A majority of New Yorkers across all racial lines back the NYPD’s “Broken Windows” anti-crime program, according to new poll results releasedWednesday.
The Quinnipiac University poll found that 60 percent of everyone surveyed said they supported having cops crack down on quality-of-life crimes like public drinking, selling pot and making noise at night, with 34 percent opposed.
The breakdown along racial lines showed the strongest support among Hispanics, at 64 percent, followed by 61 percent of whites and 56 percent of blacks.
Overall, 61 percent of those surveyed said they want cops to “actively” make arrests and issues summonses in their own neighborhoods.
But a whopping 74 percent also said that police brutality is a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem — the highest number since 78 percent answered that way in May 2001.
And 68 percent said there’s “no excuse” for the caught-on-camera chokehold death of Eric Garner during his July 17 arrest for selling loose cigarettes on Staten Island.
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said in a statement he was “gratified but not surprised that New Yorkers understand and support quality-of- life enforcement initiatives.”
“They are the foundation upon which policing in a democracy rests,” Bratton said of the “broken windows” tactics, which target low-level offenders as a way of preventing more serious crimes.
“The challenge remains to do it in a way that is both lawful and respectful, and as New York City police commissioner, that is a goal the mayor, myself and the 52,000 members of the NYPD are committed to achieving throughout the city’s many diverse neighborhoods,” he added.
“Our numbers say ‘Broken Windows’ is a good thing. In the Garner case, they think the arrest was unjustified and the cop should be prosecuted,” noted Maurice Carroll, the poll’s assistant director.
“That sounds inconsistent and it probably is, but there’s no law that says you have to be consistent.”
The poll results came from phone interviews with 1,021 city voters interviewed between Aug. 20 and 25, and have a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
On Tuesday, Quinnipiac released other results from the same poll that showed a 50 percent approval rating for Mayor de Blasio, which was almost unchanged from the 51 percent approval rating he got in June.
But Police Commissioner Bill Bratton saw his approval rating slip from 57 percent to 48 percent — a number lower than any scored by predecessor Ray Kelly during his 12 years leading the NYPD.
Asked about the poll results, de Blasio — who defended “Broken Windows” in the wake of Garner’s death — said: “People want to see enforcement of quality-of-life crimes.”
“They want it to be fair, but they want it to be addressed. They want a police response but they want it to be fair and equal,” he said during an appearance at East Harlem’s Abraham Lincoln Houses public-housing complex.
De Blasio, who campaigned against the NYPD’s “Stop and Frisk” program and reined it in upon taking office, also blamed the drop in Bratton’s popularity on problems the top cop “inherited” and “has had to clean up.”
“We are not stopping innocent people as we have in the past,” the mayor said.
De Blasio appeared with the Rev. Al Sharpton, who said he supported “Broken Windows” but added: “You cannot have unequal enforcement of the law.”
“We just dont want targeting of certain communities,” the activist minister added.