If more policing reduces crime, then we would expect less policing should lead to more crime.

But in fact we find the opposite. Civilian complaints of major crimes — murder, rape, felony assault, burglary and grand larceny — actually declined during the slowdown.

We focus on major criminal complaints for two reasons. First, because these acts so severely impact the victims’ lives, we have no reason to suspect that the reductions in foot patrols would prevent citizens from registering complaints with NYPD by, for instance, calling 911 or their local precinct. Second, the premise behind “broken windows” theory is to prevent precisely these types of major crimes by arresting people for relatively minor offenses. Yet when summonses and arrest rates plummet, we see no increase in major criminal complaints.

Reducing police presence didn’t apparently lead to more crime — at least during this period.