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Reading Repository

Readings for 2/14, Week 3: Criminalization, Policing, Incarceration

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First off, let’s look at the much-argued “Broken Windows” theory as applied to police work. It is an important jumping-off point. This is a seminal piece that ran in The Atlantic magazine in 1982, by George Kelling and James Q. Wilson:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/
And here is an inevitable criticism of that theory, one of many criticisms:
Are the police (not necessarily in New York, overly militarized? Here’s a piece of my own in The Times on the rise of SWAT teams:
Police forces, especially the NYPD, deal with many more menaces than before, not the least being terrorist threats. Here, via the NYPD, is a roster of known terrorist plot since Sept. 11, 2001. I guess the word “known” should be underlined. There may well be plots we don’t know a thing about.
In 2015, then-Police Commissioner William Bratton announced a new way in which terrorism investigations will be handled:
The police tactic of stop, question and frisk has provoked considerable anger and reflection in recent years. This New Yorker article studies the judge who sharply curtailed the practice and her reasoning:
Do bad cops escape punishment all too often? Here’s a look at possible reasons:
And is police wrongdoing not made sufficiently public? A couple of lawsuits seek to learn more:
Here’s the NYPD’s Firearms Discharge Report for 2015, the last year that we have complete. Give it a look. I’ll walk you through the relevant numbers in class. There may be surprises there for many of you:
Police corruption (meaning cops taking bribes and related acts of wrongdoing) has not been a notable problem for quite a while. But it was huge in the 1970s, and a look at history is always helpful. Revelations by a cop named Frank Serpico — portrayed by Al Pacino in a ’70s film called ‘Serpico’ — shaped a lot of the attitudes that still prevail. Here’s a look at the reclusive Serpico from a few years ago:
Well before the Eric Garner incident on Staten Island in 2014, a few cases of cops shooting unarmed black men contributed greatly to tensions. Here are two of the biggest from not that long ago:
The shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999:
And the shooting of Sean Bell in 2006:
Here’s the NYPD’s Firearms Discharge Report for 2015, the last year that we have complete. Give it a look. I’ll walk you through the relevant numbers in class. There may be surprises there for many of you:
Shootings in New York in 2016 fell to their lowest level in more than two decades:
And a steep decline in gang violence was a big reason:
But there’s one outlier to the sharp drop in homicides and that involves domestic violence:
Not police-related at all but this deals with another uniformed service, the Fire Department. In 2016, fewer people died in NYC than in any year in more than a century. Quite remarkable really:
Finally, the U.S. imprisons more people than any other country. Here’s on examination as to why:
Reading Repository, Uncategorized

Readings for 2/7

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In addition to the two pieces of writing that I’ve asked for next week, there is some reading to do. The principal piece is the E.B. White essay that I mentioned, “Here Is New York.” Here it is:
We will discuss this in class next week.
Not critical, but interesting, is this look at how various Manhattan neighborhoods got their names. We could do something comparable for the whole city, but for now here’s Manhattan:
And this is something for a few weeks from now, but you might as well watch it as soon as you can. It’s an hour-long video on a classic study done by William H. Whyte (not to be confused with E.B. White). It’s called “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces.” What it does is something I would like you to do at some point this semester: observe how people use public spaces — what works, what doesn’t, and why. This is from 1980, as you’ll see from the way folks are dressed, but while wardrobes change, human behavior doesn’t necessarily. Here it is:
And here are a few reference items on mass transit, none of which involve heavy lifting, to get our discussion of transportation rolling:
Here’s a history of the NYC subway:
And here are a couple of sets of facts and figures on subway and bus ridership from the MTA:
Do we want car-free streets? Here’s a brief look at how Montreal does it:
It took nearly a century to get even this short leg of the 2nd Ave. Subway up and running:
And is this stub of a 2nd Ave. Subway worth the vast expense? Not everyone is so sure:
Mayor de Blasio has proposed a streetcar to run along the waterfront in Brooklyn and Queens. It’s still very much a work in progress because, among other things, various groups must first sign off on it. But we haven’t had a street car in this city in many decades, so this is interesting and warrants a look. Here’s a New York Times story on this idea: