Shattered: The Continuing, Damaging, and Disparate Legacy of Broken Windows Policing in New York City (2018)

To better understand the impacts of aggressive policing on New Yorkers, beginning in 2016 the New York Civil Liberties Union surveyed nearly 1,500 people in neighborhoods with historically high and low numbers of official stop-and-frisk reports.

What we uncovered should trouble anyone who thinks the days of stop-and-frisk abuses are behind us. The NYPD’s adherence to the Broken Windows theory of crime continues to cause innocent black and brown New Yorkers to feel targeted and harassed while they go about their daily lives. And the disparate levels of enforcement across neighborhoods means that New Yorkers’ experience of policing depends largely on their zip code.