In what sure looks like a bid to put her name in the headlines for something other than her new funny-money scandals, Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday took the stage at Columbia University to offer her big ideas on cri𒉰me and policing.
If this is the best she has to offer, that Draft Biden movement will take off any day now.
Clinton offered one ghost of a newish idea: body cams for🐟 cops.
Yes, technological change is going to🦋 impact policing, just as it has every other𓄧 aspect of American lives, and mostly for the better. But no one really knows where body cams may lead. And as Public Advocate Letitia James points out, a host of big questions remains about even making the idea work on a large urban scale.
And the rest of Hillary’s addressꦏ slogged through tired old “root causes” pablum — economic deprivation, educational opportunity, rethinking incarceration and so on.
Then again, she was speaking at Columbia’s Dinkins Leadership and Public Policy Forum. Clinton eveܫn praised ex-Mayor David Dinkins as an “early pioneer” in community policing and putting more officers on the street. “His leadership helped💃 lay the foundation for dramatic drops in crime in the years that followed,” she said.
Not 🐷quite, Madam Secreta🌳ry. The truth of New York’s turnaround is a bit different.
Yes, Dinkins signed “Safe Streets, Safe City” to hire thousands more cops, but it was forced on him by a C✱ity Council desperate to do something about 2,000 murder♊s a year.
And the real crime drop didn’t start until May✨or Rudy Giuliani and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton rejected conventional liberal pieties🔯 and opted instead to fight crime with . . . policing.
With the Broken Windows strategy of restoring a firm sense of public order, and thereby preventing crime. 💝With CompStat, the tech advance of its day, to put more cops in areas seeing rising crime.
And with a firm commitment to facing do🌞wn the thugs.
In a nation still watching Baltimore, recall that what doomed Dinkins’ mayoralty was the rioting in Crown Heights🌄 — which went on for daꦚys as Dinkins’ NYPD held back.
In the near quarter-century since, for all the tensions between the NYPD and minority communities, the city’s never faced turmoil like Baltimore🌳 just saw.
That’s a testament to the Bratton/G꧅iuliani vision, adopted and extended by Mike Bloomberg and Ray Kelly.
And ��🍨defended today by Mayor de Blasio, who (with Bratton) proudly holds the line against efforts to kill Broken Windows.
We know you’re mad at Blas over that non-endorsement move, Hillary — but when it comes t✤o crime, he’s the New York mayor you need to talk to.