Everytime a Repub has been in office ... October 10, 2008 Keeping Wary Eye on Crime as Economy Sinks By CHRISTINE HAUSER<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/christine_hauser/index.html?inline=nyt-per>and AL BAKER<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/al_baker/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
It is the question on the minds of New Yorkers, once they stop pondering the fate of their 401(k)'s: If the city's economy sinks to depths not seen in decades, will crime return with a vengeance? Expert opinions differ, but the question is hardly illogical. The last time stocks on Wall Street fell hard, in 1987, crime was exploding, and the city saw historic highs in murders in the following years. Before that, the fiscal crisis of the 1970s helped lead to the abandonment of neighborhoods, failing schools and startling crime rates: robberies built through those years to a high in 1981, when there were 107,495 of them, for an average of 294 a day. (Last year's total reported robberies, 21,787, was the lowest figure in modern history.) "Every recession since the late '50s has been associated with an increase in crime and, in particular, property crime and robbery, which would be most responsive to changes in economic conditions," said Richard Rosenfeld, a sociologist at the University of Missouri<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_missouri/index.html?inline=nyt-org>-St. Louis. Typically, he said, "there is a year lag between the economic change and crime rates." New York, of course, has over the last 15 years seen an extraordinary drop in crime, from the most serious to the mildly irritating. But across all those years, economists and sociologists have debated how much of the success was attributable to new trends in policing and how much to other factors, including a robust economy. Now, if the dire predictions of economic hardship prove accurate, the city may be poised to find out in a real-time experiment. And it will have to conduct that experiment with thousands fewer police officers than it had in 2001. For his part, the New York police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/raymond_w_kelly/index.html?inline=nyt-per>, said he did not subscribe to the idea that there was a strong connection between a city's financial fortunes and its safety. He said he and his top commanders had had informal talks about the current economic conditions and what they might mean for crime, but had set no specific policy changes in motion that are related to economic circumstances. "We have had lots of conversations, but not a tactical or strategic meeting," Mr. Kelly said. "The reason for that is we have not seen it manifest itself in economic downturns in the past. But we have to be sensitive to the issue." In Los Angeles, Police Chief William J. Bratton<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/william_j_bratton/index.html?inline=nyt-per>said California had been struggling with an ailing economy for some time but had seen no appreciable rise in crime. In Providence, R.I., however, Col. Dean M. Esserman, the police chief, said he had recently seen a shift for the worse. Neighborhoods are changing as homes are abandoned or foreclosed on, he said. More young people are on the streets. There are more Fire Department calls as people steal copper plumbing from empty houses, causing flooding. "I see poverty as having a tremendous impact on both spirit and crime, and it is palpable," he said in telephone interview after attending a national meeting of police chiefs in Washington on Wednesday on crime and the economy. The Police Executive Research Forum said that in preparing for the national meeting, it conducted a survey of more than 200 law enforcement agencies in the last week of July. Nearly 40 percent of the agencies said that home foreclosures had produced an impact on their law enforcement activities, either by a loss in tax revenue or an uptick in crime around abandoned houses. In Santa Ana, Calif., for instance, the police said the large number of foreclosures meant the empty houses were attracting gangs and prostitutes. Interviews with criminologists, economists and police commanders, in New York and around the nation, suggest that in the end the correlation between fiscal calamity and rising crime may be a nuanced equation, as it was in the Great Depression<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/g/great_depression_1930s/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>, when crime rates dropped from their upswings during Prohibition. It is rare, many said, that one would see the crime rate rise based on occasional opportunistic criminal activity that comes with a tight economy: people shoplifting, for instance, when the family budget gets pinched. But the mortgage crisis and house foreclosures could set off reactions that hurt neighborhoods, giving rise to a dynamic that becomes more conducive to criminal behavior. "You see a strong relationship between falling wages and higher unemployment rates for less educated men and crime rates that tend to go up," said Bruce A. Weinberg, an associate professor of economics at Ohio State University<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/o/ohio_state_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org>, who studied data from 1979 to 1997. Others have reached different conclusions. In fact, some researchers have suggested that it is in economic good times when the threat of crime may be greatest. In urban settings, at least, there are more potential victims: more people walking the streets, carrying shopping bags, lining up at A.T.M.'s or driving around and parking their expensive cars. "One thing we know is that robbery typically takes place in areas where people go to A.T.M.'s, convenience stores, and if money is tighter, they are less likely to be out and about," said Peter K. Manning, a professor at the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/northeastern_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org> . In a city like New York, which has been so dependent on the financial industry, the crisis that has struck the markets is expected to be felt in the unskilled work force that feeds into the markets, like service industries, transportation and delivery jobs. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/michael_r_bloomberg/index.html?inline=nyt-per>has used the specter of grim economic fortunes to push to change the city's 15-year-old term limits law and stay in City Hall for four more years, arguing that he is best suited among politicians to face the city's economic storm. The crisis, Mayor Bloomberg has said, presents challenges more grave than those New York confronted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But leaving aside the theoretical question of whether a fiscal downturn will provoke more crime, police officials are worried about the impact on the department and its effectiveness as a consequence of tightened city budgets. The police force, with a head count already down by thousands, is not likely to receive a huge influx of cash for hiring or overtime costs if times are rough. On Aug. 31, the count was 36,265 police officers, down by about 4,000 from the peak strength in 2000, a result of tight budgets and recruiting difficulties that stemmed in part from a low starting salary. Recently, City Hall has asked the department for $94 million worth of suggested cuts to its budget — or 2.5 percent of its budget — for the fiscal year ending next June, Mr. Kelly said. The administration sought $192 million more in cuts for the following fiscal year, though it is unclear if those cuts will be carried out. Still, officials here have enjoyed more than a decade of impressive crime reduction — in good and bad fiscal times — and say that even if sharp increases in crime are tied to bad economic conditions, the police are better outfitted than in years past for addressing them. Commissioner Kelly says he always analyzes crime data in a way that allows the department to alter its strategies once trends emerge. At a minimum, he makes decisions about how manpower and resources are allocated every six months, when each new class of rookie officers hits the streets. Mr. Kelly used a program that assigns the newly minted officers to places that were trouble spots around the city during the last downturn, after the Sept. 11 attacks and the resulting municipal belt-tightening the city faced in 2002 and 2003. By pinpointing neighborhoods — even stretches of blocks within police precincts — and positioning extra officers there, the department drove crime down 30 percent in some places, anchoring overall annual reductions. Crime in the city is down so far this year, too. As of Oct. 5, the most recent date for which data is available, overall reported crime was down 3.2 percent compared with the same period last year, police statistics show. The number of murders rose — to 400 this year from 359 by Oct. 5, 2007, an 11.4 percent increase — though even the new figure is nearly 9 percent lower than in 2006. Mr. Bratton, who in the 1990s was the New York City police commissioner, said that poor economic conditions "can be an influence on crime rates," but not a central cause. In the fiscal crisis in New York in the 1970s, he said, it was not the overall economic downturn but the decision to lay off hordes of police officers that made the city a "hell on earth." Though Los Angeles is experiencing rising unemployment and poverty and an immigrant work force struggling to find jobs, the police budget remains robust and the overall crime rate is headed down. "Those are tough choices," Mr. Bratton said. "Where are you going to put the scarce tax dollars?" He added: "I would advocate it is the wrong thing to do if you start impacting police." David M. Kennedy, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/j/john_jay_college_of_criminal_justice/index.html?inline=nyt-org>in Manhattan, said New York achieved its crime-fighting success in part because the department attacked all levels of crime, and fundamentally altered the public's sense of what was acceptable. That, combined with a decline in the use of crack cocaine, an increase in imprisonments and tough policing strategies, helped push violent crime "down hugely," he said. In contrast to the 1960s, when crime rose menacingly even though the economy was operating at a peak, the decline of crime in the 1990s came during a robust economy, he said. "There are clearly tidal forces in crime that can overwhelm the effect of economic changes in both directions," Professor Kennedy said. Most violent crime is not committed for economic gain, he said. For example, drug crimes are bred in a street culture in which people are obsessed with establishing and maintaining a reputation, and they end up responding with violence, he said. "But it is not directly about money," he said. "The declines in the crack market are why things got better in the last 15 years. And much of the time that it was burning our collective house down was a period of economic prosperity." Whatever fate awaits New Yorkers, many say they are bracing for a crime increase, particularly in petty crimes, if the economy gets worse. But opinions are mixed about whether any signs of disorder have already begun. Mya Bee, 34, a filmmaker from a Brooklyn neighborhood once ravaged by crime, said that while it was still too early to gauge the full impact of the economic downturn, she had begun to notice some troubling trends. People seem less confident, she said. Some were selling personal belongings. One friend told her he had pulled his money out of the bank. "When you can't use your credit cards, it will get worse," said Ms. Bee, a resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant. "I know when people are really, really feeling it, it's going to get bad. When that happens, all hell will break loose. People will resort to their old methods of making money, whether it's robbing or stealing or hustling." Mr. Kelly suggested that it remained to be seen whether such a thing would happen. Asked if Mayor Bloomberg had spoken with him about staying on for the mayor's potential third term, Mr. Kelly declined to answer, saying: "Understandably, I really would not want to discuss my conversations with the mayor. Those discussions would be in confidence." Pressed, however, on whether he would consider serving another four years as police commissioner, he said it was "a discussion for myself and the mayor." -- "Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change." - Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks, 1965 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Black Focus Inc." group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Black-Focus-Inc?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
