Rapes Skyrocket In NYC Despite Continued Crime Drop

NEW YORK — A massive spike in rapes defied New York City's downward crime trend last year even as murders hit a new low. Some 1,795 rapes were reported to police in 2018, a staggering 22.4 increase from 2017, according to NYPD statistics released Thursday.

More than 400 of those crimes occurred before last year, a larger share than in 2017, Chief of Crime Control Strategies Lori Pollock said. But the number of rapes that happened in the same year in which they were reported also rose 14.5 percent to 1,394 from 1,217, NYPD figures show.

The spike occurred during the first full year since the advent of the #MeToo movement, which has empowered survivors of sexual violence and harassment to tell their stories. Police officials argued that more victims of the historically underreported crime are now coming forward.

"To say, ‘Look at this increase’ suggesting it is a pure new phenomenon would be a mistake from everything we know," Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a Thursday news conference. "... What we understand is, this is tragically what was happening for a long time but not being reported. It’s finally being reported."

De Blasio and Police Commissioner James O'Neill did not address the increase in reported rapes during their opening remarks at the news conference in Brooklyn, where they sat in front of a giant sign that read "SAFEST BIG CITY."

They instead highlighted the continued drop in crime in 2018, which another sign called the "safest year on record." It was the second straight year with fewer than 300 murders, a milestone that previously had not been reached since the early 1950s.

The NYPD recorded 289 slayings last year, down from 292 in 2017. Shootings were responsible for more than half of them, and about a third were gang-related, Pollock said.

The seven most serious crimes — murder, rape, burglary, robbery, felony assault, grand larceny and auto thefts — decreased 1.3 percent overall in 2018. Grand larceny was the only category aside from rape to see an increase last year. There were 43,543 of them, up 0.4 percent from 2017.

NYPD officials made several efforts last year to improve how sex crimes are handled and to encourage survivors to report them.

The department recently reorganized the leadership of its Special Victims Division and added more than three dozen investigators to it following a critical report finding that the division was understaffed. The NYPD also launched a campaign last April urging victims to come forward so police could "bring the perpetrator to justice."

Pollock said the department has building more trust among survivors. Police received 329 more "walk-in" reports last year than they did in 2017, she said.

"The message is we want these reports, we want to hear from you, we want to investigate these crimes," Pollock said.

(Lead image: Photo by Francis Dean/Shutterstock)