If these minor offenses are not affecting crime then are they offenses whose only purpose is to generate revenue? If the city has not imploded then is that not sufficient evidence to get a discussion about the existence of these offenses?
My dad worked for NYC during the Dinkins administration, which took a stance of not antagonizing the population with minor tickets and citations. His big story about the downside of this approach was a major snowstorm, which crippled the city in many areas. In his case, he was stuck at work at a public housing project for 3 days with the residents, because the city didn't ticket parking violations and the plows couldn't clear the clogged streets.
It made life miserable for the residents as well. Broken elevators left the elderly trapped in high-rise buildings for days. People with medical emergencies had to be carried by fireman down the stairs and down the street to an ambulance on an avenue.
One of the reasons for the current practice in NYC is the Mayor Giuliani did a complete 180 and aggressively enforced all sorts of laws. Chaos transitioned to order. The optimal answer lies somewhere in the middle.
This has still be case during some of the big snows of the past several years even with parking violations tickets.
> Broken elevators left the elderly trapped in high-rise buildings for days. People with medical emergencies had to be carried by fireman down the stairs and down the street to an ambulance on an avenue.
This still happens every once in a while. Police don't generally handle these kinds of things anyway, as the 311 service handles a lot of building code violations.
> One of the reasons for the current practice in NYC is the Mayor Giuliani did a complete 180 and aggressively enforced all sorts of laws. Chaos transitioned to order. The optimal answer lies somewhere in the middle.
This isn't accurate. Broken windows policing in NYC goes back to the mid-eighties and efforts to handle graffiti. Bill Bratton, the now police commissioner and comissioner during Guiliani's tenure, started using broken windows policing tactics and policies in the early 90s when he was at the NYC transit police.
Also, violent crime rates were already well in decline when broken windows policing became the major tactic and policy of the NYPD. It is not at all clear that broken windows policing is responsible or a contributed to that falling rate and to characterize Giuliani as instilling order on a chaotic city is laughable, as you could view many of his policies as instilling chaos.
The point is, there are extremes, and neither is the correct answer. I recall living in late 1980's Queens where getting a response from the police for anything short of a murder was an exercise in frustration. That wasn't the the case 10 years later.
I suppose he still understands that he is not really supposed to park where he is parking, but it says something about his outlook.
Apparently he believes he has the "right" to park wherever he pleases.
We are left to wonder if he has the common sense to avoid blocking hydrants, etc.
1. People speed and park wrongly despite both of these being illegal
2. A huge majority of people aren't assholes all the time, despite this not being illegal
3. Murders do get committed though it's illegal
4. Most stuff isn't stolen even though it is very difficult to catch someone breaking into houses
There's a book called Three Felonies A Day which posits that the average American commits three serious crimes every day despite the overwhelming majority of those folks not meaning to. https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=three+felonies+a+day The reason for this is that the laws are written broadly enough that entirely innocent acts could be construed to be strict-liability crimes that require absolute adherence; intent does not enter into the equation.
If society is not falling apart even if the average American is in fact committing three felonies a day, then it stands to reason that perhaps the law as a whole is over-written and could stand to be reduced. This new informal policing policy in New York might end up being further evidence of such problems.
Further people have found that in many cases persuasion is much more effective than compulsion. In the UK they've found that they can replace speed cameras (which issue tickets) with radar controlled signs that display smiley or frowny faces and that's much more effective at getting people to slow down. The theory goes that compulsion is a very ephemeral threat and that the police can't be everywhere at once ticketing everyone who's speeding all the time and people know it. But just asking them to slow down with no threat is more effective since it's polite.
https://www.google.com/webhp?q=speed+cameras+persuasion+comp...
A similar theory was used to great effect by King Frederick of Prussia to get people to eat potatoes. Decrees did nothing to make people plant them, but declaring the potato to be a royal food and nobody but the king could eat it caused people to plant it either out of spite or a desire to flout the rules. http://www.historynet.com/ask-mhq-king-frederick-ii-of-pruss...
2) the average American does not commit 3 felonies a day.
We have found that small rewards for not speeding reduces speeding - so yes, driving behavior can be modified by externalities.
http://www.rooneylawfirm.com/Articles/Monetary-Rewards-May-S...
If private parking in Manhattan is $30 and driving up on the sidewalk to park is free, the latter will happen. There is too many cars in New York for it NOT to happen. I've seen the latter happen in another country...
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22530/does-the-a...
(That too many things are crimes is probably something I agree with; that accounting companies must only destroy documents according to retention policies and not after they find out one of their clients is a giant fraud is not something that worries me)
This is the NYC in which these minor offenses needed to be enforced strictly. There are a number of theories regarding the decrease in crime but I'm pretty certain no one can argue that the drastic measures were necessary. Fast forward to 2014 NYC is basically disney world for adult tourists. There definitely needs to be a review of how we police the city because the tactics currently in place are from 25 years ago. Hopefully the data from this slowdown will provide the evidence necessary to create change.