A COOL DIP
City crime drops for safest July on record
A FEARED summer spike in violent crime hasn’t materialized in the big city — at least not in July.
Violent crime plunged sharply across the five boroughs last month, making for the safest July on record since the NYPD started tracking crimes using the CompStat system more than two decades ago.
Mayor de Blasio noted that crime often increases along with the mercury. But crime dropped 8% in July this year compared to the same month last year. There was a 17.5% drop in shooting incidents — with 80 shootings last month compared to 97 in July 2016.
“If you heard 80 shootings in
all of New York City in the month of July, any July, we would have been astounded, but this is becoming something we’re getting more and more used to,” de Blasio said.
There were 15% fewer rapes, 12% fewer robberies and 13% fewer assaults this July compared to last.
There was a slight uptick in the number of murders, with 35 killings last month — one more than in July 2016.
The NYPD has credited its precision policing philosophy, which focuses on known criminals who are often responsible for multiple crimes. Police officials also cited the NYPD’s neighborhood policing model, which frees up patrol officers to spend up to a third of each workday getting to know people in the areas they cover to improve relationships and ultimately help tackle crime.
“I ask (neighborhood coordinating officers) all the time to describe what’s different,” de Blasio said. “What I consistently hear is more information, better information, leading to more ability to stop crime. That’s the kind of thing we all hoped for.”
For the first seven months of the year, violent crime is down 6% citywide compared to last year, spurred by a 17% drop in both murders and shootings.
Crime in the transit system is up 2% for the year.
And violent crime was down 7% at public housing developments through July compared to the first seven months of last year. There have been 23 murders in public housing this year, 11 fewer than last year, and 90 shootings, down 13 from this time last year.
Citywide, 162 people have been murdered, compared to 196 during the same time period last year — a drop of 17.3%.
There have been 441 shootings citywide this year, compared to 531 during the same period last year — a 16.9% drop.
The NYPD now has ShotSpotter gunfire detection devices covering 54 square miles of the city — nearly double the coverage of a year ago.
Six more square miles, encompassing Washington Heights and Fort Greene, Brooklyn, will get the devices by the end of the summer, officials said.