In the March 1982 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson laid out the case for strong police foot patrol presence in an article titled “Broken Windows.” The authors asserted that basic disorderliness breeds complex crime and that by stopping the spread of petty vandalism through police visibility and interaction within a given community, police prevent crimes before they occur.
The authors use the example of a broken window on a building as a sign of implied apathy and permissibility for vandalism within a community. In this metaphor, the problem of a single smashed out window snowballs into a series of broken windows in much the same way minor vandalism escalates into serious crime in a community.
In many ways, College Park resembles a community teetering on the edge of the broken window complex. While petty vandalism and occasionally serious crime occurs in the town, College Park hasn’t yet reached the heights of crimes in cities such as Newark, used as an example by Wilson and Kelling.
Students fear walking off the campus late at night, and rarely does a week go by during the school year without a Crime Alert e-mail going out to the campus.
Meanwhile, residents of the city resent both the rowdy behavior downtown and the constant threat of criminal activity in the city.
The College Park City Council’s passage of extra funding for public safety two weeks ago represents a major step in combating crime in the city. The allocation for three new officers solely patrolling College Park will inevitably help make the city a safer place to live. Despite debate over the costs of the expansion, the basic need for safety within the community, a need shared by both students and residents alike, prevailed.
This does not mark the end of the problem of crime in College Park. It may not even have an impact in the immediate future. Three officers will not be able to solve every case, prevent every mugging and stop every theft in progress, but the increased police presence in and of itself will begin to act as a powerful deterrent toward crime.
In the end, the city council should be commended for taking a strong stance on improving public safety, even when the costs associated resulted in raising taxes for residents. By increasing police presence in the city, the council effectively stated that College Park will no longer be a community tolerant of broken windows.
