Colleen Long has the story in the Washington Post. Homicides are down. They’re on pace for 457 this year, which would be lower than the many-decade low of 497 in 2007. Very impressive. Thank you, NYPD! This is all the more impressive since, as Patrick McGeehan reports in the New York Times, unemployment hit 10.3% in New York City, a…
Tag: NYPD
Stop the war on pot smokers
An op-ed by Tony Newman in the New York Daily News. While New York has a reputation as a tolerant and open-minded city and New York State effectively decriminalized simple possession of up to 25 grams of marijuana more than 30 years ago, Gotham has made so many pot arrests that it now has the unfortunate distinction of being the…
Homicides and Race
The New York Times has a nice map of homicides in the city. You can select by various variables, but unfortunately not more than one at a time. The Baltimore Sun has a similar but better map. I’m always a bit surprised by just how few white homicide victims there are. Or, conversely, how many of the victims are minority.…
You’ve been warned, New Yorkers
New York City Police Department advises all Shield members regarding a military aircraft flyover that will occur on May 20, 2009 at 11:45 a.m. The flyover is part of the Fleet Week festivities and will include four military planes flying over New York City at a low altitude. At approximately 11:45 a.m., four F-18 Hornets will pass over the Verrazano…
Quota Busting: NYPD makes record number of stops
Christine Hauser reportsin the New York Times that the NYPD made 171,094 stops in the first three months of 2009. Unlike many, I don’t think stop and frisks are inherently bad (not all that were stopped were frisked, though I’m sure many were). I’m willing to concede that aggressive stop and frisks most likely contributed to making New York a…
Another gun prevents another crime
This time in New York. The fallacy of gun-control (and I say this as a supporter of gun control) is that it never answers the question: how do you get the gun out of the hands of the criminal? Passing more feel-good laws is not the answer. Laws don’t make you safer. You need observanceof laws. And criminals are not…
Fly Over Follow-Up
Len Levitt’s NYPD Confidential talks more about the fly-over fiasco.
NYPD Stop and Frisks
Al Baker reports in the Times: Any officer stopping a person in the street must tell the person “the reason, or reasons, why it occurred,” according to a letter from Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. The policy took effect April 23, according to a departmental order to revise the police patrol guide.…Street stops jumped to 508,540 in 2006, from 97,296…
Cooking the books?
Anonymous posted a comment on the previous post: I can’t wait for the fudged numbers of the NYPD Comp-stat to be exposed…” Boy, there sure is a lot of chatter about the fudged numbers in the NYPD (and I’m talking about chatter from NYPD officers). I didn’t hear this nearly so much even just a few years ago. It seems…
New York City crime rate still falling
The story in the Daily News: The city’s crime rate for the first three months of 2009 was the lowest in more than 40 years, defying fears that the sinking economy might send the city back into the bad old days of rampant murders and rough streets. Through the end of last month, overall crime dropped 13.5% from a year…