Before Eric Garner’s death, I had never heard of Tompkinsville, the Staten Island neighborhood where Garner regularly hung out, near the busy intersection of Victory Boulevard and Bay Street.
This was Garner’s spot. He played checkers and chess there, bought kids ice cream, earned the reputation of a “peacemaker” among his peers, and, yes, routinely sold untaxed “loose” cigarettes.
This was also the spot where Eric Garner died.
Over the past year, despite the substantial media attention devoted to Garner’s death and the subsequent grand jury inquiry into the responsibility for his death, I didn’t hear or read much about Tompkinsville.
The lack of attention to the neighborhood in which Garner lived and died is strange given that the New York Police Department's initial encounter with Garner was ostensibly motivated by the Broken Windows theory of crime causation. According to the theory, “disorder” in any given neighborhood, if “left unchecked,” will result in ever greater levels of disorder, which, in turn, will ultimately result in higher rates of serious crime. This is the justification for approaching and penalizing people like Garner who are engaged in non-violent misdemeanors.
[For more of this story, written by Mike Rowan, go to http://www.psmag.com/politics-...cing-of-minor-crimes]
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