When Rudy Giuliani appointed Bill Bratton to head the police back in 1994, among the first moves the new commissioner made was to go after subway turnstile jumpers.
For in his time as head of the city’s transit police, Bratton had learned that many of those arrested for fare-beating weren’t first-offenders or kids out on a lark.
Many turned out to have criminal records or outstanding warrants. Detaining them often helped authorities prevent other crimes and help get career criminals off the streets.
Which is why we find Melissa Mark-Viverito’s speech this week so alarming. In her State of the City address, the council speaker calls for the city to go back to the past by giving fare-beaters a summons rather than arresting them.
Yes, there’s room to debate about which infractions should be considered arrest-worthy. In and of itself, jumping a turnstile might not seem the biggest crime.
But from the vantage of history, we can now see that going after these fare-beaters was a huge first step in the recovery of this city. In many ways, it was at the heart of the Broken Windows policing that transformed a crime-plagued metropolis into America’s safest big city.
We suspect the speaker understands this. At this point, there’s been too much written about it for her not to know.
We hope New Yorkers understand this too. Because in targeting the arrest of turnstile jumpers as a practice she wants to end, Melissa Mark-Viverito has picked the one police tactic most associated with New York’s victory over crime.
And made clear that she stands with those Âdetermined to throw overboard the approach that made this victory possible: Broken Windows.