most commonly cited crime-drop explanation of all: innovative policing strategies. There was perhaps no more attractive theory than the belief that smart policing stops crime. It offered a set of bona fide heroes rather than simply a dearth of villains. This theory rapidly became an article of faith because it appealed to the factors that, according to John Ken- neth Galbraith, most contribute to the formation of conventional wisdom: the ease with which an idea may be understood and the de- gree to which it affects our personal well-being. The story played out most dramatically in New York City, where newly elected mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his handpicked police commissioner, William Bratton, vowed to fix the citys desperate crime situation. Bratton took a novel approach to policing. He ush- ered the NYPD into what one senior police official later called "our Athenian period," in which new ideas were given weight over calcified   practices. Instead of coddling his precinct commanders, Bratton de- manded accountability. Instead of relying solely on old-fashioned cop know-how, he introduced technological solutions like CompStat, a computerized method of addressing crime hot spots. The most compelling new idea that Bratton brought to life stemmed from the broken window theory, which was conceived by the criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. The broken window theory argues that minor nuisances, if left unchecked, turn into major nuisances: that is, if someone breaks a window and sees it isnt fixed immediately, he gets the signal that its all right to break the rest of the windows and maybe set the building afire too. So with murder raging all around, Bill Brattons cops began to police the sort of deeds that used to go unpoliced: jumping a subway turnstile, panhandling too aggressively, urinating in the streets, swab- bing a filthy squeegee across a cars windshield unless the driver made an appropriate "donation."