Bloomberg Says Let's Not Be Petty With Crime Stats

Mayor Bloomberg responded yesterday to reports earlier in the week questioning if the NYPD is changing their approach to petty crime due to the decreasing number of misdemeanor summonses being issued by police officers. The mayor sounded proud of the statistics, saying, "The bottom line is, crime is down in all these categories. There's better enforcement." Bloomberg seems to think the NYPD had a good system in place, telling his weekly radio listeners, "People are behaving better. And moving some of this stuff over from the cops to the traffic-enforcement agents is a good move, because that frees the cops up to go after the more serious stuff." But he says that doesn't mean that there is any shift in mindset, adding, "You certainly don't walk away, you know, from the broken windows theory. We're going after the small crime." The Post says that Bloomberg thinks the officers who spoke to the paper earlier in the week questioning the "new approach" to petty crimes can probably be attributed to a few cops who had to start their shifts later in the morning after being reassigned from traffic-enforcement duty.