New York City police officers. | AP Photo/Mary Altaffer Report casts doubt on link between 'broken windows' and felony crime drop NYPD assails findings, but advocates say it proves their point about bias

There is no “clear, direct link” between quality-of-life summonses and misdemeanor arrests and a drop in felony crime, according to a report published Wednesday by the city’s Department of Investigation and the agency's Inspector General for the NYPD.

The report also said there was a racial disparity in “the distribution of quality-of-life enforcement activity” which was “concentrated” in areas with “high proportions of black and Hispanic residents, New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residents and males aged 15-20.


According to the report, there are “more summonses issued than expected in precincts with large black and Hispanic populations” and that “felony crime rates do not explain the increased summonses.”

An NYPD spokesman called the report "deeply flawed" for not stating that police often respond to requests for help from the public, and for looking at data starting in 2010, when felony crimes were already low and years after police first began making quality-of-life enforcement actions.

The report is a boost to critics of so-called "broken windows" policing, who have long complained that the more punitive aspects of that strategy have unfairly affected poor residents and New Yorkers of color, without bringing about safer streets.

Mark Peters, the DOI commissioner, said the report called into question "some long-held assumptions” about the impact these enforcement tactics have on safety.

The report analyzed data from 2010 and 2015 — covering the third term of former mayor Michael Bloomberg and the first two years of his successor, Bill de Blasio. During that time, the NYPD issued 1,839,414 “quality-of-life” summonses for offenses like public urination, disorderly conduct, drinking alcohol in public and possessing small amounts of marijuana.

During that time, “felony crime, with a few exceptions, declined along with quality-of-life enforcement," the report stated. Why? It’s not clear. “Whatever has contributed to the observed drop in felony crime remains an open question worthy of further analysis,” according to the report.

What is clear, according to the report, is that there is “no evidence demonstrating a clear, direct link between an increase in summons activity and a related drop in felony crime.”

A spokesperson for DOI said the study looked only at arrests and summonses in relation to felony crime, and stressed that DOI was not directly challenging the broader strategy of “broken windows” policing, in which officers use community building techniques, verbal warnings and other strategies to deter crime and maintain public order. “Broken windows” policing is a cornerstone of NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton’s strategy.

Philip Eure, DOI’s inspector general for the NYPD, said in a statement, “It is important that the NYPD identify what has contributed to recent historically low rates of felony crime so that the Department can put police resources where they matter most.”

The DOI report runs counter to an earlier NYPD analysis. In 2015, an NYPD report about "broken windows" policing said low-level summonses and misdemeanor arrests happen in locations where residents call for help, via 911 or 311. "The historic increase in misdemeanor arrests paralleled a decrease in major crime and felony arrests," the NYPD report stated.

In the DOI report, the authors said they “took the analysis beyond the NYPD’s raw number counts … to examine whether shifts in quality-of-life enforcement activity actually had any measurable relationship over time with the City’s felony crime rates. The Report, with limited exceptions, found no such relationship.”

Politically, the concept of "broken windows" has been tricky for de Blasio. In the 2013 mayoral race, he purposely positioned himself as a critic of the police and called for a scaling back of stop-and-frisk and enforcement tactics. But once elected, he installed Bratton as NYPD commissioner. Bratton repeatedly said he would not deviate from the concept of maintaining public order in order to assure public safety.

While de Blasio has said he believes in the “ core notions” of "broken windows" policing, he has also said it is an “evolving” concept in which some elements can be reduced — fewer arrests for possessing small amounts of marijuana — while other elements can be increased — stricter vehicular traffic enforcement, as part of City Hall's Vision Zero initiative.

NYPD director of communications Peter Donald called the report “deeply flawed” and said DOI should have analyzed data starting in 1990 — which is the year Bratton first led the transit police and started using "broken windows" strategies — in order to analyze the impact of quality-of-life policing on felony crimes.

Donald also criticized the IG report for not stating that “a tremendous number” of quality-of-life enforcement action “is in response to specific and repeated complaints” from the public.

Donald added, “The Inspector General’s report and its basic assumptions and so-called statistical methodology are deeply flawed."

Groups like the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Police Reform Organizing Project, and Community United for Police Reform, have questioned the link between summonses and arrests for low-level crimes, and the drop in major crimes around the city.

Advocates also focused on what the report said — or didn’t say — about the racial disparity of the NYPD enforcement.

Johanna Miller, the advocacy director for the NYCLU, said she was “not surprised” by the report’s main finding. “The IG is saying the benefits [of these quality-of-life summonses and arrests] are harder to tease out than the NYPD lead us to believe.”

“The thing that stands out the most is what is not there: a demographic analysis of who is [getting issued summonses] and arrested,” Miller said. The IG report said enforcement was highest in precincts where the majority of residents are people of color. Miller said she wanted to see incident-level demographic data, not just a precinct-level analysis.

Robert Gangi, the director of the Police Reform Organizing Project, who has long criticized de Blasio for not curbing the racial disparity of NYPD enforcement, said in a brief interview that the IG report “expressed their findings in a very careful, politically-sensitive way.” Gangi said he was “disappointed on how tenderly the report trends on the blatant racial bias" of "broken windows."

“These practices are undeniably racist,” Gangi said, arguing that enforcement "focuses on activities that have been virtually decriminalized in white communities.”

Gangi said the report “is a gift to the advocates.”

Monica Bandele, a spokesperson for Communities United for Police Reform, said in a statement the report “makes Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner Bratton’s continued championing of policing policy based on this conservative, race and bias-based ideology that harms Black, Latino, homeless, low-income, immigrant, and LGBTQ New Yorkers all the more disgraceful and perplexing.”

De Blasio has struggled with the perception that quality of life in the city has worsened while he has scaled back some police enforcement. The perception was fueled by unflattering headlines and visible rise in the number of street homelessness — which Bratton said de Blasio was slow to acknowledge.

UPDATE: A DOI spokesperson pushed back strongly against the NYPD’s criticism, saying in a statement, “despite the heated rhetoric, the NYPD demonstrated no actual methodological flaws” in the report. As for including data from the 1990s, the DOI spokesperson said that is pointless, because “data from 25 years ago does not speak to effective policing today.”

-- Additional reporting by Brendan Cheney