Saturday, January 23, 2016

Should we lighten up on minor offenses?

From DNA Info:

Penalties for drinking alcohol and urinating in public could be reduced under a package of bills being discussed by the city council next week.

Under the Criminal Justice Reform Act of 2016, drinking alcohol in public, littering, public urination, unreasonable noise and violating parks rules would largely be considered civil offenses punishable with summonses, according to a city council memo on the plan.

The legislation would remove the possibility of a permanent criminal record for urinating in public and violating park rules. Instead, police would create public guidelines about when those violations are civil or criminal offenses.

The city has used the "broken windows" theory of policing for years which holds that smaller offenses are predictors for larger crimes. Both Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton have remained strong defenders of the strategy in the face of criticism that the theory unjustly targets minorities and the poor.

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

NO!
Nip it in the bud!
Many a career criminal begins with violating smaller laws.
In the military, the reason for discipline is to turn out an efficient confident soldier who is able to be safe in any situation.
The continuity of civilized societies demands the socialization to the norms of that society.
Teach a child that some laws do not count and you are on the path of beginning to raise a sociopath.
Maybe we don't have enough cops to enforce these "smaller" laws. After all , it's all about filing paperwork and hauling a perp in.
We need our cops for national security now, in the new age of terrorism.
Yet, we keep on over developing and adding more population and not enough cops to police them.

Anonymous said...

This is coming about because the drunken hipster transplants are drinking and pissing everywhere, especially on weekends. Let's not upset the rich millennials and their parents.

Anonymous said...

F*ck No!

MV-V is a bigger nutjob than Blah Blah, and that's saying a lot.

Anonymous said...

If we had enough places to go then we wouldn't need to pee outside.

Res Ipsa said...

I think that community service and fines are a good way to go. Putting people in jail for public urination or public drinking is a waste of taxpayer dollars. But there should be consequences to these actions....like fines and community service.

Anonymous said...

The answer is, FUCK NO!!

PJ said...

I got nailed for an open can of beer in a brown bag about 15 years ago.

I was given a summons and had to report and spend a day in a courtroom on B'way a bit north of City Hall.

To fight off a fine which was about 15 bucks which I would have been more than happy to pay and be done with.

Anyhow, I got off on the basis of "insufficient evidence, reporting officer did not mention brand of beer".

Also, never did that again!

Anonymous said...

Lets start with a 2 year trial program where it is a ticket to piss or litter around the courthouse or government buildings. Let them see/smell the problems and then decide how to proceed.

Brought to you by the Democrat Party, light on crime since LBJ!

Anonymous said...

"If we had enough places to go then we wouldn't need to pee outside."

I'm a middle age man with an aging prostate and even I don't need to pee outside. So I hope you're kidding. Otherwise it's idiots like you that ruin things for all.

r185 said...

Yes. Minor offenses should result in minor consequences, not damage to a person's future ability to get a job. We shouldn't be creating barriers that can last decades.

Anonymous said...

Serial killers usually begin by killing small animals.

Anonymous said...

Yeah why not completely make it like Mexico and Guatemala where they rape, steal and crap in the middle of the street and its all good.
When the 3rd word breaks the law and overwhelms the cops and courts me make it OK right ?
--The mayor is gearing up to save his people from being deported by the next president

JQ LLC said...

"This is coming about because the drunken hipster transplants are drinking and pissing everywhere, especially on weekends. Let's not upset the rich millennials and their parents." "

"Putting people in jail for public urination or public drinking is a waste of taxpayer dollars. But there should be consequences to these actions....like fines and community service."

In a nutshell.

This stems from recent stories involving fines and added penalties that the poor offenders couldn't afford to pay and also the selective enforcement and stiffer sentences of poor minorities. But it's fine and convenient for Generation Gentrification, which have become the anchor of our economy in this city and are loony free spenders, and our prior and current mayor and city planners has done everything possible to satiate their needs ( I don't agree that it's just the weekend though).

Funny thing, because these people can afford to pay any fine in one shot. Unfunny thing, because this seems a lot like the "too big to fail" banks execs just paying fines instead of a getting locked up.

It's heartening to see this and smoking weed offenses drawn down, it's going to save a lot of headaches for both sides. It's just stupid in retrospect of the aggressive way these petty offenses were enforced and now they are being lenient. Maybe major crimes would have went down more dramatically than little blips of 1 and 2% that this city has had for the last decade, when broken windows (selective and arbitrary enforcement) and stop and frisk (unconstitutional) were hemorrhaging the cities coffers and thanks to lawsuits still do.

This might be good for Compstat stats in these burghs too. A lot of money gets earmarked and imaginative rezoning approvals when a town gets speculative property values (The only thing liberal and progressive about DeBlasio is his ability and execution to rezone air rights).

There's no need to be alarmed by this. It's just sucks that these narcissists and culture parasites get off light, as the long time locals had to deal with the bullshit hassle.

When ya gotta go be discreet.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/44/Whosnext.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kql0ld02SS4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9D92gBcv-A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgOOyBNzXOU




Anonymous said...

An open can of beer in a brown bag is illegal ?
They will need to bust the whole immigrant population of Woodside, Elmhurst and Jackson Heights 1/2 the people in Penn Station or watching July 4th fireworks !! If so that's a stupid law, all them $$ cafes in Manhattan have have tables of people drinking alcohol in public all summer long this is pure discrimination !!!!

Anonymous said...

We need to take our communities back from speculators who make a ton of money filling buildings up with immigrants and hipsters. The former have different values of public behavior (thank 'litter?') and the latter have been babied their entire lives and still thinks that society at large is a replacement for mommy and daddy.

The city looks like a shithouse - except of course, for the finer neighborhoods that do not attract the lower reaches of the immigrant (working class and poor) - and idiot hipsters.

This is why that bullshit that Queens attracts tourists is so stupid. While Manhattan has a nightlife, you see only scum under that Roosevelt El.

Anonymous said...

Thank all of the politicians who made Queens into a wall to wall dump....all for votes to get elected!

Anonymous said...

They don't call taxpayers peons for nothing you know.

Anonymous said...

Give them an inchand they'll take........ Everything. I started as a cop in 1982. Bosses were pissed when you brought in arrest that wasn't akin to the Lindbergh kidnapping. All they wanted was parking tickets and movers. When Bratton 1 started Zero-tolerance,(remember the term,quality of life?) the tide started to turn. Was it too much? Only if you were a total piece of shit,discretion was still the name of the game. Bring it back and enjoy the city....

Anonymous said...

Selective enforcemnt,unconstitutional stops, ?? Ha!! Sorry but you enforce the law on those breaking it. If the shoe fits,put handcuff on it. It's not old asian people committing crimes,skippy.Sometimes a good kick in the ass or more works a whole lot better than locking people up,but those days are gone.

Anonymous said...

Anon said: "I'm a middle age man with an aging prostate and even I don't need to pee outside. So I hope you're kidding. Otherwise it's idiots like you that ruin things for all."
-----------------
What do you do if you are a subway rider, and often there are delays? the MTA has closed all the stations men's rooms.

Anonymous said...

OK...fine them , then they get put on a work detail and their names published in the local press.
Hmmmmm? Is that a little better than a slap on the wrist and a piddling fine?

JQ LLC said...

Ass kicking is what has led to this downgrading. And what, off-duty cops after a night in some irish bar doesn't engage in lascivious public bodily functions. Come on. And all that ass kicking in the centurion days in the NYPD didn't stop the bad old days from happening.

Don't call me skippy.

(sarc) said...

The good ole' Dinkins days...

Anonymous said...

It's about time the city finally started to decriminalize things, instead of making everything illegal. There's no reason these offenses should lead to criminal charges instead of fines.

I'm not happy with the public urination part, but with almost no public bathrooms in the city, sometimes people have no choice.

Doubly so with the littering part, since there are garbage cans everywhere, unlike bathrooms.

Anonymous said...

Next we should allow open defecation, nudity and sexual intercourse, any place you'd like, right? Subway, city parks, children's playgrounds. Sounds good duhblazio. Lets lower that bar to the ground.

Anonymous said...

Quite a jump from reducing penalties for drinking alcohol outdoors to allowing people to have sex on playgrounds.

And toplessness has been legal in the city since the 80s and it managed not to destroy the moral fabric of the city.

Anonymous said...

Because most women won't go topless. But skells, crimials and sociopaths can't wait to get over and make your life more miserable.

Anonymous said...

What you dont understand is all these offenses are fines. They become a minor crime when the person refuses to pay or go to court to fight it
. Get it??
Let's cater to the lazy useless pieces of shit and screw the average ny'r.