The Crime Emergency.... in Britain

Other progressives sometimes have a hard time with me over my take on "disorder" and "Broken Windows" theory. But that's because too often "zero-tolerance policing" is interpreted by police as "engaging" everyone they see doing things. Inner cities lack public spaces, so kids playing tag in an alley could be seen by officers as doing nefarious activities, possibly. But throwing the kids up against a police car doesn't help much. For me, "Broken Windows is about focus and focused activities, not every day harrassment...

There is a big effort to redirect policing activities under Jack Reid, the UK's new Home Secretary. Somewhat derisively, the Daily Telegraph (a conservative newspaper), calls these the "Reidathon," in " In a great victory for common sense, the Reidathon* began," But another article in the same issue discusses the impact of not addressing the problems directly, "I was just having a night out - you don't expect to end up in a car riddled with bullets."

The article mentions the London police department's Operation Trident, an initiative addressing gun crime in London's black communities, with a particular focus on drug-related shootings. This might sound overly focused, but inner city reality, despite recent headlines about incidents in Georgetown and on the National Mall, is that most of this crime is black-on-black.

I mentioned that when I worked at the Center for Science in the Public Interest on the "Marketing Booze to Blacks" project that I came across the work of Dr. Carl Bell and his work in this area, originally in Chicago. But Dr. Bell's work doesn't seem to get much play.

Operation Trident has a related publicity campaign, Stop the Guns, which works to get the community committed and on-board with this effort. While they have produced a series of ads over the years, and they put them in places that the target audience frequents such as movie theaters, recently they have opened the site up to "user generated content," in Your Say -- ads, music, spoken word, etc. -- on the issue, such as the image above, "Homicide is Suicide," by Jack Kelly, a 21 years old London resident.

More and more I am interested in ways the municipalities work to engage citizens or assist those already involved in community activities. JFK said "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." I'm don't mean that exactly, just that (1) you can't expect the municipality to do everything for you; (2) people working for the municipality (just like citizens) sometimes have wacked ideas; and (3) being involved makes a difference in our lives.

More on that later.

Index Keywords: public-safety