[apotecaryman]

What is your definition of broken windows policing? When I google it, it says:

"The broken windows theory is a criminological theory that states that visible signs of crime, anti-social behavior, and civil disorder create an urban environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes."

Now when you look at a riot such as the one in Minneapolis and in in prior cases such as California 92, how do you not see a further increase in crime and disorder once a subset of the population realizes that something seems to have gone unpunished? Even in smaller cases such as graffiti, an area tends to have a higher rate of graffiti the more graffiti there is in the area. The reason is simple, others came before and managed to do, opportunistic individuals with broken morals will abuse it.

[kaitai]

As someone from the Twin Cities, the opportunists here include white supremacists and outside agitators as well as local folks who took advantage of this loss of control. We had hockey riots too, & burned cars, in 2003 and 2014; no one made your argument there. We have a strong civic community here, and there are many more protestors taking care of each other, taking care of small businesses, and trying to keep the peace here.

Yes, sh*& is going down here. We need change. The arrest of Omar Jimenez of CNN on camera accurately represents the situation for black men in Minneapolis. This is not about broken windows or graffiti. This is about George Floyd, Philando Castile, Jamar Clark, the fact that Devin Chauvin who killed George Floyd has been involved in multiple shootings and has never been prosecuted -- even after killing other people. That's your broken window, hah.

[zaksoup]

If you had scrolled down a bit on the Wikipedia article you might have found a rather well cited section that shows the causal link you imply here is extremely weak in follow-up studies.

Sure you can say intuitively "if people see crimes go unpunished they may be inclined to commit further crimes" but the problem is that policing is an aggregate function of society, not an individual one.

Communities rightfully question the efficacy policing petty property crimes with the total value of white collar crime vastly dwarfs the value of property crime. Often these white collar criminals are connected to or directly the cause of economic devastation in these communities, yet the communities themselves are the ones who bear the brunt of over-policing and the violence that causes.