(NNPA)—Do you know what little respect Black and Hispanic citizens of New York City have for following the rules that make living in the city bearable—or not “loitering,” or riding their bicycles on the sidewalk, or spitting on the street, or walking through parks after dark, or—my particular favorite—not having a license for their dogs?
Well, you can learn what the New York City Police Department thinks in a vitally important article the New York Daily News, published August 4. Daily News reporters, plumbing the data from several sources, found that police are giving summonses to Black and Hispanic New Yorkers for violating these minor rules of the criminal code in numbers and percentages far beyond their proportion of the city’s population.
The newspaper reported that, although Blacks and Hispanics make up about half the city’s population, from 2001 to 2013, they comprised 81 percent of the 7.3 million people who’ve gotten summonses. The summons program has long been the centerpiece of the police department’s “broken windows” concept. That’s the view that enforcement of such quality-of-life violations as drinking liquor in the street, or urinating in public, or playing loud music not only damages citizens’ ability to enjoy their lives but often, if ignored, can often lead to criminal activity.
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