The American Spectator

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The Prodigal Son

By William Tucker on 3.6.07 @ 12:08AM

(Page 2 of 2)

In 1992, Herb London, head of the Gallatin School at NYU and a conservative candidate for mayor, made a radical suggestion in the pages of the New York Post. "Let's choose one place in New York and try to restore order by policing anti-social behavior," he said. London proposed Washington Square Park, where until the 1960s it had been illegal to lie on the grass. At this point, people were dealing drugs and urinating in public. London's suggestion went unheeded.

Two years later, Giuliani was elected. Before taking office, he sat through a few prepping conferences at the Manhattan Institute absorbing conservative ideas. "Broken Windows" was one of them. From day one Giuliani began putting it into practice. The "squeegee men" (who used to harass motorists at stop light) were gone in days. Turnstile jumping -- which had reached more than 50 percent in some stations -- was halted. Within weeks the results began to take effect. A frightened populace began to come out of hiding. Before Giuliani people had been afraid to walk their dogs. Within six months they were strolling at night on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Crime plummeted and didn't stop falling until it returned to 1965 levels. In no other city did this happen -- only in New York. By the time President Clinton ran for re-election in 1996 he was bragging about national crime reduction -- even though the entire drop was due to falling rates in New York. Gradually other cities picked up the idea -- although in some like New Orleans and Detroit it never happened.

Was all this due to demographics? Was it because (as Clinton claimed) the federal government had funded a few thousand police officers? Was it -- as University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt scurrilously suggests in Freakonomics -- the result of abortion? No. The entire trend is directly traceable to Giuliani's crime policies.

Rudy Giuliani would be a serious candidate for President even if September 11th had never occurred. To the despair of the New York intelligentsia, the local boy may be about to make good. Don't expect any tickertape parades.

*****

I've been criticizing the conduct of the war recently and taking a lot of flak from Spectator readers who say I'm just another East Coast elitist watching the conflict on CNN without any idea of what's really going on. So I've decided to take them up on it. I'll be flying into Iraq Thursday for a two week embed with the 82nd Airborne. I don't have an agenda. I just want to see what the troops are saying. I'll be reporting soon from Baghdad.

Letter to the Editor

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