Mr. de Blasio, whose campaign last year focused heavily against stopping and frisking, finds himself championing key aspects of the police strategies of his immediate predecessors — Mayors Rudolph W. Giuliani and Michael R. Bloomberg.
During their administrations, the city saw enormous strides in public safety, but the Police Department was faulted for heavy-handed tactics. In July, the Brooklyn district attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson, announced he would stop prosecuting some marijuana arrests, which have soared in number in the last decade, at times making up more than 10 percent of overall arrests by the police. After Mr. Garner’s death, Mr. de Blasio said that if citizens were complaining about the sale of cigarettes, the police were right to enforce the law. “If police officers are asked to enforce the law because there’s a community concern, we require that — we expect that of them,” he said. Indeed, Mr. Bratton said that Mr. Garner’s death would result in “no change in that focus” of having officers confront low-level rule-breaking. “It’s a key part of what we’re doing,” he said, adding that disorderly behavior proliferated quickly unless confronted by the police. full: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/25/nyregion/safer-era-tests-wisdom-of-broken-windows-focus-on-minor-crime-in-new-york-city.html _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
