First expressed by political scientist James Q. Wilson and criminologist George Kelling in an article for The Atlantic Monthly in 1982, the theory holds that if someone breaks a window in a building and it is not quickly repaired, others will be emboldened to break more windows. Eventually, the broken windows create a sense of disorder that attracts criminals, who thrive in conditions of public apathy and neglect.

The theory was based on an experiment conducted years ago by Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo. He took two identical cars, placing one on a street in a middle-class Palo Alto neighborhood and the other in a tougher neighborhood in the Bronx. The car in the Bronx, which had no license plate on it and was parked with its hood up, was stripped within a day. The car in Palo Alto sat untouched for a week, until Zimbardo smashed one of its windows with a sledgehammer. Within a few hours, it was stripped.

According to Wilson, a professor of public policy at UCLA, "There are two sources of disorder: offenders and physical disorder. [Both] lead people to believe the neighborhood is run down. The central problem for police is to take the small signs of disorder seriously and deal with them.

Many of the issues that Captain Tom Bowers deals with have existed for a long time, some even for years. Some folks may wonder why the city would "suddenly" take interest in a garbage heap or an abandoned vehicle that has been sitting on the same piece of ground for months. It is the City's and the Police Department's belief, which is supported by Wilson, Kelling, and Zimbardo's research, that rectifying these code violations will serve the long term goal of reducing crime by helping to foster pride in our community.