I started off liking the idea of the Broken Windows theory. It made perfect context in regards to my downstairs neighbors, boys who are now moving out in favor of Manhattan or Park Slope because they think Flatbush is grimy. They have always complained about their dump of an apartment, and thus always abused it. With little respect for the neighborhood, littering was never seen as an issue, because it was simply adding to the trash already there. But what bothered me even more so, was that they never saw Flatbush as something worth the time and effort to improve upon. To them, we might as well burn it to the ground and start over. And so, through their eyes, I could see how the Broken Windows theory comes to play.

Now, policing using that theory, which has shown no decrease in major crimes as it claims it should, is a whole other issue. I look at that those lists of misdemeanors, and especially focusing in on the summons court census graphic within the Daily News article about “racial  disparities in summons for minor violations…” and I wonder how many of these crimes have the lasting effect of having other people lose respect for the neighborhood. Will having a couple of people walking through the park at night lead to people sleeping in the park? Will having someone roll through a stop sign lead to no one following traffic laws?

And what of the people? The stories told in that census, although short and concise, instantly bring up memory after memory for me when I or the people I was with were committing exactly those misdemeanors and faced no opposition. Often times, those in my party didn’t have the excuses the people ticketed did. And here it goes back to privilege. Here it goes back to all the tickets I should have been written over the years but I wasn’t written, and even then how I knew enough to feel a little sick over it.

Perhaps Broken Windows Theory is best put into place as a community initiative to pick up trash, and repair storefronts- where it is of the people of the community and for the people of the community, rather than imposed from above by NYPD and an institutionally racist system that doesn’t help the neighborhood at all in the end.