A Trend Grows in Policing

By BOB HERBERT
New York Times

One of the better trends to emerge in the U.S. over the past several years has been the move in many big cities toward more thoughtful ways of fighting crime — what I call enlightened policing.

There is a growing awareness in city after city that wielding a police department like a blunt instrument is counterproductive. If you want to bring crime down and keep it down, cops have to be smarter.

Ray Kelly, who’s been remarkably successful as police commissioner here in New York, has long embraced this approach. So has Bill Bratton, first in New York and now in Los Angeles. Dean Esserman is doing interesting things in Providence, R.I., and Garry McCarthy is trying to haul Newark, at long last, out of the dark ages of policing.

I’m hardly naïve about the existence of police abuse, whether in New York (where Mr. Kelly has had some dreadful lapses) or elsewhere. But there has been a definite move in many big cities away from thuggishness as the rule and toward more enlightened, more effective strategies.

Those who doubt that violent crime is still an enormous problem should consider the following:

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