At a time when U.S. cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia have been plagued by violence, New York City reported its safest year ever. Overall crimes New York reached a record low of 101,606 in 2016 — a drop of 4 percent from last year and 76 percent since 1993, according to New York Police Department statistics released Wednesday. New York reported 998 shootings in 2016, a 12 percent drop from 2015, and the first time in modern history that the city had recorded fewer than 1,100. Its 335 homicides came close to the recorded low of 333, set in 2014.
This seems to contradict President-elect Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on New York’s crime-fighting strategies. Trump has said the nation’s urban areas are unsafe and would benefit from an increase in police stop-and-frisk confrontations. Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat who has stressed better relationships between police and minorities, said the city’s steep crime drop coincided with a 93 percent decrease in the use of such tactics.
“President Trump is wrong about stop-and-frisk, I told him that to his face,” De Blasio said at the news conference. “The way forward for all American police forces is to deepen communications with the local community.”
De Blasio’s efforts to bolster the police force focused on three areas.
Personnel: DeBlasio added 1,300 police officers beginning in 2015, bringing the total to about 35,000.
Technology: Police now have upgraded technology, including the use of Compstat, a crime-mapping system, and a “Real Time Crime Center” that has much of the city’s streets and transit system under 24-hour surveillance.
Strategy: Detectives have collected information focusing upon a relatively small number of problem individuals and gangs, preventing some crimes through counseling interventions, warnings and surveillance, O’Neill said.
The previous information was based on a Bloomberg article. Meanwhile the New York Observer reported that there was a 115 percent increase in bias crimes in New York City in the month following Election Day, with Jews being targeted in 24 of the 43 incidents during that period. The anti-Semitic incidents represented a threefold increase from November 2015.