Through the lens of Chambers of Commerce throughout Georgia, the state is shining in 2023. Our economy and businesses are thriving, we are home to magnificent universities and medical complexes and industry is on the move. We have a moderate climate, thriving agriculture, great sports venues and an abundance of opportunities to suit all tastes in culture and recreation.
As states go, Georgia has a great deal to offer in contemporary America. On the other hand, through the lens of the average Georgia taxpayer, in 2023 there are a growing number of local neighborhoods with major quality-of-life problems including declining public safety. Where you stand often depends on where you sit.
In some of Georgia’s metropolitan areas, there are growing numbers of formerly safe neighborhoods now suffering from urban and suburban blight, as well as dangerous trends involving illicit drug trafficking, gang activity, escalating gun violence, failing schools and public health needs. They are neighborhoods that seem to have lost their sense of community; places where neighbors do not watch out for each other anymore. Local government fails to enforce community appearance and public health standards, and out of fear of crime, responsible neighbors isolate themselves from their neighbors.
The number of neighborhoods that are declining both socially and environmentally in the wake of the pandemic and defund-the-police movement is on the increase. It is a shame, given that there were times when those neighborhoods thrived, and they were vibrant places where people were proud to live. Now they are places where people of all races flee as soon as they can afford to do it. Those who remain suffer the malaise of lost hope and feel economically trapped. there.
Ironically, in our not-too-distant history, there was a time when we developed a viable blueprint for reclaiming and rehabilitating failing neighborhoods. A brilliant 1982 book entitled “Broken Windows” explained the sad progression by which the quality-of-life in neighborhoods declines. It uses imagery of a hypothetical desirable, safe, livable neighborhood in which a house becomes vacant, starts to decay and begins to look like it is abandoned. A mischievous juvenile throws a rock that breaks a window, and no one says or does anything about it.
When no one addresses the hypothetical broken window, the teen who broke it becomes more brazen. In the days that follow, they break more windows, and other signs of decline soon appear. Still if nothing is done, crime in the neighborhood increases and neighbors begin to perceive that no one is in charge, and no one cares. They begin to intensely fear crime, withdraw from the normal social fabric of the neighborhood and the downward spiral continues until the greater community considers it a dangerous or “bad” place to live. Sadly, responsible homeowners start to move away. They don’t necessarily want to move, but they don’t want to get robbed while they are putting out their trash, or fueling their car. And they don’t want their kids being bullied.
The ”broken windows” theory warns that physical signs of decline in a neighborhood include proliferation of visible trash, derelict vehicles, and overgrown lots. These conditions encourage social decline such as street-level drug dealing, groups of defiant youths congregating, brazen vagrants hanging out and squatters. Both the declining environmental and social conditions are labeled “disorder” and to the extent disorder is ignored by local government, especially the police, conditions continue to worsen over time as crime continues to accelerate and spread. Disorder breeds more disorder.
Along with the “broken windows” approach as a way to effectively reverse the conditions that contribute to deterioration of neighborhoods, there is Community Policing. It operates on four simple principles:
1. Police directly partner with the people in the communities they serve to improve conditions.
2. Police deploy resources not for show, but based on where and when crime typically occurs.
3. Police confront suspicious persons in a legal, unbiased but proactive way to prevent crime.
4. Police lead the way in community problem-solving working with public and private service organizations.
Community Policing can still be effective today to recover once vibrant neighborhoods– especially when local police work with other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. It works because the criminal element is removed, and municipal agencies are urged to do their jobs of code enforcement, public works and public health where they are needed most.
Somewhere in the kaleidoscope of the pandemic, the defund the police movement, so-called “critical race theory” and “diversity, equity and inclusion” woke politics, we have lost the common sense of unbiased community policing. We desperately need it back.
Georgia certainly does not need any more broken windows and neither do Georgia’s children, grandchildren or senior citizens.
The author once served as the police chief of Savannah and Marietta.
