“It starts off as an arrest and things get out of control”: Why Broken Windows must be scaled back

Sentencing Project 

Earlier this week, a grand jury in New York City decided to indict an NYPD officer for recklessly wielding his authority and taking the life of a young African-American man named Akai Gurley. Finally, after a summer and fall characterized by racial strife and conflict between police officers and minority communities, the system was working, right? The answer is, yes and no — because unlike the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases, the officer indicted in this instance, a 27-year-old named Peter Liang, was not white. And among the African-Americans in Brooklyn who knew the late Gurley, this fact did not go unnoticed. As is sadly always the case in today’s media environment, the #blacklivesmatter story has faded considerably since it dominated television broadcasts and newspapers all over the country. But the problem that the #blacklivesmatter movement is trying to address — the problem of a criminal justice system that is institutionally and endemically biased against African-Americans, and indeed all people of color — has not gone away.