# American Dopers: Is "Supercop" Bill Bratton really as good as they say?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dopers-is-supercop-bill-bratton-really-as-good-as-they-say/593000>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [August 17, 2011, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dopers-is-supercop-bill-bratton-really-as-good-as-they-say/593000 "2011-08-17T05:51:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![user\_hostile](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/user_hostile/32/474_2.png) [@user\_hostile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/user_hostile)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2011, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-dopers-is-supercop-bill-bratton-really-as-good-as-they-say/593000/41 "2011-08-22T17:28:38Z")

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> [@smiling\_bandit](#):
>
> And yet even New Yorkers hostile to Guiliani admit he and his staff changed the city environment considerably. People not only were safer - they felt safer. Bratton’s new techniques not only lowered crime directly, they hit the real environmental causes of crime.
> 
> It was and is still fashionable to claim that poverty causes crime, but the evidence for this is actually pretty lacking, except inasmuch as violent and visisble crime tends to arise from poorly-educated, and poorer, strata of society. However, many more studies have shown a rough but real link between apathy and crime. If people care about neighborhoods, keep them clean, and see a real investment by the powers that be (in time more than money), they tend to not commit crimes. On the other hand, when people don’t care (which is metaphorically invoked as the window that doesn’t get fixed, eading to all the windows being broken) and see others not caring, they are more likely to commit crimes.

I have no dog in this fight. Just saying.

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