The Crime That Isn’t Dropping

A s Mayor de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bratton this month trumpeted the latest good news on crime, they failed to highlight one troubling statistic: a 7.4 percent uptick in reported rapes and sexual assault over last year.

To be fair, it’s hard to say exactly what this means, and it doesn’t detract from the overall, continued drop across the seven major felony categories. But it bears watching.

Indeed, asked about rising rape numbers back in January, the mayor said, “We take this very, very seriously and it’s our responsibility, period.”

Bratton has pointed to one complicating factor: A rise in rape reports may reflect more women feeling confident enough to come forward, rather than a straight-out increase in sexual violence.

Some rape victims fear the stigma that others may attach to them; others are too traumatized to speak of the crime. For these and similar reasons, the federal Justice Department estimates that two-thirds of rapes nationwide go unreported. Perhaps the “Cosby effect” (as Bratton calls it) has inspired more women to refuse to be shamed.

On the other hand, rapes really may be up. Bare minimum, if the trend continues, the city is on track to see over 1,500 rapes this year — the highest number since 2002, when 2,144 were reported.

And the statistics show another troubling trend: a clear drop in the arrest rate.

Back in 2009, the NYPD managed 858 rape arrests against 1,205 rape reports, for a 71.2 percent arrest rate. That fell steadily to 51.1 percent in 2012 (before de Blasio took office), bouncing up to 56.9 percent in 2014 before dropping to 55.1 percent last year.

Something else for the mayor and the NYPD to take “very, very seriously.”