Thirty years ago, the NYPD cared more about bullets than bombing, so graffiti artists were able to participate in a renaissance that delighted the public while infuriating the city and the MTA. The since-adopted broken window theory of policing has made tagging a serious offense, but one former graffiti artist wants kids who are caught to channel their efforts into a type of art that's legal. Rafael Perez, AKA TATU, the leader of the legendary XMEN crew, has started Paint Straight, a 10-week program for recently-arrested taggers in Brooklyn. more ›

Former NYC Police Chief William Bratton announced yesterday that he will step down from his current post running the LAPD and return to New York to work in the private sector. Bratton has been chief of police in Los Angeles since 2002 and spoke of his tenure with a sense of "mission accomplished" yesterday, telling reporters, "We succeeded in making this city one of the safest in America." more ›

NYPD's Chief of Department Joseph Esposito brought in the heads of station-houses from throughout Manhattan and the Bronx into One Police Plaza to re-up the Department's effort in making sure that officers are going after the smallest of crimes. With summons numbers down in each of the last two years, the Post says that police are trying to refocus their attack against quality-of-life crimes with a source coming out of the meeting telling them, "If you have a homeless person on your street, that's a threat." The station heads were shown photographs taken by an NYPD scout of problem areas in their neighborhoods: the "aggressive beggars, squeegee men, hookers and illegal peddlers." A source came out of the meeting telling the paper, "They want to get a hold of these quality-of-life problems. They really want to go back to basics." NYPD spokesman Paul Browne says that the effort was nothing but routine and one official told the Post the lessons were rudimentary saying, "If you know your squeegee men by first name, you're on top of this." more ›

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. more ›

The NYPD may not be using the same bottom-up approach of going after petty crimes as vehemently as they had been for much of the last two decades. Misdemeanors (as well as parking and moving violations) are down for the second year in a row—this year's drop over 7%. This past year, the NYPD stopped having designated "summons officers" at each precinct, leading to questions if they have loosened up on former Mayor Giuliani's zero-tolerance policy for quality-of-life crimes, which the Post credits for "leading to widespread reductions in minor and major crimes." A Poli-Sci professor at John Jay College tells the paper, "Nobody wants to become a police officer to deal with minor traffic violations or issue summonses to people urinating in public." Maybe 2009 will be the year the NYPD will loosen up on stoop drinking. more ›