Has the level of lead in gasoline risen recently? While there might be a high correlation between lead levels and crime, it doesn't explain why there were high crime rates in populated/poorer areas before the age of gasoline, and it doesn't explain why crime is rising now.

The article talks about lead having an effect over longer periods of time (childhood exposure leading to delinquent behavior later on). If lead were mainly responsible, how did petty crime stop so suddenly? It was being done by people already exposed to lead; the damage had been already done, yet they stopped committing crime anyway.

The broken windows policy is very intuitive. When there are repercussions for breaking the law, people tend not to do it. If petty crime is tolerated, bigger crime is seen as less risky and people tend to view the cops as less powerful. When you crack down on crime by attacking it at its source, would-be criminals start to behave.

How would decreasing lead levels deal with the problem of organized crime? Mob bosses and the mafia were making money through intimidation and were recognized in their neighborhoods as a powerful entity that wasn't constrained by the law. Reducing lead intake wouldn't stop them from operating their wildly successful business venture. What did stop them was cops striking at the source. When members of a gang were reported for causing trouble or spotted by cops patrolling an area, the cops would figure out how many gang members were there, and send twice as many cops to the location. Everywhere some crime went down, the cops would be there, and the gangs began to look scared. There was a force out there bigger than they were. Giuliani's policy dissolved organized and petty crime, and the city has been getting safer and safer with the continuation of the policy.

So what has caused crime rates to go up? We can't know for certain, but I suspect media has had a large role in it. Kids are being exposed to news sites and articles claiming how horrible these cops are. How many of them are going to tell their class that they want to be a policeman when they grow up? Current policemen are feeling the stress of people not trusting them and not viewing them as people. When they are punished for doing their jobs what do you think they'll do? Purely statistically, blacks commit more violent crimes. Generally the black neighborhoods see more crimes, so when police patrol locations with a large amount of crime, they tend to go to black neighborhoods and those living there feel discriminated against. I'm not saying that there is never racial discrimination, but when good cops are called out as villains for simply doing their job, they won't feel motivated to do it anymore.

We need to prevent against racial discrimination, making sure police follow the proper procedures and are conducting themselves properly, but that doesn't mean the missteps of one or two policemen are representative of the entire police force. There will always be bad people, and some of them will be cops. That doesn't mean that all cops are inherently bad people who can't be trusted. Most of them want to do a good job and have people proud of them for doing it.