http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/nyregion/12police.htmlTeenagers flashing knives in a spate of high school stabbings. Two men murdered in a brawl aboard a downtown No. 2 subway train. Four people shot and 33 others arrested in late-night melees in Times Square that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg described with a loaded term from the past: “wilding.”
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Yana Paskova for The New York Times
Raymond W. Kelly, the city’s police commissioner, after a news conference last week.
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APTN, via Associated Press
A video image of a melee in Times Square on Easter.
It is impossible to know if the recent increase in violent crime in the city is legitimate cause for concern that the “bad old days” of crime may return, or if it simply represents a blip in a trend line continuing a descent of nearly two decades.
Homicides are up nearly 22 percent in 2010, compared with the same period last year. Shootings are up in the city, to 293 from 257, a 14 percent increase. And there are more victims of gunfire: 351 through April 4, up from 318 in the same period a year ago.
But it is not statistics, but rather the tenor and pace of 2010’s spasm of disorder that are suggestive of a bygone era, and have again raised questions about whether New York City is finally at the end of crime declines.
Add to this a depleted police headcount — and city and state budgets that remain stubbornly unsolved — and crime is suddenly a political hammer: The mayor is lobbying for money from Albany, and state lawmakers are pleading poverty even as they try to close a $9.2 billion budget gap and serve the needs of constituencies from Buffalo to Bridgehampton.
Last week, after hordes of young people swarmed Times Square in what has evolved in recent years into a violent Easter night ritual, the mayor used a term popularized in 1989 when a Central Park jogger was brutally attacked, emblematic of an era when crime in the city was at its apex. That followed comments he made in March when he called the uptick in homicides “worrisome,” and decried, “We have fewer police officers on the streets than we did before.”
His choice of words was significant for a mayor who typically gives little credence to minor fluctuations in data. But the posturing is laced with a degree of caution, as city officials strive to sound the alarms of budget cuts while at the same time assuring the public that the streets remain as safe as they have ever been.
Addressing a radio audience on Sunday, Mr. Bloomberg said that since 2001, overall crime was down 40 percent, murder was down 35 percent and subway crime was down nearly by half.
Under the governor’s and the Senate’s budget proposals, the city would lose roughly $1.3 billion, and a little more than half of that under the Assembly’s plan. The mayor warned in January that the governor’s proposal would force the Police Department to lay off 3,150 officers, bringing the force down to same level it was in 1985. He backed off that statement last week, saying on his weekly radio program that the city was “not going to lay off cops.”
Nonetheless, the police force has been shrinking steadily, from a high of 40,285 officers in 2000, to about 35,600 last year.
Even if the cuts in the governor’s proposal were fully restored, the department’s uniformed count is still on course to drop below 33,000 through attrition by July 2011, its lowest level since 1990, when it had 32,441 officers, including housing and transit police before the departments were merged.
That was the year murders in the city peaked at 2,245, making it one of the nation’s top murder capitals. Not only is the force smaller, but it is also being pulled in more directions, with roughly 1,000 officers on counterterrorism duty. The department devotes cars and resources to a critical response team and to provide a presence near potential terrorist targets, though those resources can be redeployed to areas with elevated crime.
Some officials worry the city is already slipping toward its lawless past.
“What is the tipping point?” said Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president. “How low can you go, in actual police numbers? And I think what these statistics say, and these other incidents say, especially those who have been around the city all our lives, is we may have tipped a little.”
Mr. Stringer added that for the first time in a long time he is hearing from constituents who do not feel safe in the subways or the streets. A string of six stabbings involving high school students over a few days last month, along with a subway brawl that left two people dead and the Easter night mayhem in Times Square have helped stoke those fears.
But perceptions about crime and safety are often more potent than reality. Criminologists long have warned against using statistics selectively, to study trends in crime over short time periods — say, less than six months’ worth of data — because such analyses can lead to faulty portrayals.
For instance, the murder rate is up this year, because of increased numbers of killings in the first three months of the year, but the rate is in no way near its peak.
Through April 4, there were 118 homicides recorded, up from 97 in the same period a year earlier, for a 21.6 percent increase. But through March, the tally for the year was still lower than it was in the first three months of 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2008 — all low crime years.
“Crime is down, last year, down to record lows,” said Raymond W. Kelly, the city’s police commissioner. “We’ve seen an increase in murders. Obviously that’s a cause for concern. But if we stayed at this level of murders — we know it does go up seasonally — but if we stayed at this level of murders, 1.25 a day, we’d have a record low year. So it puts it in some sort of context as to where we are. The city has become much, much safer.”
“So, we’ve had some high-profile events,” Mr. Kelly added. “That’s going to happen in a big city like this, but it’s important to keep it in context.”
Still, violent crime this year is rising across several categories, even though the overall crime rate in the city’s 76 police precincts is showing a decrease of 2.3 percent. Rapes have increased to 324 as of April 4, from 277 in the same period a year ago; robberies are flat, at 4,477 each year; felony assaults have risen to 3,836 from 3,707.
Statewide, crime is also ticking up slightly in the major jurisdictions outside New York City so far this year, rising 1.4 percent through February in the state’s so-called impact zones, which account for 80 percent of the crime outside of the city. But the spike, driven by an increase in January, “appears to be more an anomaly than a trend,” said John M. Caher, a spokesman for the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, particularly since crime is down in February.
Still, statistically important or not, it means more municipalities competing with New York City for state money.
“I think there is going to be a lot of hurt around the state and in the city,” said State Senator Martin J. Golden, a Republican from Brooklyn and a retired city police officer, who said he understood the need for more officers. “I don’t see an alternative. Spending has to stop.”
For the municipalities requesting money, he said, that will mean “some tough choices.
Topic: severe rise in NY crime evoking city's 'bad old days' (Read 489 times)