unfairly targeting blacks, but in its report on the Baltimore police, issued Wednesday, it used its most scathing language to date to denounce the zero-tolerance policing approach that has spread from New York to many departments big and small.

The broken-windows style of policing that New York evangelized with particular fervor during William J. Bratton’s first term as police commissioner is increasingly viewed more as a source of tensions with minority communities than as a successful crime-fighting strategy.

Taking up too much space on a park bench in New York. Spitting in public in Minneapolis. Moving household goods at night in Atlanta. Focusing on small violations to prevent bigger crimes has grown into a cornerstone of policing over recent decades.

But the Justice Department found that critical elements of that approach led to a breakdown in police-community relations in Baltimore and prompted a frenzy of unconstitutional policing aimed at African-Americans that was more about racking up statistics than reducing violent crime.