In 2014, at a fundraiser for the Police Foundation, the newly elected New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, hobnobbed with the city’s elite. Among the luminaries in attendance were billionaire Wall Street investor Carl Icahn and real estate developer Bill Rudin, whose company converted St Vincent’s Hospital into a complex of luxury condominiums with units starting at the mere pittance of $16,320,623.57.

As reported by the journalist Josmar Trujillo, the gala marked the first hundred days of de Blasio’s mayoralty and Bratton’s second stint as commissioner. Attendees were honored with keepsakes that included bullets and bulletproof vests courtesy of the NYPD. But the most important guests in the room, the coterie of millionaires and billionaires, were provided with the highest honor of the night: incontrovertible evidence of how private property and policing mutually constitute wealth accumulation under capitalism.

To this august assemblage of the city’s most powerful residents, Bratton presented slides juxtaposing drops in crime against the accompanying rise in property values in the same neighborhoods. Mayor de Blasio, ostensibly elected as a repudiation of his predecessor’s heavy-handed policing tactics, gushed with praise: “It’s actually incredibly inspiring to see what the work of the NYPD has achieved. . . .  Let’s thank them for all they’ve done. I will also note, as a homeowner in Brooklyn, I was struck by the real-estate value map. There’s good news all around tonight.”