New York City Major Crimes Fall to Lowest Recorded Level
New York City Major Crimes Fall to Lowest Recorded Level:- Major felony crime in New York City slid in 2016 to its lowest level in decades, as other big U.S. cities reported jumps in homicides.
Sixteen of the nation’s 20 largest police departments reported a year-over rise in homicides, a Wall Street Journal survey from last month found. Chicago alone reported 762 homicides in 2016, more than Los Angeles and New York City combined.
New York City reported 335 murders in 2016, down from 352 in 2015, 673 in 2000—and 2,262 in 1990.
Franklin Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said the recent jump in homicides in many U.S. cities may not indicate a trend. Though Chicago’s spike is worrisome, he said, violent crime rates nationally remain far below levels of the early 1990s.
Mr. Zimring, author of a 2012 book on New York City titled “The City That Became Safe,” said New York nonetheless stood out from other U.S. cities, given its steep drop in crime during the past 25 years.
About half of that long-term decrease reflected the broader national trend that began in the 1990s, he said. But he attributed the other half to strategies employed by the New York Police Department, including a sharp increase in the size of the police force, an intense focus on crime hot spots and the introduction of the crime-tracking system known as CompStat.
Major felony crime in New York City fell by 4.1% in 2016 from a year earlier, reaching its lowest level since the Police Department began keeping track of statistics.
There were 101,606 major felony offenses reported citywide in 2016, compared with 105,921 crimes in 2015. In 2000, 184,652 major crimes were committed. In 1990, 527,257 major crimes were reported.
The NYPD recorded 998 shooting incidents in 2016, the fewest the city has seen since former Commissioner William Bratton introduced CompStat in 1994, according to Dermot Shea, the department’s chief of crime control strategies.
Police officials have attributed much of the decline in major crimes to focusing on repeat offenders and gang-violence. Robert Boyce, the NYPD’s chief of detectives, said Wednesday the NYPD had conducted 107 takedowns in 2016, 41 of them against gangs. The city is down 21 gang-related murders this year, 141 gang-related shootings.
“We’ve redefined what it means to be a police officer in New York,” NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill said Wednesday.
One major crime, felony assault, went against the trend, with an increase in 2016 to 20,807, compared with 20,375 in 2015.
The crime figures are welcome news for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat who is up for re-election this year and whose first bid for mayor included a promise to improve policing in minority neighborhoods.
Mr. de Blasio noted that about 25 years ago, there were over 5,000 shootings. “Real work went in over the past quarter-century,” he said.
The city’s drop in crime also coincides with the NYPD’s halt of its aggressive use of street-crime tactic known as stop-and-frisk.
In 2005, the NYPD stopped more than 398,000 New Yorkers, the vast majority of them black or Latino. About 90% of those stopped weren’t charged with a crime. In the first six months of 2016, police conducted more than 7,600 stops. The crime fighting tactic, which a federal court judge found was being used unconstitutionally by officers to target minorities, has been praised by President-elect Donald Trump, a Republican.
Some of Mr. de Blasio’s critics said the credit for the crime numbers rested largely with the NYPD, not with the mayor. Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the union of police officers, said the crime drop was “due to the dedication and professionalism of the women and men who actually do the work to keep our streets safe.”
Source:- http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-city-crime-rate-falls-to-lowest-recorded-level-1483543802
