At ground zero of the NYPD "slowdown"

On Wednesday afternoon in the predominantly black Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, many had noticed the police slowdown. A car mechanic who goes by the name “Big Perm” said he noticed a change in the neighborhood. “They just walk around, they ride in their patrol cars, and they just pass by,” he said. He does not approve of the police slow down, like most people I spoke to. Big Perm worries that the lack of policing the “small fry” will lead to more crimes by “big fry.” In the meantime, he is keeping his children at home.

A young man who wouldn’t give his name also noticed the police slowdown over the past week in a neighborhood he says is usually teeming with police activity. “I see the streets are different, they have a different look to them. I’m not seeing the police like I usually see them,” he said. But he said the streets are calmer, too. “More police makes it crazy. If they see me and my friend having a conversation, and my cousin comes down the street, it’s a problem. I just try to keep out their way most of the time.”

But many I spoke to felt that even when the police were making arrests, they were frequently focused on the wrong issues. As Matt Ford notes astutely in The Atlantic, “the police union’s phrasing—officers shouldn’t make arrests ‘unless absolutely necessary’—begs the question: How many unnecessary arrests was the NYPD making before now?” Ford suggests that the slowdown “challenges the fundamental tenets of broken-windows policing,” Commissioner Bill Bratton’s method for prosecuting smaller “quality of life” misdemeanors to reduce more serious crime. “If the NYPD can safely cut arrests by two-thirds, why haven’t they done it before?” Ford asks.