NYC police cut back on low-level enforcement
Print Edition
OF all the statistics from the recent New Year's Eve in Times Square — 1 million revelers, 900 kilograms of confetti, thousands of police officers, dozens of surveillance cameras — there is one number that stands out: zero, as in zero tickets for low-level crimes.
No tickets for having an open container of alcohol, no tickets for public urination, no tickets for double parking, no tickets for costumed characters hassling tourists to take their picture.
And that wasn't just on New Year's Eve. That was for the entire week containing the holiday. During the Christmas week, when the neon-lit streets were every bit as jammed, the total for such infractions was 23 — compared to more than 650 summonses per week the previous year, according to police statistics.
Times Square is perhaps the most jarring example of a slowdown in low-level enforcement across New York City amid tension between police and Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Police accusation
Police accuse the mayor of encouraging violence against officers by siding with protesters after the chokehold death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man stopped on suspicion of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes. Many police officers were angered by comments in which the mayor said he had warned his biracial son to be wary in dealing with officers.
In the two weeks after two officers were shot to death in their patrol car on December 20 by a fugitive who had ranted online about avenging police killings, low-level arrests citywide dropped 61 percent. Arraignment courts have been so slow they have sometimes closed early, and Rikers Island's jails have about 2,000 fewer inmates.
The 14-block precinct in the heart of Times Square was among at least seven across the city where not a single summons was issued for parking, moving or criminal violations during New Year’s week — a statistic that makes some people nervous.
“It’s dangerous for the public to know that the police are doing less,” said Madeline Sorel, 57, a knitting teacher in Brooklyn’s Coney Island, one of the zero-summons precincts. “It might make criminals more eager to do crime.”
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