Broken windows and graffiti-laden subway cars are symbols of a society that is out of control. A permissive approach to crime is making it extremely difficult for law-abiding citizens to live in New York City.

Former Police Commissioner William Bratton was credited with controlling crime between the 1990s and 2017 in Boston, New York City, and Los Angeles, through enforcing punishment for minor crimes in order to prevent major crimes. In short, enforcing the law for minor infractions of the law took criminals off the streets and sent a message that authorities were serious about cracking down on crime.

A much-discredited policy of searching seemingly minor criminals for guns and other weapons took weapons off the streets and made all of us safer than we are now in our crime-ravaged city. A number of police officers have, in recent years, committed horrendous crimes against individuals, but that doesn’t mean that we should make it virtually impossible for good cops to fight crime. Social activist movements, like calls to “Defund the Police,” have made all of us, Black and White, significantly less safe in our city.

We should not distinguish between White criminals and Black criminals. In the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we should be judged by the content of our character, rather than the color of our skin. With our city now crime-ravaged, many of the same people who were clamoring for the defunding of the police, now see the need to beef up the police force to fight crime.

Also, many of the same people who had been clamoring for lack of enforcement of nonviolent crimes are now advocating strict enforcement of the law. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had allegedly instructed his staff not to enforce the law against “nonviolent” criminals, including some of those who resist arrest.

On the other hand, Eric Adams, the city’s new mayor, was elected on a promise to crack down on crime in our city. Now, these two elected officials are at loggerheads, as New Yorkers come to grips with the reality that there are good and heroic cops, just as there are horrendous cops who commit homicides with criminal actions.

Two hero cops recently died in a shootout in Harlem, emphasizing that we should not judge all cops based on the actions of a few barbaric cops in New York, Minneapolis, or other American cities. We desperately need enforcement of our laws and the help of our police to bring crime under control in New York

City and other cities in our nation. We can’t tie the hands of the police with unreasonable restrictions if we are to have safe cities in our nation.

In short, by cracking down on minor crimes, we can get more guns off the streets in our city, former Police Commissioner Bratton said, in a recent interview with Don Lemon on CNN. As Bratton noted, the current climate has triggered a major rise in crime in our city over the last three years. How far we have come! In 2018, the city had its lowest crime rate at a time of strict enforcement of the law.

The message then was loud and clear. Law-breaking should not be tolerated, and those who break the law should be prosecuted, to the fullest extent of the law.

We need to return to a time when there was more concern about the victims of crime than those who break the law. We desperately need to have the police and private citizens working together in the fight against crime.

Michael Horowitz is a longtime journalist and resident of The Bronx  

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.