Evidence that curtailing proactive policing can reduce major crime

> “While we cannot entirely rule out the effects of under-reporting,” the authors wrote, “our results show that crime complaints decreased, rather than increased, during a slowdown in proactive policing, contrary to deterrence theory.” Original research is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5 Both authors are political scientists who are highly unlikely to have a command of econometrics. I am not sure if they took into account the panel nature of the data and in those circumstances where authors focus solely on either the cross-section or the time-series nature of the process, it is not uncommon for "results" to be nonsense.

Yes, one of them happened very close to my childhood from home, but I don't understand where there's a disagreement. It should be noted that aggressive policing - distinct from increased police presence - has been shown to contribute to violent/major crimes rather than decrease it: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5 Significant community trust has been built by police in Detroit by keeping their limited resources focused on what helps prevent violence rather than broken windows policing - I believe the community would agree and the police leadership here have voiced support for this as well.

Here is the study https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5 Our criminal justice system has a heavy financial penalty component, I can see how this nickle and diming of certain economically at risk communities can result in more crime. Ferguson is a great example, where the city made a large percentage of it's revenue overpolicing minorities (in many cases even planting drugs etc... As video evidence and DOJ investigations showed). This resulted in many escelations of fines/warrants/arrests for not being able to pay simple traffic/jaywalking etc fines. Putting people in a position where they have to choose between paying rent/medical bills /food or escalating fines (for non payment). Also in many cases, if they could afford a lawyer these outcomes would be very different. MLK talked about the "2 Americas", this is what the other one looks like.

In regards to the "broken windows" model of policing, which sounds eerily like Kristallnacht: "But the authors argue that the data suggests the opposite is true. “The results,” they write, “imply that aggressively enforcing minor legal statutes incites more severe criminal acts.” Rather than proactive policing deterring major crime, Sullivan and O’Keeffe think it’s more likely that this kind of aggressive enforcement “disrupts communal life, which can drain social control of group-level violence.” In other words, overly aggressive policing brings a level of social disruption that actually leads to more crime—and the reduced proactive policing during the slowdown produced a calming effect." Emphasis, mine. Link to Nature article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0211-5

On the other hand, rather "diminished police action", the NYPD went on strike for a couple months in 2014-2015 and crime actually went down. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5

In fact I'll throw out there the time that the NYPD went on strike to prove to the people of New York how much they needed the force (which is pretty fucked up IMO, they were essentially sacrificing the security of civilians in their mind), but instead crime plummeted even accounting for reduced reports of crime. Ie. the presence of police in fact seems to increase crime. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5