By Matt Apuzzo, The Associated Press
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) -- When Connecticut’s largest city was mired in the economic slump of the early 1990s, drug dealers and gang leaders charged tolls to cross their turf. Every year, Bridgeport flirted with setting its own state record for homicides.
And when economic relief came in the late 1990s, it was no surprise that violent crime rates fell in turn, riding the national wave of big-city crime reduction.
It seemed obvious: Lead the state in unemployment, lead the state in homicides. Stop the recession, stop the violence.
But recent years have turned that thinking on its head. The collapse of the stock market in 2000 brought tough economic times to Bridgeport. The region lost more than 8,000 manufacturing jobs and city unemployment more than doubled.
Violent crime, meanwhile, fell 32 percent over that span.
It wasn’t an aberration. From San Jose, Calif., to Chattanooga, Tenn., cities across the country dramatically reduced violent crime despite a recession, spikes in unemployment and dips in the stock market.
It’s a trend that’s forcing police and criminologists to question the premise that crime is a product of the economy and only so much can be done to prevent it.
“They’re absolutely wrong,” Bridgeport police Chief Wilbur Chapman said. “I couldn’t be more diametrically opposed to the idea that the economy drives crime.”
Bridgeport saw 15 homicides last year, down from 60 a decade ago and down from 32 during the height of the late 1990s economic boom. Chapman, a product of the New York City Police Department, attributes the decline not to an increase in officers (he’s down 57) but to the statistics-driven policing model credited with polishing the Big Apple.
“The results have been nothing short of phenomenal,” Mayor John Fabrizi said.
New York called its program Compstat, a fancy name for a simple idea. Map every crime and put cops on the dots. Address quality-of-life issues. Clean the streets. Watch crime fall.
“It’s not rocket science. It’s breaking down various police units and holding them accountable for what’s going on,” said Steve Parks, police chief in Chattanooga, Tenn., where violent crime is down 32 percent since 2000. “We can’t control economic conditions, but there are some things law enforcement can do to control violent crime, even during a bad economy.”
Today, cities big and small are duplicating Compstat and changing the way experts thinks about crime.
“What we did over the past decade is realize that everything we thought about crime is wrong and we need to find out what does work,” said Gene Stephens, a former University of South Carolina criminal justice professor.
Stephens was one of many experts who, in the early 1990s, put much of the blame for rising crime rates on the shoulders of unemployment and poverty. Today, he’s a consultant who teaches police officers that crime is not inevitable.
Successful cities vary in size and demographics, but they share common themes. Police say they don’t let minor crimes go unnoticed and never let crime spikes become trends.
In Bridgeport, that meant some simple changes. The narcotics squad worked weekday shifts. Chapman scheduled them overnight and on weekends. He put 20 officers inside housing projects, which drug dealers ran like combat zones. City Hall razed condemned buildings and cleaned up abandoned lots.
“If you don’t feel safe, you don’t invest,” Fabrizi said. “You need to invert the formula so safety comes first.”
In San Jose, Calif., the heart of Silicon Valley, the economy was never a problem. The nation’s 11th-largest city was home to some of the nation’s smartest workers. Then came the dot-com bust and police prepared for the worst.
Violent crime fell about 45 percent since 2000, even though unemployment hit 9.1 percent last year, nearly twice the national average.
Assistant Chief Dewey Hosmer said police prioritized domestic violence calls, which tend to spike when people are out of work. Residents complained about speeding, so officers stepped up traffic enforcement. Traffic stops can lead to drug and gun arrests before anyone gets shot.
“You can’t say, ‘The economy’s going bad so crime is going to up, and there’s not much we can do,”’ Hosmer said.
But not everybody is convinced the economy-crime link is broken. Ohio State University economics professor Bruce Weinberg said police influence crime rates, but said he wants to see more data before he’s convinced the economy is not a factor.
Even among the most successful cities, the data can be murky. Topeka, Kan., nearly cut violent crime in half since 2000, but has struggled to control property crime.
But others believe the past decade has seen a sea change in crime control. Stephens said it’s still unknown if new policing models will work after the economy rebounds.
“A lot of people were fatalistic about crime, and we’ve proven you don’t have to be fatalistic about it,” he said.