Be honest about New York crimes

Maybe fourth time’s the charm: Last week, Mayor Adams appointed Sanitation chief Jessica Tisch would serve as his final NYPD commissioner.

Tisch, who once served as the NYPD’s deputy IT commissioner, is good with data, so he’ll quickly realize that the city’s crime numbers aren’t stellar.

The mayor would be well served if he used his independence to share this fact with the public, and Describe the problems and solutions.

What did Tisch inherit? Through mid-November, major crimes (murder, rape, robbery, assault, grand larceny, burglary and auto theft) were down 1.9% from last year.

But such a crime Still That was a large increase (30.4%) from 2019, the year before all of New York state’s defendant-friendly criminal justice laws went into full effect.

Homicides are 12.1% above 2019 levels, and the mayor’s progress there has slowed since the summer, suggesting distraction.

New Yorkers elected Adams because they were experiencing the largest increase in crime ever in such a short period of time; The level of homicides increased by 53% between 2019 and 2021.

So the public had an expectation decisiveWith Adams’ re-election, there was a double-digit drop in crime.

Instead, felonies increased by 23.2% in his first year in office, with a slight increase (statistically flat) in 2023.

It is not enough for the mayor to just say it, as he did after a while. Deadly stabbing spree in Manhattan “We’re still reviewing (the suspect’s) record, but there’s a real question as to why he’s on the street,” he said last week, following a brief sentence at Rikers for theft that led to the deaths of three people. “There are some serious mental health issues that need to be examined.”

Here’s something the mayor could forgivably say in his first year in office, not his third year: From where does this continue?

Tisch is in a unique position to impose some discipline on the mayor. Because of his indictments, and because he is currently only in office because the governor has not fired him, he has little room to interfere with his leadership of the NYPD.

After all, he ruined the department with ill-considered appointments of people like the now-deceased Phil Banks and Edward Caban. despite their own dark past.

If he He leaves and gets angry because it doesn’t allow him to do his job effectively.

Tisch should use this power to treat the public like adults who deserve to know the serious picture: No, New York nowhere It’s close to where we need to be on crime numbers.

For starters, get the NYPD to stop insisting that subways are safe, even though there have been 10 murders this year, easily double the pre-COVID level.

He must also be clear about whether he has enough officers to do the job.

Yes, when announcing Tisch’s appointment, Adams said he would reverse the cancellation of two courses he had canceled at the Police Academy. In other words, 1,600 new officers will graduate by next fall, which will bring the number of officers to close to 34,000.

But at the height of the Giuliani-Bloomberg crime-fighting era, the NYPD had a staff of over 40,000.

There is a lot the Ministry can do about overtime. If he needs more civil servants, he should say so publicly.

Finally, Tisch, who helped develop CompStat, the police’s crime-fighting data system, should present the data to better illustrate what’s what. Negative It’s the police’s fault.

How many cases were dropped from the number of arrests officers made and the number of summonses they issued, compared to the few years leading up to 2019, when state lawmakers finished making changes to bail, evidence-finding rules and laws regarding underage suspects?

Instead of senior police officers and the mayor drawing attention to the problems individual For suspects, Tisch should make this an integral part of the publicly available and frequently updated CompStat: What happens to people arrested or issued summonses when the NYPD’s responsibility ends?

It should then consider compiling and publishing relevant data. immigrant crime.

Sanctuary city laws don’t prevent this, at least not if it’s done indirectly: It could, for example, publish regular reports on how many suspects have listed addresses in immigration shelters or how many suspects have arrived in New York in the past three years. .

As Tisch said last week, “Let me take a moment and speak directly to New Yorkers. I hear you loud and clear. Our mission is to keep you safe, make you feel safe and improve your quality of life.”

He can do this by being honest with us about the city’s ongoing public safety emergency.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.