‘Back From the Brink’ Review: When Gotham Was Reborn

In the 1970s and ’80s, New York’s streets and subways were plagued with persistent crime. Then the city came back to life.

By John McMillian. He is a professor of American history at Georgia State University. He reviewed the book Back from the Brink: Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop by Peter Moskos. Excerpts:

[NY] "went, in the space of a few years, from one of the most dangerous big cities in America to one of the safest. That transformation wasn’t chiefly the result of underlying structural improvements, Mr. Moskos explains. It came about—as faithful readers of this newspaper’s editorial page will know—largely as a consequence of proactive policing."

"in the mid-1970s . . . Officers learned to keep their heads down and their mouths shut, even as crime rates soared. No one held them accountable for perpetually high levels of crime."

"in the final decade of the past century, New York experienced the greatest drop in violent crime the city ever recorded. In 1990, Bill Bratton took over the demoralized Transit Police."

"Mr. Bratton and Maple first went after fare beaters. They found that one in six of those arrested had outstanding warrants, and one in 82 was carrying an illegal weapon. To speed up the time it took to process arrests, they came up with the “bust bus,” a city bus reconfigured as a mobile arrest processing center. To reduce muggings, they placed elaborate decoy squads on the trains. Now transit cops were roused to enthusiasm. Many wanted to get lucky by discovering that whatever miscreant or turnstile hopper they’d collared was wanted for rape or murder."

"In 1994, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani made Mr. Bratton the NYPD’s commissioner."

"he policies and tactics that produced positive results on the subways worked equally well aboveground. Mr. Bratton put more officers on the streets"

[He] "upgraded their guns."

"CompStat also had the effect of pushing responsibility down the chain of command. For the first time in their careers, police commanders were expected to know precisely what was happening in their precincts. CompStat meetings became exercises in teamwork and practical problem solving. Motivated and creative cops thrived in Mr. Bratton’s revitalized NYPD. Shirkers and fatalists did not." 

"The criminological strategy known as Broken Windows . . .called for cops to uphold minimal public standards. When officers dealt with relatively minor offenses . . . they discouraged the commission of more serious crimes. The strategy dramatically improved law-abiding New Yorkers’ quality of life"

"evidence for the efficacy of Broken Windows policing has proved remarkably strong." 

"crime fell nationally in the 1990s . . .But . . . crime declined in New York City first"

"murders . . . declined to 671 in 1999 from 2,262 in 1990" 

"police departments around the world . . . [were] emulating the NYPD’s tactics"