‘Broken Windows’ enforcement everywhere — especially in white neighborhoods

For some New Yorkers, there are broken windows wherever they go.

Critics of the NYPD's aggressive policing of quality-of-life offenses to prevent more serious ones — a strategy known as "broken windows" — say it has created a tale of two cities, one primarily populated by whites, where minor infractions like drinking on a stoop or smoking a joint are rarely punished, and another, primarily populated by blacks and Hispanics, where walking down the street could be cause for interrogation.

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has said the disproportionate number of summonses for low-level offenses doled out in minority communities are a result of cops concentrating their efforts on "the most problematic areas of the city," riddled by crime and quality-of-life complaints.

“Very often times our enforcement activities in the communities, based on a study that we have out there at the moment about quality-of-life enforcement, are based on 311 and 911 calls, service requests, complaints that we receive,” he said at a City Council hearing on Monday.

But a new analysis by the Daily News has found this tale of two cities seems to follow blacks and Hispanics wherever they go. Not only do the communities where they are the majority get slapped with far more summonses — they are also far more likely to be ticketed in low-crime, primarily white communities.

The disparity in summons activity is highest in the 24th Precinct (Upper West Side - North), where blacks and Hispanics make up just 34% of the population but received an estimated 84% of the summonses, and the 84th Precinct (Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO), where they made up 28% of the population but received 78% of the summonses — both a spread of 50 percentage points.

That's followed by the 20th Precinct (Upper West Side - South) with a 48-point spread, the 19th Precinct (Upper East Side - South) with a 43-point spread, and the 13th Precinct (Gramercy) with a 42-point spread.

The analysis also found blacks and Hispanics received the vast majority of summonses for scores of common offenses, such as disorderly conduct (88%), loitering (89%), spitting (92%) and failure to have a dog license (91%) — even though the Health Department estimates that less than 17% of dogs citywide are licensed.