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The article deflates its own headline: During the slowdown, police continued to respond to calls, and the arrest rate for major crimes (murder, rape, robbery,

The article deflates its own headline: During the slowdown, police continued to respond to calls, and the arrest rate for major crimes (murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny, and grand theft auto) remained constant. But the arrest rate for non-major crime and narcotic offenses dropped, as did the number of stop-and-frisk events. So the crime that dropped was that which the cops stopped pursuing because there were no calls about it. No action means no official, recordable data. There's a lot of shady and shoddy data in the social "science" around crime. As has been said more generally, torture the data enough and it will tell you whatever you want to hear. IMHO, the best indicator to look at is murder rate, because there is a body which has to be dealt with and accounted for in the stats, despite any political pressures.

tnzn 9y ago
The report rates also dropped. You just cherry picked to attack the article here.
- lr4444lr 9y ago
  And then the article goes on to list several possible reasons, each little more than hypothetical. Reports of crimes != crimes.
  - mcphage 9y ago
    Arrests for crimes != crimes, as well.
24gttghh 9y ago
In regards to the "broken windows" model of policing, which sounds eerily like Kristallnacht: "But the authors argue that the data suggests the opposite is true. “The results,” they write, “imply that aggressively enforcing minor legal statutes incites more severe criminal acts.” Rather than proactive policing deterring major crime, Sullivan and O’Keeffe think it’s more likely that this kind of aggressive enforcement “disrupts communal life, which can drain social control of group-level violence.” In other words, overly aggressive policing brings a level of social disruption that actually leads to more crime—and the reduced proactive policing during the slowdown produced a calming effect." Emphasis, mine. Link to Nature article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0211-5 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0211-5
- didgeoridoo 9y ago
  There is evidence for both situations — the general case seems to be that either too much OR too little police presence leads to disruption. Ideally, police would be responsive to community demands. So, if a high-crime community demands more aggressive policing in the Broken Windows mold, they get it. Conversely, if community representatives see that policing is causing more trouble than it's solving, they should be able to request an easing-off without being deemed "pro-crime". Unfortunately, most cities tend to take a much more top-down approach with the allocation of enforcement power.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    > if a high-crime community demands more aggressive policing in the Broken Windows mold, they get it I think what a lot of people would like is more policing but less aggressive policing. Such as the ability to call the police for minor crime like broken windows and know the police aren't going to shoot someone dead. e.g http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/17/australian-woman-shot-dead-police-calling-911-report-disturbance/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/17/australian-woman-... (but there have been a number of other examples, especially involving non-white people) "Minneapolis police are investigating, but their work has been hampered because the officers’ body cameras were switched off. The police department said the squad car's camera also failed to capture the incident." How convenient.
    - exelius 9y ago
      We need to switch the mentality of our police units. Right now, the mentality is that of a soldier who is going to run in, kill or lock up all the bad guys and save the good guys. This black-and-white view of policing ends up getting a lot of citizens killed. Police officers often end up getting called out to fill the gap in social services, so why not allocate funds to those programs to help people out of poverty? I mean, I know the reasons (police unions and the prison-industrial complex) but it would make more sense than making the police do this crap. Right now, the police have to act as social workers. When your social worker carries a gun, anything they do to help you sounds more like a command than advice (and the police often confuse the two as well, since maintaining a sense of control is rule #1 of modern policing). Myself, I don’t fuck with the police. I don’t volunteer information to them either; I don’t trust the police to be good at their job, so anything you say will only serve to get you in more trouble. And I grew up as an upper-middle class privileged white kid.
outoftacos 9y ago
Murder rate is often gamed for political reasons as well, half the bodies that show up at our office can be coin flipped into either "suicide" or "suspicious" and it often depends on how much money the family has as anything else.
omginternets 9y ago
>in the social "science" around crime This is likely to provoke strong reactions from people who think you're against social science as a whole, but you raise an important point: much of what passes for academic social science is political activism in disguise.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  Especially the closer you get to certain topics (like crime).
jdavis703 9y ago
You're cherry picking the article. They also looked at the amount of reported crime (i.e. 911 calls, non-emergency calls etc), which also dropped.
amelius 9y ago
Kind of like this: [1], where the mortality rate seemingly goes down as doctors go on strike. [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/slightly-blighty/201510/why-do-patients-stop-dying-when-doctors-go-strike https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/slightly-blighty/201510...
- lr4444lr 9y ago
  Now this is more interesting, because they're actually looking at the hard mortality numbers. A dead body is a dead body. There is a sensational statistic that in the U.S., medical error is the 3rd leading cause of death, or maybe preventable death. I take that high ranking with just as much a grain of salt as crime stats, because there are competing explanations (like patients themselves aggressively shopping around for unnecessary treatments) or in this case, from your article, an indictment of the bureaucracy that compels doctors to treat badly: While physicians were technically on strike during the four months of the dispute, most did not in fact adhere to the industrial action regulations. In truth, most doctors in Jerusalem provided care in a private or partially private context, so, while participating in spirit, they did not actually withdraw services. Very interesting find. Thanks!
seriff 9y ago
Except incidents of major crime also decreased, if you continue reading.
- lr4444lr 9y ago
  Again, as I posted below, the quote is reports of major crime dropped during the slowdown period. Arrests remained constant, reports dropped. Reports of crime != crime. I maintain: focus on the bodycount. Corpses can't be hidden.
  - bandrami 9y ago
    arrests for crime also != crime, btw
  - sp332 9y ago
    It does put a hole in the "broken windows" theory of policing. Supposedly if you have cops around all the time busting everyone for minor violations, things won't escalate to larger crimes. But in this case, with the cops doing pretty much the minimum they could get away with, more serious crimes didn't go up.

tnzn 9y ago

The report rates also dropped. You just cherry picked to attack the article here.

lr4444lr 9y ago
And then the article goes on to list several possible reasons, each little more than hypothetical. Reports of crimes != crimes.
- mcphage 9y ago
  Arrests for crimes != crimes, as well.

24gttghh 9y ago

In regards to the "broken windows" model of policing, which sounds eerily like Kristallnacht: "But the authors argue that the data suggests the opposite is true. “The results,” they write, “imply that aggressively enforcing minor legal statutes incites more severe criminal acts.” Rather than proactive policing deterring major crime, Sullivan and O’Keeffe think it’s more likely that this kind of aggressive enforcement “disrupts communal life, which can drain social control of group-level violence.” In other words, overly aggressive policing brings a level of social disruption that actually leads to more crime—and the reduced proactive policing during the slowdown produced a calming effect." Emphasis, mine. Link to Nature article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0211-5 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0211-5

didgeoridoo 9y ago
There is evidence for both situations — the general case seems to be that either too much OR too little police presence leads to disruption. Ideally, police would be responsive to community demands. So, if a high-crime community demands more aggressive policing in the Broken Windows mold, they get it. Conversely, if community representatives see that policing is causing more trouble than it's solving, they should be able to request an easing-off without being deemed "pro-crime". Unfortunately, most cities tend to take a much more top-down approach with the allocation of enforcement power.
- pjc50 9y ago
  > if a high-crime community demands more aggressive policing in the Broken Windows mold, they get it I think what a lot of people would like is more policing but less aggressive policing. Such as the ability to call the police for minor crime like broken windows and know the police aren't going to shoot someone dead. e.g http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/17/australian-woman-shot-dead-police-calling-911-report-disturbance/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/17/australian-woman-... (but there have been a number of other examples, especially involving non-white people) "Minneapolis police are investigating, but their work has been hampered because the officers’ body cameras were switched off. The police department said the squad car's camera also failed to capture the incident." How convenient.
  - exelius 9y ago
    We need to switch the mentality of our police units. Right now, the mentality is that of a soldier who is going to run in, kill or lock up all the bad guys and save the good guys. This black-and-white view of policing ends up getting a lot of citizens killed. Police officers often end up getting called out to fill the gap in social services, so why not allocate funds to those programs to help people out of poverty? I mean, I know the reasons (police unions and the prison-industrial complex) but it would make more sense than making the police do this crap. Right now, the police have to act as social workers. When your social worker carries a gun, anything they do to help you sounds more like a command than advice (and the police often confuse the two as well, since maintaining a sense of control is rule #1 of modern policing). Myself, I don’t fuck with the police. I don’t volunteer information to them either; I don’t trust the police to be good at their job, so anything you say will only serve to get you in more trouble. And I grew up as an upper-middle class privileged white kid.

outoftacos 9y ago

Murder rate is often gamed for political reasons as well, half the bodies that show up at our office can be coin flipped into either "suicide" or "suspicious" and it often depends on how much money the family has as anything else.

omginternets 9y ago

>in the social "science" around crime This is likely to provoke strong reactions from people who think you're against social science as a whole, but you raise an important point: much of what passes for academic social science is political activism in disguise.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
Especially the closer you get to certain topics (like crime).

jdavis703 9y ago

You're cherry picking the article. They also looked at the amount of reported crime (i.e. 911 calls, non-emergency calls etc), which also dropped.

amelius 9y ago

Kind of like this: [1], where the mortality rate seemingly goes down as doctors go on strike. [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/slightly-blighty/201510/why-do-patients-stop-dying-when-doctors-go-strike https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/slightly-blighty/201510...

lr4444lr 9y ago
Now this is more interesting, because they're actually looking at the hard mortality numbers. A dead body is a dead body. There is a sensational statistic that in the U.S., medical error is the 3rd leading cause of death, or maybe preventable death. I take that high ranking with just as much a grain of salt as crime stats, because there are competing explanations (like patients themselves aggressively shopping around for unnecessary treatments) or in this case, from your article, an indictment of the bureaucracy that compels doctors to treat badly: While physicians were technically on strike during the four months of the dispute, most did not in fact adhere to the industrial action regulations. In truth, most doctors in Jerusalem provided care in a private or partially private context, so, while participating in spirit, they did not actually withdraw services. Very interesting find. Thanks!

seriff 9y ago

Except incidents of major crime also decreased, if you continue reading.

lr4444lr 9y ago
Again, as I posted below, the quote is reports of major crime dropped during the slowdown period. Arrests remained constant, reports dropped. Reports of crime != crime. I maintain: focus on the bodycount. Corpses can't be hidden.
- bandrami 9y ago
  arrests for crime also != crime, btw
- sp332 9y ago
  It does put a hole in the "broken windows" theory of policing. Supposedly if you have cops around all the time busting everyone for minor violations, things won't escalate to larger crimes. But in this case, with the cops doing pretty much the minimum they could get away with, more serious crimes didn't go up.