Considering all the news of trucks killing defenseless cyclists, rogue racing bicycles knocking down poor grannies, and pedestrians dying crossing the street—all of which you can see on one map if you'd like—the latest stat out of the NYPD is actually pretty surprising. TransportationNation reports that this year "some 214 people have died in traffic accidents so far" according to the NYPD. Last year at this time there were 256 traffic fatalities on the books. more ›

On Black Friday itself Americans spent $11.4 billion but that's nothing compared to what we spent over the Thursday-Sunday "Black Friday" holiday weekend. According to the National Retail Foundation $52 billion dollars were spent in that period! And, if the NYC Economic Development Corporation is correct, a whole lot of that cash was spent here in town. more ›

The latest NYPD crime stats are in...and they're kind of depressing! In the 12-month period ending June 30, violent crimes, including forcible rape, murder, robbery and felony assault, all rose. During the same period, police response time also climbed nearly a minute. But on the plus side, a record number of potholes were fixed! more ›

Mayor Bloomberg is a man who likes numbers. From three terms to whatever it reads on his bank account statement, the guy has always had love for digits and using them as a "professional manager." But according to the NY Times, the numbers that really count — performance statistics for city agencies — aren't showing any love back to Bloomberg. The mayor's own tracking method, called the Citywide Performance Reporting system, shows that a majority of agencies are slumping over the last fiscal year. more ›

Recently Wired took a look at the sex worker industry in New York City and turned out a series of fun stats! For instance, what would a hand job cost you in your neighborhood? If you're in the Bronx, it's just 75 bucks plus a shot at the bar. In Manhattan, it's $125 north of 14th Street, but if you go to Chinatown or Soho, the price goes up to $175. Meanwhile, in the TriBeca-Wall Street area, a hand job will cost you a whopping $225—that's just $175 less than mommy role-play sex! more ›

After many reports of crime stat manipulation by the NYPD, critics have been loudly calling for independent audits of the city's COMPSTAT system. And while Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has reluctantly formed his own three-person committee to investigate, many critics are unsatisfied with the half-measures. And two of the biggest critics are writing their own book about it. more ›

After months of ignoring reports, shrugging off concerns, and generally denying that anything was wrong, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly announced today that he has formed a committee to study and parse how the NYPD records crime statistics. The panel comes amidst allegations over the past year that the NYPD brass pressured officers to downgrade incidents, under-report crimes, and meet monthly quotas. Maybe he was inspired to take a closer look after his recent three-car accident was downgraded to an alternate-side parking violation. more ›

A new batch of those notoriously-reliable NYPD crime statistics were released this past week, and the scientists at the News have crunched the numbers and compiled a list of some of the more interesting pieces of data. And while it may seem obvious that Saturday would be the most deadly day of the week (89 murders this year), did you know that Tuesday (58 murders) is the safest day of the week? more ›

The NYPD released the 2009 "New York City Police Department Annual Firearms Discharge Report," and what it contains may thoroughly surprise you: despite all the lawsuits, police-involved shootings hit a record low last year. City police were involved in 105 shooting incidents during which 130 officers fired a total of 296 bullets, about 19% fewer than the previous year. Strangely, only 68 of those officers intentionally fired their weapons, which would leave one to the conclusion that 62 officers didn't shoot on purpose? more ›

This year, the NYPD has been accused of massively under-reporting crimes, and refusing to investigate crimes in order to keep statistics down. Many of these accusations stem from secret recordings made by former Officer Adrian Schoolcraft. We received a tip that an email has been circulated to the entire Bronx DA's office ("probably by accident") from a high-level prosecutor, who describes their observations of the NYPD undercharging cases: more ›

Despite an FBI study that shows many former police officers were pressure to fudge crime statistics, Mayor Bloomberg insists that nobody is trying to hide anything nowadays. He said on his radio show, "No. You know, it's, in this day and age, I love this, gonna cook the books. With the press talking all the time, with everybody having Twitter and Facebook and everything, do you really think you could keep anything private anymore? C'mon." Twitter: Keeping cops honest since 2006. more ›

Today the Times crunches the numbers on New Yorkers whose deaths are ruled accidental, noting that although there has been a significant drop in homicides and fire fatalities in recent years, there has not been a similar drop in death by oops. According to a recently released report [pdf], in 2008, 54,193 people died in NYC, and 1,044 deaths (excluding drug overdoses) were classified as accidental. It was an 8.8 percent decline from 1998, but homicides fell 17.5 percent in that same period. Why can't the government save us from accidents? more ›

The NYPD's stop and frisk policy shows no signs of abating. The latest data on the controversial program shows that the NYPD is on track to stop a record number of New Yorkers this year. more ›

An audit by the State Comptroller's Office has found that five CUNY colleges failed to report 73 percent of the felonies that occurred on their campuses, as required by law. The most ironic offender? John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which failed to report 19 of its 20 felonies. more ›

NYC has kept its ranking as the metropolis with the lowest overall crime rate, as compared to 2008 stats from the 25 largest cities in America. The FBI’s Crime in the United States report asserts that violent crime decreased by four percent in NYC last year, outpacing a national decline. And according to NYPD Compstat data, crime was down an additional 12 percent citywide for the first five months of this year, compared to 2008 levels. Murders are down 21 percent, robberies are down 17 percent, and there have been 17 percent less rapes. But declines in felony assaults, while slightly down (1.6 percent) from 2008, have not kept pace with other reductions. Some downtown precincts, including those that police Greenwich Village, have reported a spike in assaults, and the NYPD has beefed up patrols in the area. Still, the report is great news for Mayor Bloomberg's third term hopes. In a statement, he praised the NYPD's "innovative policing strategies" and also attributed the decreased crime to his focus on getting guns off the streets. more ›

Though there's been a surge in assaults in some downtown neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, the NYPD says New York's fifteen year decline in crime continues unabated, with an overall drop of 12% so far this year. But some New Yorkers, like Harlem's Kone Mahamadou, tell a different story: "If you walk these streets, especially at night, you know crime is definitely not down. It's not safe. I don't know where they get these statistics." Some say the NYPD's stats are skewed because officers have been known to discourage crime victims from filling out police reports, but David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College, says the bad economy is just messing with everyone's heads: "All objective information says things are no worse, and maybe a little better, but residents think things are going in a ditch." Tell that to 20-year-old East New York resident Tianna Sanchez; the NYPD says robberies and grand larcenies are down by double digits in the area, but she tells the News, "You can't sit on a bench because you are scared there will be shootings. They were shooting on my baby's birthday. It was 90 degrees out, and we had to go in the house." more ›

Because of the NYPD's abiding commitment to self-transcendence in the fields of racial profiling and constitutional violation, the department has beat its own lofty record for the number of reported stop and frisk interrogations in three months. According to a data revealed today [pdf] at the NYCLU's insistence, the NYPD stopped and searched more innocent people during the first three months of 2009 than during any three-month period since police began collecting data on the program. more ›

Horrible: A 24-year-old NYPD crime-lab worker was brutally murdered at some point over the weekend, her body found Monday morning tied to the bed in her Sunnyside apartment with a knife stuck in her neck. Last year Michelle Lee, originally of College Point, Queens, graduated with a forensic science degree from John Jay College, and began working for the police department. Her roommate, who also works in the crime lab, says she was out of town for the weekend, and when she returned on Sunday night, she assumed Lee was asleep in her bedroom. But investigators believe Lee may have been dead for days. more ›

According to NYPD statistics, overall subway crime dropped by 3% in 2008, with murders down to two from four in 2007. There were an average 6.3 major felonies a day last year, compared with 7.4 in 2006 (there was an average of 17 in 1997). But robberies are on the rise: 823 occurred last year, up from 796 in '07. And there were three rapes reported last year, as opposed to just one in '07. Still, the NYPD's John Hall tells the Post crime is "so low that it's getting more and more difficult to keep it there," and attributes the stats to a crackdown on people walking between moving cars, which criminals do when trolling for victims. more ›

Almost half of all accidental subway fatalities happen to riders with alcohol in their bloodstreams, according to a study by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, which looked at data on subway deaths between 1990 and 2003. 145 of the 315 accidental fatalities during that time period were found to involve some degree of alcohol, though the report doesn't specify how blotto the victims were, if at all. more ›

The Washington Square News, NYU's student paper, has a juicy article showing how their university artificially deflates campus crime stats by classifying 87% of its residence hall population as "off campus." The exposé sensationally notes that if you're a student who "gets murdered in Rubin residence hall, you were killed off-campus. You missed the cutoff by three blocks." Because it receives federal funds, NYU is required by law to publish its annual crime statistics, but only three of NYU’s 21 undergraduate dorms are technically classified as on-campus. Looking at NYU's report, you might think the school ranks a modest 61st out of the largest 180 universities for substance abuse violations. But when campus and "non-campus" incidents are compiled together, NYU is #2 in the nation (which sounds more like it). Professor Dennis Jay Kenney tells the News, "It clearly sounds to me that they’re trying to circumvent the reporting requirements." Now NYU officials say they'll change the way they present the stats, but it's unclear if this will affect their recent announcement that it would cut back on security. more ›

Is the economic free fall already leading to higher crime and degentrifying neighborhoods, as previously speculated? Brooklyn's 88th precinct, which includes Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, is reporting that so far this year robberies have spiked 7.6 percent and burglaries are up 18.6 percent. And a cardboard box of bloody human remains discovered on fancy Washington Park isn't exactly putting residents at ease; one of them tells The Brooklyn Paper, “This hasn’t happened since the 1970s. Back then, I came out of my building one morning and found a body hanging from a lightpost." more ›

You would think that living in the city with the highest herpes rate would put the fear in New Yorkers, but a new Dept. of Health report is calling NYC out on its unsafe sex practices...and promiscuity! The Daily News breaks down the report, which shows that 40% of residents (your friends, neighbors, colleagues!) with multiple partners didn't use a condom the last time they had sex. 11%--that's around 610,000--had more than one partner in the past year, and 17% of men listed multiple partners (compared to the ladies at 6%). These weren't just single folks either: 5% of married men and women had two or more partners in the past year. The DoH isn't saying we're the sluttiest city in the world, but they do suggest having fewer partners and using more condoms! (Their report was based on telephone surveys with 10,000 city adults.) more ›