Slays spike 37% after brutal Feb.
Homicides in the city have surged by 37% so far in 2019, and the NYPD said on Monday it will be sending more cops to some neighborhoods to turn the tide.
There have been 52 murders in the city year-to-date compared with 38 in the same period last year, officials said. A spike in the month of February, which had 24 homicides compared with 16 in February last year, helped drive up the statistics.
The NYPD’s chief of crime control strategies, Lori Pollock, said the biggest problems were concentrated in several neighborhoods including Brooklyn North, where 15 murders have occurred so far this year, mostly driven by drugs and gangs, or arguments between acquaintances. That compares with five murders in Brooklyn North in the same period last year.
The stats were released during a press conference at NYPD headquarters in lower Manhattan, where a blue-and-white sign reading “Safest Big City in America” had been replaced with a smaller, less boastful sign that read: “Deepening Our Commitment.”
Police Commissioner James O’Neill said police have been able to repeatedly drive down crime by making adjustments on the fly.
“Conditions are ever-changing,” O’Neill said. “Every neighborhood has different dynamics that have to be individually addressed. We are always in the process of deploying the right type and amount of resources at the appropriate time and places.”
To that end, Chief of Department Terence Monahan said the NYPD looked at the murders in the city this year, as well as 93 nonfatal shootings, and decided to send at least eight more cops to four precincts.
Those officers will be posted in the 34th Precinct, which covers Washington Heights and Inwood, the 43rd Precinct in Soundview and Castle Hill in the Bronx, the 79th Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and the 113th Precinct, which covers several neighborhoods including Springfield Gardens and St. Albans in Queens.
Monahan said cops from the warrants unit will also be focusing on known offenders in those neighborhoods.
The NYPD said keeping kids from joining gangs will be one of its priorities along with getting those already in gangs to straighten themselves out. It said it would work with parole and probation to prevent people who have committed crimes from becoming repeat offenders and sharpen its focus on gun arrests so those charged with weapons offenses are convicted and serve harsher sentences.
Monahan said more attention would also be paid to domestic violence, particularly cases involving guns.
Pollock said 66 guns were recovered from homes in domestic violence investigations in 2018.
Despite the increase in murders, the city’s overall crime rate was down 11% in February and down 9% for the year.
Robberies, burglaries and stolen autos have declined between 10% and 14% this year. Felony assaults are down 8%, but rapes are up 19%, with 285 year-to-date compared with 240 in the same period last year.
Police have attributed the sex crime surge to more rapes being reported because of the #MeToo movement.
Hate crimes have risen 40.4%, with 66 to date this year compared with 47 in the same period last year. In those 66 incidents, 33 arrests have been made.