Small focus yields large result in crime fight

NY Post Editorial:

More than a decade after a revolutionary approach to policing sent crime in New York City tumbling to lows not experienced since the early '60s, new evidence suggests that it continues to work.

The NYPD reports that its strict enforcement of a seemingly trivial infraction - moving between cars on subway trains in motion - has resulted in 1,953 summonses since January.

Of those, 166 - nearly one in 10 - turned out to involve the subject of an outstanding warrant. Another 49 were found to be carrying illegal weapons: four loaded guns and 45 knives.

Consider it the latest validation of the so-called "broken window" theory of policing: Cracking down on petty crime not only leads to the apprehension of wanted felons, but stops low-level criminals before they move on to more serious crimes.

That was a reflection of the observation that allowing broken windows in a building to remain unfixed inevitably leads to further vandalism. Fixing the small problems now, the argument went, will prevent them from becoming bigger problems later.

It also breeds grater respect for the law generally.

It was the visionary approach that Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his first police commissioner, William Bratton, took.

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Zero tolerance was also extended to low-level quality-of-life offenders, like squeegee men and graffiti vandals, to similar good effect.

The result: an astonishing turnaround that made New York a city that was - and remains - cleaner and safer than anyone at the time seemed to think possible. Memories of an earlier New York, when people lived in fear of deadly crime, soon receded.

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So, we know this works, why don't we apply the same principle to immigration law. One of the reasons the problem is so big is because we don't focus on the small violators and we tend to catch and release. We could seriously reduce illegal immigration if we applied the same standard. Too often we are stuck with the same excuses that we used to hear about fighting crime in New York.