The Trajectory of the Blue Model

Today tells you about next year.

In a long history of murder in America, the historian Randolph Roth argued that violence follows other losses of trust and order. The murder rate surges in the face of “four distinct phenomena: political instability; a loss of government legitimacy; a loss of fellow-feeling among members of society caused by racial, religious, or political antagonism; and a loss of faith in the social hierarchy.”

Read that list carefully, because it should sound familiar.

Similarly, the originators of the theory of “broken windows policing” argued that peace and order grow from peace and order; neighborhoods are more likely to be calm when they’re “places where people are confident they can regulate public behavior by informal controls.” Crime follows crime; vandalism, for example, “can occur anywhere once communal barriers — the sense of mutual regard and the obligations of civility — are lowered by actions that seem to signal that ‘no one cares.’” The police commissioner William Bratton famously reduced all categories of crime in New York City subways by assigning officers to arrest turnstile jumpers who entered the system without paying. He sent a signal at the front gates.

“Broken windows” is a much-criticized theory: “He contended that the very notion of ‘disorder’ is subjective and racially fraught.” But the criticisms tend to reduce the complexity of the theory in order to “debunk” it.

Decay communicates. Disorder is a message.

So.

Late last week in Oakland, a group of “80 to 100 people” ransacked a gas station market, causing an estimated $100,000 in damage.

The gas station is in the same neighborhood as an In-N-Out that closed recently because of constant crime.

Broken windows: as soon as it closed, the signs were stolen.

The mob that ransacked the gas station took about 40 minutes to empty the market. Police arrived several hours later.

Similarly, sideshows in Los Angeles and the Bay Area — street takeovers by drift drivers and crowds of spectators — often result in no arrests.

At the same time, elderly women in Oakland are becoming a particularly ripe target for violent crime:

And so the mayor of Oakland warns that the city is being targeted by a right-wing conspiracy, and the governor of California is tweeting hard at red states. The failure of the blue model produces…attacks on alternatives. And nothing but. All other approaches are LITERALLY ADOLF HITLER, the message of people who have a model that doesn’t work. We’re drowning in distraction.

But disorder feeds disorder, and media-centered distraction doesn’t change the substance of the message on the streets. “Tell me how this ends.”