The Broken Window Theory: An Argument Against The Broken Window Theory

Improved Essays
While police brutality, abuse of power, racial profiling and targeting the poor are arguments against the Broken Window Theory, they are not necessarily caused by it. The police have certain rules of engagement when dealing with suspects that they must follow, however, this is often mistaken for police brutality and abuse of power. The media hype over stories of people like Eric Garner, Freddie Gray and Michael Brown cause stories to be told from a biased and largely anti-police point of view (Gainor). There’s proof that using Broken Windows policing keeps communities safer by getting dangerous criminals off the streets by arresting them for small crimes when the police do not yet have enough evidence to arrest them for more major crimes. …show more content…
Crack is a smokable form of cocaine that is significantly purer (75-100% pure) and stronger than powder cocaine (“What is Crack Cocaine”). Crack became popular in poor, urban black communities because it was highly profitable, easy to produce, cheap, easy to use and caused an intense and immediate high (“Crack Cocaine: A Short History”). The crack epidemic caused a surge in violence in the black community; between 1984 and 1994, weapons arrests increased by 25% and the homicide rate among black males from 14-24 went up approximately 200% (Fryer, Heaton, Levitt and Murphy, 2-3). To combat this epidemic, New York City increased its police force significantly by growing the force by 45% between 1991 and 2001 (Levitt). This increase in police helped cut the crime rate in half; in 1991, New York City had 1,127,651 crimes and by 2001, New York City only had 556,025 crimes (“New York Crime Rates 1960-2014”). African Americans supported ending the crack epidemic in their own way, by holding 24-hour vigils at their churches; at these vigils, recovered addicts would counsel addicts. At these churches a hot line was set up to connect the churches with Sterling Johnson Jr., New York’s special narcotics …show more content…
Although the goal is to use little force when arresting suspects, that is not always possible. One of the rules of engagement is that if the suspect is a known or suspected armed felon, and could cause bodily injury or death to the officer or bystanders, the officer has the right to use deadly force. For example, in the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri, Brown was shot by police officer Darren Wilson after an altercation ensued over control of Wilson’s gun after Wilson stopped Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson because they matched the descriptions of robbers in the area. Brown and Johnson then fled after Wilson’s gun went off and Wilson chased them. Brown then turned around and charged at Wilson; Wilson fearing for his safety fired his gun at Brown, shooting him multiple times until Brown was no longer a threat. Although Brown was unarmed, he was perceived to be a threat because he was significantly larger than the officer and was moving toward the officer. In this case, Wilson’s use of force was legally considered justified after he was not indicted by the grand

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Donna Murch’s “Crack in Los Angeles: Crisis, Militarization, and Black Response to the Late Twentieth-Century War on Drugs” article focused on how the American government tried to combat the “war on drugs” – a phrase created by President Nixon – and the “crack epidemic,” an issue fueled by the media, in Los Angeles through policies made by the government, such as the Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention (STEP) Act in 1988 and Operation Hammer in the same year. The government also received funding from the California National Guard so that a tank could be used. In response to these policies, self-help approaches were offered by Christian churches. Kali Nicole Gross’ “African American Women, Mass Incarceration, and the Politics of Protection”…

    • 676 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The officer claimed that Brown assaulted him and reached for his gun while sitting in his patrol car, and after striking a bullet in his hand, Michael ran and Wilson pursued him on foot. Witnesses say that Michael turned with his hands up, but Wilson opened fire on him anyway. The autopsy reported that Brown was hit six times; four bullets hitting him in his arm and the other two were taken in the head. His body was left in the suburbs, exactly where he fell, for four hours before the police took over the crime scene. Had Mr. Wilson just simply arrested Mr. Brown or given him a ticket for “blocking traffic”, there would be no questions asked and there would be no answers to be wanted.…

    • 1011 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Training took over. It was survival mode," he said. Wilson further explained his fear of being overpowered by Brown: "He was very large, very powerful man." These social laws make it seem like it is okay for a police officers to kill somebody because they felt like they were in danger even though they were unarmed. Another quote to support this is comes from Sheriff Ron Hickman from the article (Police Shootings against Black Community Members Draw Criticism and Legal Action against Law Enforcement,by Historic Events)“Sheriff Ron Hickman of Harris County, Texas, lost one of his deputies, Darren Goforth, in a shooting in Houston.…

    • 1675 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Boyz N The Hood Summary

    • 1064 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Inner city population are normally made up of poor income people, which are primarily African American families. African American’s are not only disproportionate in arrests in these parts of the city but are also disproportionate in being victims also, especially in the juvenile age range. National Crime Victimization (NCVS) date showed “…that one of every six juveniles (defined as youth aged 12 to 17) had been the victim of property crime”, which is 40 percent higher than that of an adult (Walker, Spohn, & Delone, 2012, p. 445). For violent crimes, juveniles also had a high rate of being victims depending on age range, and were even high for African…

    • 1064 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Why is crime such a large part of our everyday society? Since the beginning of time, crime has been a large part of history, which gradually increased throughout the years, and continues today in everyday life. Crime is something that is caused by either force, impulse, fun, accident, or environmental factors. Some people have been raised since childhood in areas where crime rates were at a high and this may have compelled them to follow a negative figure, thus resulting in that person committing crimes. Malcolm Gladwell, author of Power of Context: Bernie Goetz and the Rise and Fall of New York City Crime, mentions how key concepts shape the way in which crimes are performed through an individual’s involvement with his or her environment and…

    • 1715 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The early 1980's was one of the biggest, most infectious crisis that terrorized urban inner-city communities all over America. The American crack epidemic or " Crack Era", as it is known by swept through predominately poor, African American neighborhoods resulting in a number of drug affiliated arrest. The U.S government launched a highly advertised and publicized project they named "War on Drugs", which was originally set in place to prohibit the abuse and selling of illegal drugs in American communities. Since the "War on Drugs" campaign commenced, inner-city communities have been affected by the extreme elevation in arrest rates that has negatively and disproportionately targeted African American men making them only 13% of the U.S population but 37% of the prison population. African American men from poor, inner-city neighborhoods between the ages of 26-41 whom may or may not have committed a drug offended crime are more likely to be arrested, convicted, and are forced to serve longer prison sentences.…

    • 285 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When a police officer pulls their gun out it is because they are under a possible deadly threat or the public is under a threat. In the case of this story, a public citizen threw a beer bottle at the back of a stopped police car causing the glass to shatter. Furthermore, the officers, “fearing they were under fire, the officers bailed out of the cruiser and fired their own guns at a nearby man they believed was responsible, killing him” (2015). The officers who are now being investigated on whether there force was reasonable due to the fact the suspect did not possess a gun or a weapon. So ultimately, there is a question of was it necessary to fire in this situation?…

    • 357 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As of 2016, there are 7.4 billion people on the planet. Of that 7.4 billion, the United States accounts for roughly 321 million people. Would it surprise you, that although the U.S is home to less than 5% of the world’s population, we have 25% of the world’s overall incarcerated population? Our country has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Michelle Alexander writes in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, that the impact of the drug war has been astounding.…

    • 997 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    1. Journalist and Author Annalee Newitz once said, “Capitalism is fundamentally an economic system that promotes inequality”(). While America is considered to be a mixed economy, a mixture of capitalism that allows private businesses to sell goods and socialism that relies on the government for public education and regulations on business, it still creates inequality. This can be seen in the use of prisoners after the civil war in the south. As well with, the more recent use of private prisons beginning in the 1980s.…

    • 1659 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Disproportionate Minority Representation in American Prisons Arielle Warner English 122: English Composition II Instructor Nancy Segovia 29 September 2014 In contemporary American society, the Black male has become a disproportionate representation of what it looks like to be a criminal. In an era in which the concept of “colorblindness” and “equal-opportunity” are supposed to reign supreme, why is it that our African American males are being disproportionately represented in our prison populations? This gross over representation of African Americans in the American prison system is contributed to by the disparity in punishment between whites and blacks, the War on Drugs and the passing of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act…

    • 965 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Social Disorganization Theory Case Study

    • 1248 Words
    • 5 Pages
    • 3 Works Cited

    When most community or neighborhood members are acquainted and on good terms with one another, a substantial portion of the adult population has the potential to influence each child. Modern Social disorganization theory is more complex than the classical theory. They linked structural aspects of neighborhoods (Poverty, Residential mobility, heterogeneity, and broken homes.) to a neighborhoods ability to institute social control (Interpersonal friendship networks, ability to monitor teens, and public organization) and found it a good predictor of criminal victimization. Placed an emphasis on how disorganization reduced social control and impacted other neighborhood aspects that also enhanced the amount of crime that occurred. This theory statistically speaking, those that grow up in poverty areas generally do not finish school and most likely have parent who did not either.…

    • 1248 Words
    • 5 Pages
    • 3 Works Cited
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Though president Nixon is often seen as having started the modern war on drugs, his administration’s actual role in drug policy legislation and enforcement never lived up to the inflated rhetoric surrounding the issue. The war on drugs, from a policy standpoint, was largely created under the Reagan administration. Despite having fewer than 2% of the American public reporting that they believed drugs were the most important issue the country faced (Alexander, 2010 p. 49), the Reagan administration announced its war on drugs in 1982. Unlike Nixon’s rhetorical war on drugs, the Reagan administration began creating impactful laws and enforcement mechanisms. Beginning by transferring funds from drug education and drug treatment programs into drug related enforcement mechanisms was only a small indicator of what was to come next.…

    • 1021 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dark Ghettos Essay

    • 957 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In his book, Shelby discusses how there is a seemingly endless cycle of violence in ghettos that only seems to further crime and oppression. He writes, “The illegal drug market, so common in black urban neighborhoods, engenders drug-related violence and invites organized crime,” (203), and…

    • 957 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    My understanding regarding wasteful government spending is that it would not benefit the economy overall. Mainly, this is would be due to a part of the idea of the broken window fallacy applied in a different manner. For instance, it was explained that the money spent to repair a broken would not be spent on what they originally would have spent it on. Thus, the money spent would have still have been spent. However, now, it is to repair something broken instead of something new.…

    • 196 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Satire Essay On Drugs

    • 905 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The FBI’s Safe Streets program designed to combat youth street gang involvement, for instance, was suspended in Baltimore after police found guns and drugs in its office and arrested two employees (Fighting Gangs). Although implemented in the 1990s, gang membership has increased since the mid-2000s (Fighting Gangs). Efforts have been made, but federal anti-gang programs are ineffective and the public lacks resources to contain problem, allowing community detriment to…

    • 905 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics