Broken Windows

In a personal conversation, a friend said "broken windows policing does not work." That feels like an opening to tell my broken windows story.

My parents were good parents -- they are good parents: I still learn from them and I feel their love continually. I wonder how much the parenting moments that shine brightest in my mind were even things they noticed, never mind remember. This is one of those moments where they were at their best, as I remember it at least.

I was wandering around the house in one of those long, boring afternoons that seem so typical in my mind of growing up in a rural environment. Out of idle carelessness, I was tossing a rock up alongside the front of the house -- I suspect I wanted to see if I could reach the third floor attic window. More accurately there was no real reason.

As you can probably predict, I did reach the window and it did break. My mom did come out the front door, and I suspect she was pretty mad. But I don't remember her showing it. I remember her saying "you'll discuss this with your father when he comes home." Dad came home, and we did discuss it. He said "We'll take the money out of your allowance, we'll go down to the hardware store on Saturday, you'll buy a new window. You'll climb a ladder and you'll replace that window." What I do not remember is anger.

Was this my first experience with the idea of restorative justice? Though in today's concept, restorative justice is a very different thing, but we learn as children through what are at first very primitive analogies, so maybe in some limited sense it was. It taught me about ways to move forward with reason rather than anger. It taught me how to replace a window. It was a solution that gave me power, rather than taking power away. And it gave me a chance to constructively rebuild a relationship that I had harmed.

On May 31, the New York Daily News reported that 2 Brooklyn lawyers are facing federal charges over accusations they tossed a Molotov cocktail into an NYPD vehicle early Saturday morning during a protest over the police killing of George Floyd. The car was empty.

Undoubtedly, this was an illegal act. And most people, myself included, see it as a reckless and regrettable act. They face a minimum 5-year prison sentence if convicted. But I wonder if we can find a place in national dialog to consider something other than a form of justice where the state as an instrument of power seeks vengeance...where the opportunity to rebuild relationship is given priority over meeting the letter of the law.