A second reason for the intense focus upon broken-windows policing is that many confuse it with the use of stop, question, and frisk policies, especially in New York City. Stop, question, and frisk is a traditional police response used when police observe what they consider to be suspicious behavior: e.g., someone going from car to car looking into windows. Broken windows policing, on the other hand, focuses on illegal behavior, for example public drinking. Police across the country have utilized stop, question and frisk practices as part of violence prevention and reduction programs. Arguably, they have proven successful in reducing gun violence. The public concern in New York City has been about the overuse and aggressiveness of this tactic, especially in minority neighborhoods.

Moreover, many opponents of broken-windows policing have adopted the unfounded views of a number of academics who continue to argue that there is no evidence that it has an impact on crime. In fact those academics are guilty of either ignorance of the literature or willful deceit. While the literature has been mixed, the preponderance of studies has found that broken windows policing has a significant impact on street crime. The two most rigorous tests of broken-windows policing on crime have been the formal randomized experiments conducted by Anthony Braga and his colleagues in Jersey City, NJ and Lowell, MA. In each case, crime declined in the experimental areas when compared to control neighborhoods. Likewise, Braga and his colleagues Brandon Welsh and Cory Schnell concluded in their recent paper (2015) “Can Policing Disorder Reduce Crime? A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis” that “The results… suggest that disorder policing strategies generate noteworthy crime control gains.” (A meta-analysis is a statistical method of combining studies to determine what patterns exist in their findings. The paper can be found in the July 2015 special edition of Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency)