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Responding to questions about a dramatic increase in violent assaults downtown, NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters yesterday that police are "aggressively investigating" the crime wave, while acknowledging that "there also has been a bit of a hate crimes element in some of those crimes, so our Hate Crimes Task Force is doing an investigation." But Kelly also stressed that "the rise in those assaults we believe emanated from clubs," and that insisted that overall crime is down in the Village. The remarks came after a City Council budget hearing, during which he warned that the impending $20 million in NYPD budget cuts could mean less cops on the street, because the department will have to fire 395 civilian administrative aides who type and file reports. At first they'll be replaced with cops on restricted duty, but Kelly predicts that officers will eventually be pulled off patrol to help with paperwork. The police force is already down to 35,571 cops, from 40,000 in 2001, and one source points out the obvious to the Daily News: "Anyone pulled in to type is a dead waste of people."
NYPD Focused on Downtown Crime Spike as Budget Cuts Loom
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"At first they'll be replaced with cops on restricted duty, but Kelly predicts that officers will eventually be pulled off patrol to help with paperwork."
I don't know. There seems to be a pretty steady supply of cops being placed on modified duty.
This "uptick" in crime has been way overblown by the tabloids.
Crime statistcs for Manhattan South
If you look at the statistics, you'll see that assault is the only category that is (mildly) up in southern Manhattan (only 4.9%), while levels of all other major crime categories are down.
That's not to say that the reports of sharp increases in assaults in a few select precincts in Manhattan South are false, but they neglect the fact that assaults are flat or sharply down in other precincts in Manhattan South, as implied by the relatively stable overall assault numbers.
It's only April, so it's way too early to tell on a precinct-by-precinct level whether this uptick in assaults in some neighborhoods is statistically significant or not.
By the way, I'm a cop-hating hippie (who just happens to have a Stats degree).
Some of the worry is over a wave of releases of crimminals locked up 10-20 years ago. They come out of the revolving door just as cops have less resources to deal with. Judges take heed: in a bad economy, add a few years to that jerk's sentence.
Assuming the Judges have more than three minutes to review the case and pass a sentence.