Tag: NYPD

…And Bratton is right. Should be the end of the story, despite what you’ll read in the Postand the Daily News.

More interesting is what is buried in the Daily News story:

Police made 12,495 stops between October and December — down a staggering 86% from 89,620 during the same time period in 2012. And of the stops during the last quarter of 2013, 16% resulted in an arrest. That’s up from 6% over the same period in 2012.

Raising the hit-rate of stops is a great indicator that more stops are based on actual real articulatable reasonable suspicion (you know, what is legally required) and not just quota pressure (er, productivity goals). 2,000 arrests from 12,500 stops is better than 5,400 arrests from 90,000 stops. Of course if these data simply mean more stops are unrecorded, this “improvement” could mean nothing…

Bill Bratton was just quoted in the Post saying that the NYPD is conducting too few stop and frisks.

Who would have thought that the shameful practice of mass stop, question, and frisk would ever end? Actually, I did (though I was two years too quick to predict its gradual demise). I knew there was internal pressure from up high in the NYPD to reduce quota-based stops. But nobody I know, certainly not me, expected the stops to completely stop! For that, we can thank not just the stop and frisk lawsuit but the absurd over-reaction of the PBA.

We’re down to 3,000 stops a month. That’s 36,000 stops a year. Back when the NYPD conducted almost 700,000 stops a year (in 2011), I said that most of these stops were quota (er, “productivity”) driven, not needed, and bad police work.

More recently I wrote:

We now know that all these stops were not needed. Throw out that bathwater! But be careful, because there is baby somewhere in that murky water. Surely some of these stop are needed. You know, the stops based on officers’ reasonable and honest suspicion.

We need to ensure we don’t let “stop and frisk” give a bad name to good police officers using discretion legally stopping (and questioning, and sometimes frisking) suspects.

So is there a “right” number of stop, question, and frisk? I hate to quantify individual acts of police discretion (doing so is what got us into the stop and frisk mess). Bratton pointed out that stops should be “based on what officers are seeing and what they are reacting to. There is no number that you want to project toward.” But on a city-wide macro level, I think it’s fair to expect a certain number of proactive stops conducted by the NYPD en masse.

Based on my intuition (and the “hit rate” for white people stopped, I suspected that an 80 percent reduction in stops would have no adverse effects (and much positive impact on police morale and police/community relations. Cut stops 80 percent and what’s left, the remaining 20 percent, might actually serve an essential crime prevention purpose.

An 80 percent reduction from the peak would have been about 11,000 stops a month. (Put another way, this is less than one stop per month per patrol officer. Of course that number is just an intuitive guess. Perhaps the ideal number of stops is half or twice that.) But no matter how you look it, 3,000 stops per month is to low. To paraphrase a politically incorrect sign in the police station in which I used to work, “Unlike the citizens you police, you are required to work for your government check.” Police officers (and the PBA) would be wise to remember that.

Well that’s the headline I would have expected to see after listening to Ray Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg (and almost all my police friends) over the past few years. They had me believe that each and every one of those more than 600,000 annual stops in 2011 was absolutely essential to prevent the city from descending into an Orwellian Escape from New York type chaos!

Well this year stop, question, and frisks are down 50 percent and homicides are down another 20 percent (which is really amazing).

Today the city released a press release touting this most recent crime drop (did I mention how amazing this is?!). Interestingly, nothing was said about stop and frisk. How odd.

So while some stop and frisks are needed — you know, ones based police officers’ actual reasonable suspicion that a suspect is armed — it seem like the NYPD can do just fine, gosh, perhaps even better, while stopping 800 fewer people per day.

The problem when you try and quantify the “productivity” of police work (or almost any occupation) is that those being judged start to play to the stats. Means becomes ends. Ends be damned.

But now Bloomberg barely gives the police any credit at all! Here’s the press release:

To: Interested Parties

From: Howard Wolfson

RE: T-Minus 5

Over the last 10 days, Mayor Bloomberg has been to each of the five boroughs, cutting ribbons, touring schools, riding on a new subway extension, visiting new parks, and discussing the incredible progress of the last twelve years.

Today and tomorrow the Mayor will highlight the Administration’s record fighting crime while reducing incarceration rates by visiting a Neighborhood Opportunity Network Center and by attending his final police graduation ceremony to swear in more than 1,100 police recruits.

Under Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly crime has fallen in New York City to record lows:

Safest big city in the nation: New York City has fewer major felony crimes per 100,000 residents than any of the nation’s top 25 largest cities.

Total Crime: Down 32% compared to 2001, despite the added demand of counterterrorism, having fewer officers in the ranks, and adding 300,000 more people to the city’s population.

Murder: On pace to have a record low number of murders in 2013 following a record low established in 2012.

Murder is down 49% compared to 2001.

Shootings: On pace to have a record low number of shootings in 2013 following a record low established in 2012.

Terrorism: Since 9/11, there has not been a successful terror attack against New York City, despite the city remaining a top terror target.

At the same time that Ray Kelly and the NYPD have brought crime to record lows, the Bloomberg Administration has actually reduced incarceration rates in New York City by 36% over the last twelve years.

This drop occurred as the national incarceration rate rose by 3% during the same period.

So during the last twelve years, the United States also saw crime declines, but it was achieved by locking more people up. But New York City didn’t reduce crime by locking more people up: in fact the City actually put fewer and fewer of its citizens behind bars as crime fell to record lows.

How? The crime prevention strategies implemented by the NYPD, and under the leadership of Deputy Mayor Gibbs, Commissioners Vincent Schiraldi, Dora Schriro and others the City have expanded use of felony drug courts, alternative-to-incarceration programs for substance abusers, expanded alternatives to jail sentences for misdemeanants, created more effective probation programs and implemented the Young Men’s Initiative, which is reducing increasing opportunities for young black and Latino men and reducing the number of young black and Latino men who are entering the criminal justice system.

The result? New York City is the safest it has ever been.