...Between 1991 and 1999, more professional policing, with an assist from demography (fewer young males), reduced violent crime nationally more than 25 percent. In New York City between 1993 and 2001, thanks largely to measures instituted while Bratton was Mayor Rudy Giuliani's police commissioner between 1994 and 1996, crime was reduced 64 percent -- including a 75 percent decrease in gun homicides.

This change, of a magnitude that social science rarely records, primarily benefited low-income minorities living in neighborhoods infested with predators -- mostly minority predators preying on minorities. The facts of crime refute the "progressive" myth of the equal susceptibility, at any time, of all social groups to antisocial behavior.

But successful policing, which led to "disparate" arrest patterns, produced complaints about police. Complainers cited the disparities as prima facie proof of racial profiling. But the racial profile of the beneficiaries of better policing is mostly minorities released from imprisonment in their homes, free to venture into the streets of revitalized neighborhoods...