 We had aggressive begging everywhere. And we had every day on average, 60 or 70 serious felony crimes, including robbery, stabbings, 22 murders, 1990. And that was very serious crime, as well as quality of life crime. So what did you do then to clean up, you know, the subway? It was very easy. It's exactly what the transit police now in 2023 are doing in New York once again. And surprise, surprise, the success they're having is crime is going down and quality life is improving. We focused first on fare evasion. And fare evasion was a dollar 15 theft of service. The cops did not want to enforce it. They thought they were just protecting the revenue of the transit authority. Plus they would be tied up anywhere from 12 to 24 hours processing that fare evasion arrest. We structured it so that we put teams of officers working together, supervised, and we would arrest 10 or 15 or 20 fare evaders, hold them together and then bring them upstairs and we created what we called a bust bus. It was especially a quick bus where we could process the prisoners right there at the station. Seven out of 10 could be released immediately because they had no record so we could effectively give them desk appearance tickets. But three out of 10 were found to be wanted on warrants or in many instances carrying weapons. So the figure we used back in 1990 was one out of every 21 we arrested had some type of weapon on them and one out of every seven had a warrant outstanding usually for a previous transit offense. So the beauty of what we were doing was the public saw for the first time in 20 years the police were actively going after the fare beaters. There's one line of argument that is like, well, that's really what was the difference maker here is it's almost like it's less about the public disorder perception of things and more about you're kind of creating a pretense or like almost like a fishing expedition to be able to stop a bunch of people and then from that you're able to find the people that have outstanding warrants and so forth. And that is really the part of it that's having an effect more so than broken windows more broadly understood. Is there anything to that? What you're describing is the term is called a pretext stop that stop that you're trying to find a reason to make a stop. Broken windows policing, however, is about probable cause. It's an offense, a criminal offense or a administrative offense in the case of the subway oftentimes that the police officer actually sees the violation, it's probable cause. He has probable cause, they see him picking the pocket they see him accosting the other riders on the system. So the far left has been able to really muddy the waters significantly relative to trying to equate broken windows policing which is probable cause policing quality of life policing with stop, question and frisk both of them are essential tools of American policing and need to be practiced legally need to be supervised closely and need to be defended vigorously and I'm a staunch defender and proponent of both of them. How would you defend stop, question and frisk? Because that seems to be the even more controversial policy where there's been real constitutional questions and rulings against it because you're not actually, as you say, you're not intervening after a crime. It's the police officer kind of saying, okay, we, I believe that this person is about to commit a crime and doesn't that contribute to rationing up the tensions? Let me explain, stop, question and frisk is protected and governed by Terry versus Ohio Supreme Court case 1968. We studied extensively when I was in the police academy in 1970 because it was so new that you have to believe that a crime has is or is about to be committed and have to be able to articulate the reasons for that. And that articulation is critical. And what has happened in recent years unfortunately because of poor leadership, poor supervision, poor training, his offices are not trained enough as to how to articulate why they made the stop. And it's allowed in the case of New York City where it was overused, well intended but overused in the early 20th century. Could you give me an example, just a concrete example of what is a good use of stop and frisk and what is a bad use of stop question and frisk? Well, basically it goes right to the heart of reasonable suspicion. You have to be able to articulate why are you making the stop? And in city after city around the country and it's been determined that many of those stops are being made inappropriately. So it's given stop, question and frisk. Oftentimes it's called stop and frisk but the important part of stop, question and frisk is the question. You stop somebody, you have the legal right to stop them if you have reasonable sufficient that you can document but then your question. And then the questioning basically may lead to effectively the frisk, the fear that the individual may be armed. So it's an essential tool of policing. Some cities have tried to claim that they don't do it. You cannot police any community in America without the officer having the ability to do a stop, question, frisk. It's like going into a doctor's office and the doctor's not allowed to ask you any questions. How about why are you there? One point that our colleague CJ C. Armella highlighted here was that in that essay, Kelly said that broken windows policing is a highly discretionary set of activities that seeks the least intrusive means of solving a problem whether it's prostitution, drug dealing in a park, graffiti, public drunkenness and moreover depending on the problem, good broken windows policing seeks partners to address it, social workers, city code enforcers, business improvement, district staff, teachers, medical personnel, clergy and others. Do you agree with Kelly's argument there or clarification about broken windows that there's more to it than the police need to be out there aggressively enforcing every infraction? That's correct. He has never basically indicated or have I that you have to enforce with the rest every infraction but you do have to address the infraction that broken windows is never gonna work with just police enforcement. It has to work with what did Kylie and Gunn do in the transit authority? Even as we were arresting fair evaders, seven out of 10 of them were stopped but then they were released with a ticket. They weren't jailed. They were inconvenienced for half an hour or so but they were simultaneously cleaning up the subway. They were getting rid of the trash. They were getting rid of the graffiti. They were improving, getting rid of the, on 6,000 train cars they got rid of that graffiti that was like the hallmark of New York of the 70s and 80s. And so there's with a partnership with the station masters with the transit authority, with the police. This is an example, the business improvement districts in New York that are so successful. Grand Central Park, Bryant Park. Why are they so successful? They focus on cleanliness. They focus on enforcement and they focus on furniture. The idea of benches and street lights. The creative idea of Bryant Park of not having permanent benches and chairs because you can move around. So three or four, you want to sit together, you get a little folding chair and you make your own little group. You want to sit by yourself, take that chair and go sit off on the corner. And it's that creative thinking that is that what broken windows was all about. The dotted line on the top is the incarceration rate in the US. The bottom is New York City during the relevant time period and you see the divergence there. It actually goes down in New York City. So it's not obvious. Every year. Every year. Yes. So it's it's not like, you know, just locking up all the criminals or something made New York safer and New York during that time period saw greater crime improvements in reducing crime than the rest of the nation. So that's an interesting aspect to note of your approach is that did not require mass incarceration. Some of what resulted with that lower crime, et cetera, was increased tourism, increased jobs to support that tourism. The number, it had not been a new hotel open to New York when Giuliani came in in 94 for years. And then you started having all these boutique hotels popping up. I think there were like 65 of them in the space for a couple of years. And I remember going with Giuliani in 94 down to the South Side Seaport, an international meeting of real estate investors and telling them point blank, you want to start taking a close look at putting your money into New York City because we're going to make it safe. And we did. And it continues to be a relatively safe city compared to some of what's going on in America. Hey, that's an excerpt from our Reason livestream with Bill Bratton, who was New York City's top cop. He also worked in LA and oversaw dramatic decreases in crime. We talked about what's going on now, what worked in the past, what might work in the future and how to square all of that with the need for civil liberties. If you want to watch the whole video, check it out. And if you want to check out our Reason livestreams, we do them every Thursday at Zach Weismiller and I at 1pm Eastern time, go to reason.com and check us out.