> When New York police officers temporarily reduced their “proactive policing” efforts on low-level offenses, major-crime reports in the city actually fell, according to a study based on New York Police Department crime statistics.

>[...] the NYPD held a work “slowdown” for about seven weeks [...]

>[...] The scientists found that civilian complaints of major crimes dropped by about 3% to 6% during the slowdown. [...]

If we assume that "complaints of major crimes" is a reliable proxy of actual major crimes being committed, as the article suggests, what are we supposed to conclude from this? That within weeks of the police not catching people for minor crimes, that criminals called an armistice stopped committing crimes? Or 3-6% of "major crimes" were only committed because police were doing stop and frisk? I'm aware of arguments about how aggressive policing creates a cycle of broken families and thereby creating future criminals, but that can't explain the effect materializing within weeks.

Hell, start at both ends and meet in the middle. Top-down change seems like it’d benefit a lot from bottom-up support.