Subscribe
The Daily Grind Video
CLOSE

Following the shooting death of two NYPD officers at the hands of a troubled Baltimore resident, police in New York started what many are dubbing a “work stoppage” in protest of Mayor Bill de Blasio — a stand against the mayor’s “support” of protests denouncing police brutality against marginalized communities.

In short, police have stopped arrests and tickets for minor infractions. Not completely, but drastically and noticeably if you look at the numbers.

For starters, arrests are down 66 percent compared with the same period in 2013. According to the NY Post:

Citations for traffic violations fell by 94 percent, from 10,069 to 587, during that time frame.

Summonses for low-level offenses like public drinking and urination also plunged 94 percent—from 4,831 to 300.

Even parking violations are way down, dropping by 92 percent, from 14,699 to 1,241.

Drug arrests by cops assigned to the NYPD’s Organized Crime Control Bureau—which are part of the overall number—dropped by 84 percent, from 382 to 63.

An organized effort? Maybe. But police unions continue to deny that the officers are purposeful in their actions.

According to the New York Times:

A top union official flatly denied that there was a job action and pointed to the orders to double up and the need to police demonstrations as the main reasons.

“No one has sanctioned a slowdown or stoppage,” said Edward Mullins, the president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association. “That is not something that anybody came out and said to do.”

He added: “We have demonstrations every night of the week, to which cops are being pulled into every night. We have had two officers killed that has changed the everyday duties of what we are doing, and one of those changes is the consistency of patrol cars backing each other up on radio assignments.”

But it’s hard to ignore the numbers. Especially in the 79th and 84th precincts Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, the two fallen officers, were assigned to.

Officers in those precincts wrote no parking or traffic tickets. By contrast, the combined tally of criminal summonses alone during the same week last year reached 130, the department statistics showed.

When asked about the possible work stoppage, Police Commissioner William Bratton said that the “weeklong period of mourning” and demonstrations contributed to the decline in arrests. He added that New Yorkers should not be concerned about the decrease, pointing out that “it has not had an impact on the city’s safety at all.”

The numbers prove that the stoppage — intentional or not — is taking its time to phase out, but other numbers made public this week rival the idea that policing quantity makes for safer neighborhoods.

In fact, murders in NYC are at an all-time low, falling to 328 in 2014 (the fewest since the NYPD started keeping numbers in 1963).

Reports of major crimes in New York City fell to 105,428 through Dec. 28, from 110,728 in the same period in 2013. Murders are down 85 percent from their peak in 1990, the Times said.

It’s hard to say if the slim arrest rates will contribute to less or more crime, but we’ll be watching.

For more information on the latest statistics from the NYPD, click here.

SOURCE: NYT | PHOTO CREDIT: Getty

NYC Protests Following Eric Garner Grand Jury Non-Indictment (PHOTOS)
Global Grind "G" logo
0 photos