Mutinous New York cops ignore petty crime

 A policeman looks out the window of his patrol car in Times Square in New York. Photo / AP

Is it really possible that no one among the roughly one million revellers who jammed Times Square on New Year's Eve did anything naughty at all?
No double-parking, no sipping from a vodka flask, not one person relieving a stretched bladder in the open air?
According to the police crime statistics, yes.
A big fat zero is the answer if you ask how many tickets were issued on New Year's night for petty crimes at the crossroads of the world.
Actually, it was still zero if you counted the week after Christmas.
My, how well behaved everyone was this year. Or is there, perchance, another explanation?
It now seems plain that the curious case of collapsing crime in Gotham City has very little to do with societal self-improvement and everything to do with the pique of the city's police force with their leader, Mayor Bill de Blasio.

He incensed rank-and-file officers at the end of last year by seeming to side with those protesting at the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of white officers.
Their union leaders have so far denied it is so, but there is no longer any doubt that the police in New York have joined together in a quiet act of mass insubordination by turning a blind eye to every kind of low-level infraction.
The enforcement go-slow was certainly under way over Christmas and the New Year. New statistics due out today will show if it's still happening.

A lone police officer faces New York Mayor Bill de Blasio as other colleagues turn their backs at the funeral of police officer Wenjian Liu. Photo / AP
It took Police Commissioner William Bratton until Friday to admit he had a discipline problem.
"We'll work to bring things back to normal," he told clamouring reporters.
He signalled a degree of forbearance, however, pointing to the "extraordinarily stressful situations" members of his force had faced.
New York was one of many cities that witnessed huge anti-police protests late last year after two notable cases of grand juries declining to indict police officers involved in the killings of unarmed black men.
The first involving Michael Brown, killed in Ferguson, Missouri, the second Eric Garner, who died in a police chokehold on Staten Island, New York.
Then just before Christmas, two New York officers were shot dead on the street by a man who ranted online about alleged police brutality.
The go-slow is bad news for those in the businesses of helping people swat summonses and fight fines.
The phones have almost gone dead in the offices of traffic lawyers across the city. Business is way off at bond bailsmen offices. Petty crimes courts have been closing early for lack of defendants. Even the jail cells on Rikers Island are starting to echo; inmate numbers are about 2000 below the usual level.
It has also emboldened critics of the "broken windows" doctrine championed by Mr Bratton, which holds that keeping a lid on petty crime is key to keeping levels of more serious crimes down.
There has been no spike in more serious criminal activity across the city since the go-slow got started. In the past two weeks, in fact, serious crimes reports were down to 3704 from 4130 over the same time last year.
To some this has finally discredited the broken-windows notion that no crime is too small to ignore.
"There have been unnecessary arrests, and this proves it," Monifa Bandele, a spokesperson for the Communities United for Police Reform, said.
Mr Bratton argued, however, that the negative impact would take longer than a few weeks to filter through.
But a showdown between Mr Bratton and his officers may be unavoidable if this morning's statistics show they are still in revolt.