Brooklyn Sees Continued Drop in Major Crimes

ONE POLICE PLAZA, MANHATTAN — Mayor Bill de Blasio and new NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill on Monday credited targeted policing efforts and the department's expansion of community policing with New York City's continued overall reduction in crime.

The city recently finished its safest September since 1993, when the Compstat crime tracking system was implemented, NYPD officials said.

A total of 1,163 fewer major crimes were recorded during the month than during September 2015, according to the NYPD, including 220 fewer robberies, 338 fewer burglaries and 176 fewer vehicle thefts.

During September, 32 murders were recorded, two fewer than during the same month last year, along with 27 fewer rapes, 89 fewer felonious assaults, and 311 fewer grand larcenies.

Through Sept. 25, major crimes in northern Brooklyn were collectively down about six percent compared to the same period last year, and down nearly 12 percent in southern Brooklyn, according to official statistics.

Shootings also proved an outlier. A total of 108 were recorded during this September, compared to 98 during the same month last year.

Shea linked the additional gunplay to the 103rd and 113 precincts, two adjacent precincts in Queens, and to Canarsie and Flatbush in Brooklyn.

Canarsie is patrolled by the NYPD's 69th Precinct, which has seen major crimes fall 6.4 percent so far this year while 12 shootings have been recorded, slightly down from 2015.

In East Flatbush, however, the 67th Precinct has recorded both a 4.6 percent increase in overall crime and a stark uptick in shootings. Through Sept. 25, 48 shootings were recorded with 62 victims, compared to 39 shootings with 44 victims during the same period last year.

In both areas, the gun crimes are gang-related, Shea said. However, he said that while the incidents were more localized in Queens, gunfire "spreads like a cancer" in South Brooklyn, and can erupt wherever rival gangs come in contact with each other.

That said, overall gun crime continues to fall. Through Sept. 25, 763 shootings with 913 victims were recorded city-wide, according to NYPD statistics, compared to 869 shootings with 1,033 victims during the same period last year.

De Blasio said the crime reductions had taken place even as the NYPD had stopped and searched 97 percent fewer people this year than during 2011. Shea said that in 2011, the northern Brooklyn precincts recorded 110,000 stops and searches, while so far this year, about 1,000 had taken place.

De Blasio said that reality disproved "the misinformation we heard" during the first presidential debate, during which Republican candidate Donald Trump defended stop-and-frisk while incorrectly claiming that murders were up in New York City (252 were recorded through Sept. 25, compared to 266 during the same period last year).

The mayor and police brass brass emphasized that the NYPD was effectively targeting those most responsible for crime. Stops and searches remain "an important part of what police officers do," O'Neill said, so long as the tactic is used correctly.

He said that the stops taking place yield better results. From 2011 to 2014, the chief said, stops typically found illegal activity between 1.5 percent and 3 percent of the time, whereas from 2014 through the present, those numbers had undergone a "tripling."

The NYPD also said that assaults on officers are up this year, suggesting that could be the result of members of the force directly engaging dangerous individuals.

As he has in recent months, De Blasio made a point to praise the NYPD's community policing model, which are now active in more than 50 percent of precincts. The mayor said he routinely asks cops whether they are "proactively hearing from community members" about whether community policing is working.

The officers, de Blasio continued, "uniformly say yes," adding that improving police-community relations results in better information intelligence and more responsive policing.

NYPD Chief of Department Carlos Gomez said that overall crime is down 2.5 percent in precincts with community policing, with robberies down 8 percent, shootings down 8 percent, and murders down 3 percent.

In order to better quantify how happy police officers are with their jobs, and how the public feels about the NYPD, the department plans to begin conducting broad surveys of both. On Monday, O'Neill said that effort will be "done scientifically" and "should be out shortly."

Top photo courtesy of Adrian Owen/Flickr