Back from the Brink, an oral history of the introduction and implementation of Broken Windows theory policing in New York City

I have been remiss in reviewing Back from the Brink, the book by Peter Moskos that is an oral history of the New York City Police Department during the Bratton period, where new strategies and tactics were introduced to suppress crime in significantly measurable ways.  (I first mentioned the book last September, in "Murder rate in Chicago is bad: "correct" applications of broken window policing.")

Unfortuately, I have a bad habit of if I don't write the review as soon as I read the book, I'm not likely to get back to it, partly because I have another bad habit of writing my notes on various different pieces of paper, some get mislaid etc.

But the review of the book by Michael Fortner, a professor at Claremont McKenna College in Washington Monthly, "How New York City Got Safe: A historical reconstruction of the Big Apple’s crime decline, told from inside the institutions responsible for public safety," reminds me that it is important to do so.

A New York Subway car before Broken Windows policing practice was introduced in the late 1980s.

Fortner covers the book pretty well, but I think he misses some points.  

I lived in DC during the bad times in the 80s and 90s, and am a fervent believer in broken windows policing theory.  

In general, especially in progressive academia, it has a bad rep because most departments interpreted it as "zero tolerance policing" with a lack of focus on major crimes and the creation of a siege mentality by arresting people for the least transgression, like an unbuckled seatbelt (also see "Looking Through Broken Windows: The Impact of Neighborhood Disorder on Aggression and Fear of Crime Is an Artifact of Research Design" Annual Review of Criminology, "Why the Fraudulent 'Broken Windows' Theory of Policing Refuses to Die," Current Affairs).

What I got out of Moskos book are a few key things.  

First, the interviews make clear that Bratton and the top people believed that crime could be suppressed.  CompStat was about (re)focusing police time towards proactiveness.  "Cops on Dots" -- putting cops where crime is occurring--as some people called it.

Although as Fortner quotes one commander, it was a philosophy.  Moskos cites a cop talking about how they had a problem with bike-based robberies in his precinct and how it was addressed.  But others took out of CompStat meetings about their approach that they should "arrest more bicyclists" rather than analyze whether or not bicycles were used repetitively in perpetrating crime.

Bratton's team believed that by addressing pattern crime, and arresting perpetrators crime would drop.  

While generally, the police department wasn't focused on "broken windows" or improving public spaces per se, the application of focused policing on the subway system was complemented by a refurbishment of subway stations and subway cars--not just buying new equipment--but by addressing graffiti, etc.

The book gives you a great picture of the effort and how it was incremental, building on each success, or adjusting after failure.  I really got a sense of the breadth and depth of the effort and the spirit of experimentation.  

The idea of "moving the success of broken windows from underground/the subways" to above ground wasn't just about the CompStat tracking system and delving deeply into crime patterns, precinct by precinct.  It was about making improvements in crime reduction and physical improvements very visible, which in turn led to more support for the Broken Windows Approach.

Two stories in particular cover the integration of policing with public space improvement were the campaigns to significantly improve the  Port Authority Bus Terminal and Bryant Park (although the program to improve BP began before the Bratton period of policing).  

People didn't used to go to Bryant Park, day or night.  Now it hums with activity.

But as the president of the subway system told Bratton during his interview "if we don't fix stations and subway trains in association with better policing people won't take the train," the success of Bryant Park likely would have taken much longer to come to fruition without better, focused policing in public parks and Bryant Park in particular.

Another element of public space improvement at the time had nothing to do with policing, but with the creation of business improvement districts, funded by local property tax surcharges, these groups provided extranormal cleaning services, public space improvements and monitoring (Jane Jacobs style "eyes on the street") in places like Times Square and around Penn Station.

And the proof is in the pudding.  Sure multiple cities had significant crime drops starting in the late 1990s.  But eg DC versus NYC.  NYC had a 75% drop in homicides, DC 38%.  I'm sure this quantum difference in results between NYC and other cities was across the board in other crime categories.

Living in DC at the time, there weren't many broken windows approaches, but there was a focus on involving neighborhood groups, the way that Patrick Sharkey in Uneasy Peace attributes some of the fall in crime during that period to civic and collective action ("George Kelling, co-creator of the "Broken WIndows" thesis, dies," 2019).

I myself participated in one such neighborhood group that was started in response to a major drug distribution area, and over (a long) time the problem was cured.  

Cops came to monthly meetings, problems were discussed, there were occasional walks with police and elected officials, etc.  (I also did small BW experiments in my neighborhood, with litter pick up and measurement of its impact on certain streets and in bus shelters.)

A blog reader once made the point that as crime dropped, maybe stop and frisk was in part a response of needing something to do, but with the lack of restraints applied during the post Bratton Guiliani years (although Bratton in his later stint did support stop and frisk; later he recanted) it became a big problem.  

Obviously, Stop and Frisk was proven to be not productive.  Unlike the value of arresting fare jumpers and checking them for outstanding warrants, an early initiative of Bratton's on the subway system, less than 2% of the people stopped under Stop and Frisk had outstanding warrants.  

They were stopping people without reasonable suspicion or probable cause and it showed in the data.  Whereas fare jumping is a crime, and jumpers often perpetrate other crimes, on the subway system and off it.

So for me, the biggest issue with BW is that it hasn't really been applied in a true fashion in very many places.  And with how the Bratton people were pushed out by Giuliani, my lesson from DC is that you can't ever stop being vigilant when it comes to crime and order versus disorder.  Once disorder returns it's hard to reverse.

The rise in social justice concerns, deserved somewhat in response to structural racism, as crime dropped and fewer elected officials and academics had direct experience of the mess of disorder during the worst of 1990s, did lead to a rise in crime in places like DC ("The Coming D.C. Crime Boomerang," Atlantic), as crime decriminalization was seen by perpetrators not as a social justice move to help them because they were "driven to crime because of life circumstances," but as a signal to commit more crime (see the argument, by extension here, "The role of physical environment in the ‘broken windows’ theory," University of Chicago)

BART's new fare gates, seen at the Coliseum station in 2025, have generated more money for the transit agency. Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle

BART and fare gates. Recently there was a super interesting BW finding in SF with BART stations with new fare evasion resistant gates ("BART’s long fight against fare evasion is finally paying off. Here’s how much," San Francisco Chronicle).  

Not only did rider attitudes improve, ridership and fare revenue grew, and instances of vandalism dropped significantly.  Like Bratton said, turnstile jumpers commit other crimes.  If they aren't on the subway because they didn't pay, well, then there is less likelihood for vandalism of subway infrastructure.

Note that NYC and DC subways ("Metro’s new, higher faregates reducing fare evasion by more than 70 percent"), and St. Louis and Minneapolis light rail ("Transit safety and security: Broken Windows theory and reality | and the state of transit safety today," 2023) are also implementing new fare gates to reduce fare evasion.

Playgrounds and cafes were some of the positive use spaces added to the area.   Photo:  Jessie Cooper and Justin Roth embrace on a swing at a playground at Civic Center in San Francisco, California, on Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018. Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle

Revival of BART's Civic Center station.  Predating the fare gate program, the BART Civic Center Station became a center for nuisance and crime including drug dealing, where the main two block "entryway" to the station became a gauntlet where drug dealing, loitering, and quality of life offenses blossomed..  

Above-ground, the City of San Francisco invested in improving the public realm on those two blocks and beyond, adding new facilities and refurbishment to encourage more positive use of the space, while below ground BART made complementary station-specific improvements.  

Media coverage of the project makes clear that the effort involved police and multiple other partners including philanthropy, physical interventions and ongoing programming ("SF Civic Center’s new vision: soccer fields, shaded gardens and people," "SF Civic Center — cleaner and safer — now a place to play and have a bite," "Rejuvenating SF Civic Center Plaza: a challenge beyond design," San Francisco Chronicle). 

While the area’s transformation remains a work in progress, the differences are stark. In addition to two new playgrounds that cost $10 million, the space hosts a growing number of public events, including outdoor concerts, art installations and food-truck gatherings. A winter park — complete with a 6,000-square-foot ice rink — is set to open next month.

BART has developed a station modernization program equally focused on reducing public safety issues.

The Station Modernization Program focuses on increasing safety, capacity, sustainability, appearance, and enhancing the customer experience: 

• Vibrancy-- Reflect the energy of the surrounding community and enhance the station’s existing strengths 
• Connectivity – Strengthen multi-modal and universal access to the station and promote a safe and comfortable customer experience 
•  Sustainability – Incorporate sustainable materials and technologies into the station to increase the life-cycle value of the station’s infrastructure and to conserve natural resources and protect the public investment. 

Residents hope a similar program can be developed to improve the environment and public safety elements at the 16th Street-Mission Station ("Can BART bring a Civic Center-style revival to another dilapidated S.F. station?," SFC).   But in contrast to the Civic Center project, they seem to be focusing more on BART, and less on engaging other agencies into creating a broader response.

There not thinking either multiplicatively, nor in terms of below ground versus above-ground improvements.

 “If you really think about it, this is the living room of the Mission,” he said. “And the BART station is the front door. The first impression you have of the neighborhood is coming through the fare gate and up that escalator.”

As discussed in the 2013 entry "Transit, stations, and placemaking: stations as entrypoints into neighborhoods," transit stations are entry points--porches or living rooms--to neighborhoods.  While transit systems typically don't plan them that way, it is a responsibility that goes beyond the transit agency, and should require ongoing coordination and planning with the local jurisdiction.

Managing to prevent disorder is an ongoing process.  The final lesson with BW in NYC is that it requires constant vigilance too.  That it's hard to maintain because people get burned out.  But also when elected officials want the credit, they push out the top cops who bring the changes about.  That definitely happened in NYC.  Most of the top implementers of BW at NYPD were gone within a few years of Bratton's departure.  Although fortunately, further down the ranks were commanders, inspectors, and captains who had been (re)trained to the approach, embedded the precepts, and continued to implement the BW approach of proactive crime suppression.

Covid-related uptick in crime.  Although yes, things tipped the other way during the covid pandemic, in NYC and nationally "Explaining the COVID Violence Spike and the Roaring Crime Decline").  Although today, in most places reported crime including murders, has dropped significantly.

Police officers and detectives enter the crime scene area where a 9-year-old boy was fatally shot. Photo: John J. Kim, Chicago Tribune

Chicago.  Chicago is an outlier nationally, in that the city that has continued to have high murder rates, although they are dropping, despite purportedly adopting BW approaches ("End-of-Year Analysis: Chicago Crime Trends," U of Chicago Crime Lab).   More recently, the city has had success with crime reductions in association with community intervention programs.

In a past blog entry, I opined that they probably aren't doing BW very well, have many high profile negative incidents that indicate systemic problems with management, and that a high rate of financial settlements for police misconduct, fatal errors, etc. indicates, from a risk management standpoint, that they have a serious crime problem.  Although more recently, like Baltimore ("Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott discusses how the city has brought violent crime down," NPR, "Baltimore has cut homicides by almost 60 percent in five years," Washington Post) they seem to be having effect with violence interruption programs.

Also see:

"The federal help Chicago really needs," Crain's Chicago Business

At the University of Chicago Crime Lab, we have spent over fifteen years studying which interventions actually reduce gun violence and maximize the impact of government spending. We think we’ve found a clear path forward: Build the capacity of police commanders managing jurisdictions with the highest rates of violence. The Policing Leadership Academy has a simple premise — treat policing as a profession using the formula that has had tremendous success for private sector companies: investing in people’s leadership and management skills.

Also see "Policing and management," NBER, which makes the point about how the use of management time shapes outcomes positively or negatively.

Murder rate in Chicago is bad: "correct" applications of broken window policing

 

I can't remember where I came across a mention of the new book by Peter Moskos, a professor at CUNY's John Jay College, Back from the Brink, which is an oral history interviewing various police and other people involved in developing in the early 1990s, "the system" of focused policing on improving place and suppressing crime in New York City, which became a national best practice for reduction in crime and policing, and a shining light leading to the resurgence in interest in urban living--most major cities began adding population in the 2000s because city living was perceived to be cool, but also safe.

I was so intrigued I bought a copy right away, forgetting I could probably get a review copy for free.

It's a slow read only because there are so many lessons to be drawn from the examples of what people did to bring down crime, and how they improved quality of life in New York City, leading to the city's "revival" in rising population, commerce, new construction, and tourism.

I used to say, after reading William Bratton's second autobiography, The Profession: A Memoir of Policing in America, that the New York City subway system was the only place that true "broken windows" policing ("Broken Windows," Atlantic) was implemented, to great success.

Many academics and advocates deride the theory, saying it didn't improve places, that it led to over-incarceration, etc.  

The reality is that what most people call "broken windows" is effectuated by police departments as "zero tolerance policing" where they arrest people for the most minor crimes.  By contrast, BW arrests when the effect can be multiplicative, in that turnstile jumpers tend to commit other crimes, when people not wearing their seatbelts tends to not be associated with criminal activity.

More and more research finds the "broken windows" approach to be successful.

So I'm reading the book, slowly, preparing to write a blog entry about lessons, but it's spurring me to buy more "old books" on the topic such as Crime Fighter about Jack Maple, Disorder and Deviance--after the BW theory was devised this book looks to better define what disorder looks like, and Bleeding Out. by a University of Maryland professor, about community organization ground up initiatives aimed at reducing violence.

Maybe I'll include them all in one big entry, maybe not.

Once the NYC subway was "cleaned up," police and stakeholders wanted to bring the concept of place-based improvement policing "up to the surface."  Bryant Park was first.  Then the Port Authority Bus Terminal.  Then Times Square.  These were the anchors that helped to create a critical mass of improvement, developing critical mass, leading to even more widespread improvements.

When I was in the process of buying other books, I noticed that the author of the book on disorder, who is based at Northwestern, has a lot of books about the "success" of community policing in Chicago.  I'd say that the number of police-involved killings, the hundred millions of dollars of judgements the city pays out each year, and the persistent level of crime indicates that community policing hasn't worked.

National Guard federal law enforcement accosting a guy on a bench in a park, Washington, DC.  Reddit photo.

Bloomberg reports, "Eight Dead, 58 Shot in Chicago Fuel Trump’s Troop Threats," on an especially high rate of violence in Chicago over Labor Day weekend, and how it gives Trump justification for his threats to put "federal law enforcement" in the city, the way he has in DC ("What a great headline (about Trump's takeover of the city police department in Washington DC) | and more on disorder").  

(Note that federal court ruled that the entry of federal law enforcement in Los Angeles, was illegal, "Trump deployment of military troops to Los Angeles was illegal, judge rules in blistering opinion, Los Angeles Times).

The fact is that DC and Chicago are great examples of not applying broken windows principles to policing and/or public safety, and having persistent crime as a result.  

In DC, it's a failure to focus on youth, their participation in crime including murder, car jacking, armed robberies, assaults, and what precipitates it ("Empty desks: How the District’s failure to curb truancy in middle schools fueled the biggest youth crime surge in a generation.," Washington Post).  FWIW, Washington Post columnist Colbert King has been writing about this problem since the 1990s.

Another book in my queue to read, Unforgiving Places The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence. I learned about it from the Atlantic article, "Are We Thinking About Gun Violence All Wrong?."  Also see, "What We Get Wrong About Violent Crime," New Yorker.

Decades ago in the 1990s I was thinking about moving to Chicago, so I subscribed to Chicago Magazine for a bit.  

I remember a couple articles focusing on crime in that city, on the areas where it was worst, and how a relatively small number of perpetrators were responsible for a preponderance of crime.  (These articles are more recent: "The Truth About Chicago’s Crime Rates," "The Truth About Chicago's Crime Rates: Part 2," "New Tricks," Chicago Magazine).

I can't find that article without going to a place with a microfilm copy, but the New Yorker review of the book discusses that concept:

... research—from criminologists like David Weisburd and Lawrence W. Sherman—showed that, in city after city, crime was hyperconcentrated. A handful of blocks accounted for a disproportionate share of violence, and those blocks stayed violent, year after year. In other words, the problem wasn’t people. It was place.

Recognition that there were high crime areas, and the need to focus on those areas, while developing effective strategies for reducing crime, not just reacting to it, is the basis of broken windows policing.

I'm not sure what's happening in Chicago.  When I was on grand jury duty a decade ago, one of the people on the jury was from Chicago and she opined that the closure of various housing projects redistributed criminal activity into different areas, leading to turf wars.

Clearly Chicago isn't doing it, and their community policing strategy wasn't focused on the most important elements ("Civic heavyweights push CPD to rethink community policing strategy," Crain's Chicago Business)., Operationalizing Community Policing Within The Chicago Police Department, CP Solutions, "Homicide, Social Efficacy, and Poverty in Chicago," Chicago Magazine).

Also see:

-- "Chicago's Poor Neighborhoods: Everything Deserts," Chicago Magazine
-- "Is Chicago an Outlier? Organizational Density in Poor Urban Neighborhoods," University of Chicago

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Also see, included within many links to past entries, "Redefining what public safety means: Community Safety Partnership, Los Angeles."

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-- Restore the Core: A citizen's guide to building a livable Washington, DC

I lived in DC for almost 15 years before I started getting involved in civic affairs.  I did so believing if I didn't, nothing would change.  

I did have good timing.  Around then a desire to live in cities began to build.  And crime was dropping.  Neighborhood specifics was one of my foci.  

The other, "smart growth," and the report from the local Sierra Club chapter that I picked up at the Adams Morgan Festival definitely spurred me into involvement.  Before that I had been interested in urban issues, bought and read books, read the Washington Post and the New York Times, etc.  But I was an observer.

One of my first involvements was a local community group that was focused on the community sure, but especially on crime.  

The group was called Near Northeast Citizens Against Crime and Drugs and it was spearheaded by a firebrand "old lady," Loree Murray ("A Woman who won't sit still for it" and "Fought D.C. Cocaine Epidemic" Washington Post).  This area was right in the center of Rayful Edmond's crack distribution operation ("Rayful Edmond was no victim," Washington Post).  She lived around the corner from it, while I lived about 5 blocks away, in an area still affected by it.

This was the kind of community organization that Patrick Sharkey says in Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence, that helped to bring crime down.

In 2003, I ended up getting featured in the Post, "on a slow news day," on the overconcentration of liquor stores in my neighborhood ("Neighbors fight single beer sales").  The photo in my blog profile is from that story.

This kind of overconcentration elsewhere had been associated with significant crime increases ("Alcoholic beverage sales restrictions moving forward in Seattle," 2006).

Ironically, later I opposed a reflexive opposition to taverns and restaurants with liquor licenses, believing it would help revitalize the lagging commercial district, stating there was a big difference between liquor stores and restaurants ("Restaurants and liquor licenses--How much is too much on H Street?," 2005).  Of course, my position was the correct position.

Like a lot of issues, policing gets all mucked up in politics.  The way forward has been shown.  It's just that in most jurisdictions, that's not what police want to do, especially in Chicago ("The federal help Chicago really needs," "A tough truth about police management in Chicago," Crain's Chicago Business).

Poletown, GM, the Archdiocese, etc. and the closure of the Detroit Hamtramack GM plant

Another story I didn't get around to discussing was the November announcement that General Motors will be closing some car plants to rightsize production in the face of reduced sales of cars (as opposed to trucks and SUVs).

It's a surprise to many that with low gas prices (that's why you need higher excise taxes on gasoline) more and more people are buying SUVs and trucks, so plants making cars are redundant.

The reason that this announcement is particularly poignant is because the Poletown neighborhood was wiped out in the early 1980s, because GM wanted to build a plant there.    Hamtramck is a small city enveloped by Detroit that at the time was Polish-majority, hence the name "Poletown."

Immaculate Conception Church.  Historic American Building Survey photo.

The residents fought with the help of organizers (I knew some of them back when I was in college), but the air was kicked out of them when the Catholic Church agreed to sell the various church sites in the district.

- "GM Hamtramck plant closing reopens old Detroit controversy," Detroit Free Press
-- "Thousands lost their homes in epic fight to build GM’s Detroit plant. Now it’s closing," Washington Post

In 1981, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the use of eminent domain for this project was legal, although a couple decades later the same Court sheepishly ruled they were in error.

-- "Michigan Legal Milestones: 33. Poletown and Eminent Domain," Michigan Bar Association
-- "Michigan Court Reverses "Poletown" Decision on Eminent Domain," Appraisal Institute

"Poletown Lives" was a documentary made about what happened.  And books and journal articles have been published as well.

-- Lost Poletown webpage, Detroit Historical Society

Houses in Poletown.  Photo from a Detroit Free Press image gallery.

Ironically, GM "needed" the land occupied by the Poletown neighborhood for a parking lot for the workers.  A big one, sure.  But a parking lot. 

If the company had been willing to build a parking garage, they wouldn't have even needed the land and a neighborhood wouldn't have been demolished.

One lesson is that even back then, Detroit had lots of empty land and the company should have been directed to empty land, rather than land that was utilized productively with residences, businesses, even a hospital.

Today, GM announced it's not likely that another vehicle will be assigned to the plant for manufacture ("GM's Barra signals no new vehicles for Detroit Hamtramck, Lordstown," Detroit Free Press).

Purple Line moves forward

Light rail in Minneapolis.  Flickr photo by Nick Benson.

Various media outlets report today that some of the legal limbo that held up moving forward on the Purple Line has ended ("Federal court ruling enables Purple Line to move ahead," WBAL-TV).

The ruling keeps a separate lawsuit fighting the project overall in play, while approving the environmental impact findings that had been approved earlier, rather than requiring a new environmental impact study taking into account degradation of the quality of the Metrorail system and the concomitant drop in ridership.

Rather than write a big long new post, it's an excuse to call attention to previously written pieces on the subject:

1.  With the Purple Line, Prince George's County has been given a second chance to reposition its land use planning and development paradigm around transit connectivity, which it didn't do with the Metrorail.

-- "The future of mixed use development/urbanization: Part 3, Prince George's County, where's the there?," 2011
-- "A recommended new planning direction for Prince George's County," 2011
-- "Another lesson that Prince George's County has a three to five year window to reposition based on visionary transportation planning," 2011
-- "Frustration #3: the talk about transit oriented development and Prince George's County," 2013

2.  At this time, the Purple Line is as close as we're going to get to a Crossrail-type project, but even though it's nothing like the scale of projects in London and Paris, it does have the ability to strengthen significantly the fixed rail transit network in Metropolitan Washington--which is why some of the reasoning in the early holdings on the lawsuit was misguided.

-- "Maybe the Purple Line light rail project in Suburban Maryland is a lot bigger deal than is recognized (It's our Crossrail)," 2016

3.  The Purple Line ought to be seized as an opportunity to drive other complementary changes across the transit network, to make the Purple Line more successful from the outset, and to improve significantly the transit network.

-- "Setting the stage for the Purple Line light rail line to be an overwhelming success: Part 2 | proposed parallel improvements across the transit network," 2017

This piece lists 19 items to improve the existing transit network, leveraging the development of the Purple Line as a way to do so:

• Change the WMATA Metrorail map so that it includes the Purple Line and regional railroad services
• Integrate the Purple Line light rail line into the Metrorail fare system
• Integrate MARC fares into the SmarTrip/ CharmCard fare media system
• Introduce bi-directional passenger rail service between DC and Frederick on the MARC Brunswick Line
• Consider charging DC-Montgomery County trips on a bi-directional Brunswick Line using the Metrorail/Purple Line tolling/fare schedule. That would treat mileage from railroad trips in the context of a complete (linked) trip on railroad+subway+light rail as a single fare
• The White Flint Sector Plan calls for an infill MARC station. Plans to build that station should be accelerated as part of this proposal
• Provide integrated train arrival information screens at Metrorail, Light Rail, and MARC stations
• Provide integrated bus arrival and departure information screens at Metrorail, Light Rail, and MARC stations
• Bus service in certain corridors between DC and Maryland should be extended and/or frequency increased to better link these areas to the new light rail service
• Montgomery County bus system improvements with the launch of the Purple Line and bi-directional service on the MARC Brunswick Line should include launch of planned Bus Rapid Transit services
• Rearticulate, rebrand, and reposition-extend the Prince George's County TheBus bus transit service. Change the name of the service and the graphic design of the bus livery
• Consider a redesign and rebranding of the metropolitan area's bus systems into an integrated framework, comparable to that of GoTransit in the Raleigh-Durham area
• Set the opening of the Purple Line as the deadline for the integration of the MARC Penn Line and VRE Fredericksburg Line into one combined railroad passenger service
• Set the opening of the Purple Line as the deadline for the implementation of a full-fledged integrated Night Owl bus network for the DC metropolitan area
• Create a cheap weekend pass to use the local transit network, especially Metrorail
• Incorporate quantum improvements in bicycle facilities across the mobility network in association with the launch of the Purple Line
• Rearticulate transportation demand management programming and services in conjunction with the PL launch, including a single network of "customer information centers"
• WMATA should upgrade its Metrorail station bus shelters
• Create "sustainable mobility" corridors in Silver Spring (and other places), complementing the new PL.

4.  To accomplish the various local economic and equity development goals and objectives stated by various groups, stakeholders, and elected officials, Montgomery and Prince George's County need to create a bi-county development authority.

-- "Purple line planning in suburban Maryland as an opportunity to integrate place and people focused initiatives into delivery of new transit systems," 2014
-- "Quick follow up to the Purple Line piece about creating a Transportation Renewal District and selling bonds to fund equitable development," 2014
-- "To build the Purple Line, perhaps Montgomery and Prince George's Counties will have to create a "Transportation Renewal District" and Development Authority," 2015

5. The Purple Line affords the opportunity for Montgomery and Prince George's County to rethink their brand and identity as it relates to "design."


-- "Using the Purple Line to rebrand Montgomery and Prince George's Counties as Design Forward," 2017

6.  The Purple Line is an opportunity to reposition Silver Spring for Montgomery County and New Carrollton Maryland for Prince George's County.

Silver Spring:

Fenton Street, East-West Highway, and Wayne Avenue, Silver Spring, as building blocks for a Silver Spring "Sustainable Mobility District"
-- "Part 1: Setting the stage"
-- "Part 2: Program items 1- 9"
-- "Part 3: Program items 10-18"
-- "Part 4: Conclusion

New Carrollton:
-- "Making over New Carrollton as a transit-centric urban center and Prince George's County's "New Downtown"," 2017 (an update of a piece from 2014)

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While it seems crazy, I think that steps for planning extensions to the Purple Line on either end should get underway also.

Police misconduct and grand juries: a separate prosecution and grand jury system is necessary

The Christian Science Monitor has a story, "In wake of Eric Garner case, should grand jury system be reformed?," positing that the grand jury process is flawed because of the recent incidents in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City, where Michael Brown and Eric Garner were killed by police officers.

I think the article gets it wrong somewhat when it says that juries always return indictments, except in instances of alleged police misconduct.  From the article:

Two grand juries – one in New York, where Mr. Garner was choked to death, and in Missouri, where Mr. Brown was shot – failed to return criminal indictments against police officers a little more than a week apart.

Rooted in history as a skeptical check on the crown, the American grand jury – a secret panel of 12 citizens – has become largely a prosecutor’s rubber stamp. Grand juries almost always return an indictment, except in one specific instance: when it comes to cases involving a police officer.

The real point is that juries do just about 100% of the time what the prosecution suggests should be done--return indictments against alleged criminals and not return indictments against police officers.

We have to remember that prosecutors work with police officers to make cases against alleged perpetrators. Police and prosecutors are two separate but integrated components of the same system.  So it is very difficult for prosecutors to bring cases against police officers, especially when the case is problematic (but not when cases are clearly egregious), because police officers are their primary witnesses in all other matters.

The solution is to have an independent prosecution and grand jury system for police misconduct cases, featuring prosecutors who are not normally involved in trying those crimes where police officers are part of the case for the prosecution.

Of course that will create a different problem, a special police misconduct prosecution unit will be considered pariahs by both police officers,comparable to how police officers cast opprobrium on internal affairs units--which investigate police officers for misconduct, as well as by other prosecutors, who normally work with the police, and "not against them."