Critics of the NYPD's aggressive policing of quality-of-life offenses to prevent more serious ones — a strategy known as "broken windows" — say it has created a tale of two cities, one primarily populated by whites, where minor infractions like drinking on a stoop or smoking a joint are rarely punished, and another, primarily populated by blacks and Hispanics, where walking down the street could be cause for interrogation.
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has said the disproportionate number of summonses for low-level offenses doled out in minority communities are a result of cops concentrating their efforts on "the most problematic areas of the city," riddled by crime and quality-of-life complaints.
“Very often times our enforcement activities in the communities, based on a study that we have out there at the moment about quality-of-life enforcement, are based on 311 and 911 calls, service requests, complaints that we receive,” he said at a City Council hearing on Monday.
