The mounting behavioral ills of Johnstown, and of this nation writ large, can be explained by the Broken Windows Theory.
Said theory, the brainchild of social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling that was put forth in an 1982 article, observed that visible signs of crime, anti-social behavior and civil disorder (broken windows on buildings for example) prompt more behavior of an undesirable kind.
Similarly, when bad behavior in general is tolerated and not punished, it serves as a catalyst for more bad behavior.
Ride herd on the small stuff and you get less of that, not to mention less big crime.
Just this week, a Cambria County vehicle, one of the silver ones with blue lettering, opted to park on the side of my street that is clearly marked as no parking. There was space available in the driveway where the car had stopped. There were legal parking spaces available on the other side of the street. This is not downtown New York City! The driver just opted to be a scofflaw.
Within moments, another car sped up the street, pulled a U-turn, and parked on the illegal side, too. The woman got out of her car, lugged a case of bottled water out of the back seat, and deposited it on the front porch of a neighbor, finishing by taking the obligatory cell phone picture showing the goods had been delivered.
I had just returned home from picking up a granddaughter from preschool, and parked – imagine this – legally. But cars coming down the street, first a resident and then the mail delivery guy, both had to swerve around the illegally parked cars and near the side of my car from which I was trying to get my granddaughter
I waited for the traffic to pass and then gave my granddaughter an object lesson on how rude, self-centered boors make life a little more difficult for the rest of us. At four years of age, she’d better get used to this sort of existence, which is very much unlike what I had experienced growing up.
It’s not like things were perfect when I was young. It’s just that the legal system, schools, parents, did their best to keep a lid on things.
As a 1973 graduate of Greater Johnstown High School, and a product of that school district with stops at various elementary schools and Cochran Junior High, I encountered lot of bad actors along the way; just domestically produced, not imported on the Section 8 railway.
Acquaintances from the old neighborhood who fell into the ne’er-do-well category were generically labeled by me as the Neighborhood Hoods. I knew a guy who later killed a man in Florida. My brother, who tended to run with a rougher crowd, had a close acquaintance who killed a cab driver in Woodvale — blew his head off with a shotgun, allegedly by accident in a robbery gone bad.
I knew plenty of people who ended up in jail for drug or burglary charges, maybe both. We had one fellow student shot to death within the river walls in the Eighth Ward after unsuccessfully trying to burglarize a car dealership.
An older brother of some friends did hard time for helping rob the old Riverside Market (where Team Kia is currently in Richland) back when that store did big business cashing paychecks for customers.
Another fellow student, with the stereotypical creepy look enhanced by Coke bottle lenses in his glasses, was an arsonist. Yet another got thrown out of Johnstown Vo-Tech for having dynamite, was returned to Johnstown High School, and for a time had a locker next to mine.
And kids these days think people making snarky comments about them on social media is tough duty!
The point is, these people were punished and kept in line, often in the good old-fashioned physical way.
They tended to save most of their disruptive behavior for outside of school and often went away for lengthy stretches courtesy of the state as a consequence.
I don’t recall area schools being closed a single day due to a threat of violence when I was younger. But, I also don’t recall states such as California telling would-be shoplifters to keep their theft total under $950 and no big deal.
Fast-forward to today and entire states have taken it upon themselves to de-criminalize criminal behavior and – COLOR ME SHOCKED – find themselves struck by waves of mounting crime.
Urban centers like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City are becoming virtually unlivable for the law-abiding. But it goes beyond that. The U.S. Department of Justice has just shared that of the 22 most populous states, Colorado is number one in violent crime.
Colorado has decriminalized drug infractions, creating a climate of tolerance, along with a welcome sign for drug dealers and a rise in consequent crime such as burglaries, robberies and car thefts by addicts to fund drug habits.
When they talk about Mile-High Denver, it’s just not about the altitude any longer.
We have an overabundance of broken windows – metaphorically and literally – in this nation and a glaring shortage of people willing to do anything about it. And that means expect further societal decline until the general population announces in dramatic fashion that it has had enough.
Sam Ross Jr's site 