other forms of vandalism to go unpunished, actually encourages more serious crime.
• • •
Mayor Giuliani’s first act was to clean up the New York police force by firing those involved in graft and serving notice it would not be tolerated. He then hired hundreds more police officers and empowered them to make arrests for even minor infractions. The common practice of jumping over subway turnstiles was stopped. Interestingly enough, they found that many of those who were doing this were wanted for other offences.
Gangs of youths hanging around street corners were ordered to move along. Kids police thought should be in school were hauled down to a police station and their parents summoned and in some cases fined. Attendance at schools shot up.
The mayor then served notice that he would not allow anyone to live on the streets. You have three choices he warned:
1.Go back to your homes if you have them. If not we’ll provide you with decent accommodation;
2.Go into drug or alcohol rehabilitation; or
3.Go to jail.
But whatever, we will not allow you to live on the streets. It is unsanitary, unsightly, and unsafe.
The usual suspects on the Left, including most of the Democrats in Congress, screamed bloody murder. There were grave warnings about overflowing jails. Open rebellion on the streets. The usual stuff. We’ve heard it all before here in Canada.
But guess what? It worked. As soon as police started hauling people off the streets and they realized the mayor meant business, almost all the street people just disappeared. Some did go into rehab and you’ll still see a few characters doing a bit of panhandling in New York, but the change is truly miraculous! Even such former hellholes as Harlem are now rapidly becoming middle class and better! And as for the jails…amazing. Just as the mayor and many others predicted, there are fewer people in New York jails today than there were when the crackdown began.
Times Square has even replaced its infamous strip clubs and peep shows with Disney, for heaven’s sake. Where once you feared for your life in broad daylight, today you can walk in safety almost anywhere in New York, at night!
As we have seen time and time again, when people realize they will likely get caught and be sentenced to some serious jail time, they decide to take up a career other than crime. (All New York crime figures are quoted in Rudy Giuliani’s book Leadership, Rudolf Giuliani with Ken Kurson, Miramax Books, Hyperion, New York, NY, 2002.)
Crime has been cut in more than half in many other US cities as a direct response to much tougher law enforcement and longer sentencing.
Despite the evidence, which is plain as the nose on your face, that cracking down on crime is the best way to prevent it, here in Canada the central philosophy of our criminal justice system remains firmly entrenched in that dangerously outmoded concept that providing criminals with more rights and privileges creates a safer society. Any evidence to the contrary is dismissed out of hand. With these terribly naive and misguided people, ideology wins easily any time it is challenged by reality.
Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are going to have a very difficult time changing the mindset of almost all those earning their living from Canada’s legal system. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, most of those entrenched in Canada’s legal system, from junior law clerks to senior judges, still firmly believe that strict law enforcement and punishment are not deterrents to crime! This is the prevailing belief of the Canadian leftists who, along with such things as conditional sentencing and automatic early parole, have saddled us with the Young Offenders Act. It is just one more example of how we fail to learn from our own mistakes or the successes of others.
As the new Conservative Government announced its plans to toughen up sentencing, Canadian newspapers were filled with editorials, columns, and letters to the editor all claiming that longer jail terms don’t deter crime. In the following chapters you can see for yourself what the truth is.
And not just about crime. Anyone who removes the blinders and looks around at other serious problems we are confronted with can clearly see, for example, that despite the tens of millions of dollars we are spending on native reserves, the residents are actually worse off than they were 20 years ago. Ditto the homeless, the street people, and the drug addicts. But we keep doing the same thing, over and over again. More money thrown at the problem, more social workers, more lenient sentencing, more committee meetings, more studies, all resulting in more problems, and more crime.
On the other hand, all around us are perfect examples of how to successfully deal with these issues, but sadly, what actually works just doesn’t fit the socialist and very often the antiAmerican ideology that is rampant in this country and is thus ignored. In many cases what actually works is bitterly attacked.
Opinion is one thing, but it’s time to have a close look at some facts which should prove to even the most obtuse skeptic that what’s really needed to solve many of our most pressing problems is just a little common sense!
Let’s start with crime and the facts involving two fairly major miracles…
SIX
The Miracle of New York
In September 1990, Time Magazine ran a cover story headlined “The Rotting of the Big Apple.” The story described how New York City had become the crime and welfare capital of the United States. Violence was out of control. Businesses were fleeing the city by the thousands, the infrastructure was crumbling, and the city was bankrupt despite constantly soaring taxes. The New York Post carried a headline one day that filled the entire front page asking desperately “WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE DO SOMETHING?” It was a legacy of decades of left-wing liberal policies in a left-wing liberal city run by left-wing liberal mayors and administrations.
On January 1, 1994, staunch right-wing conservative Rudy Giuliani, good friend of very right-wing conservative Ronald Reagan, was sworn in as mayor. He immediately answered the Post’s cry and began to do something.
On January 2, Giuliani summoned Police Commissioner Bill Bratton to his office. “We’ve got to show New Yorkers some hope, some reason to believe that their city can be saved,” said the mayor. “We can’t reduce 2,000 murders a year to none overnight, we need to tackle something we can accomplish quickly, something visible enough so that people can see the difference right away.” He raised the issue of the squeegee people who had been harassing motorists for years.
“The law doesn’t allow us to touch them,” said Bratton, “unless they become threatening or actually attack someone.” “Wait a minute,” said the Mayor. “We have jaywalking laws, don’t we? Let’s see if we can’t ticket them for that.”
The Police Commissioner was skeptical but returned a few days later excited. “We can do it,” he said. “Not only that, we thought there were thousands of these guys, but it turns out there are only 180 in the entire city. We’ll put an officer on each one of them and the moment they step off the curb with a bucket we’ll ticket them!” And so they did.
Within a few days the squeegee people were gone. As a bonus, police discovered that a number of them were wanted for much more serious crimes and were hauled off to jail. It is now believed that several murders were prevented by this simple act. Rudy and New York had their first victory, small as it was. There were many more!
The following is a brief list of some of the miracles accomplished by eight years of conservative common sense administration in New
