The police in this earlier period assisted in that reassertion of authority by acting, sometimes violently, on behalf of the community. Young toughs were roughed up, people were arrested “on suspicion” or for vagrancy, and prostitutes and petty thieves were routed. “Rights” were something enjoyed by decent folk. This last line about rights is important. Kelling and Wilson seem implicitly to have been hostile to the kind of rights-based proceduralism that flowed from the Warren Court. They were urging the return to a bygone era when cops were local authorities who enforced community norms of
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