WON’T GO BACK TO ‘OLD DAYS’
Sewell putting more cops into the subways to fight surge in crime
NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell vowed that cops will make the subway system safe and prevent the city from returning to the “bad old days.”
The top cop made the promise Tuesday and spoke about other crimefighting strategies at the annual State of the NYPD breakfast, held virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
She said she is well aware of the perception that the city is heading in the wrong direction, noting the surge in gun violence as well as unchecked shoplifting merchants have complained about.
“I know what a lot of people are fearful of,” she said, “that we’ve somehow fallen all the way back to the bad old days — a time when in our worst year, 1990, there were more than 2,200 murders in New York City.”
But she said New Yorkers “deserve better” and that police have a plan.
In the subways, where serious crime is up 75% so far this year, 1,000 more cops are deployed into the system every day, Sewell said. They have conducted more than 70,000 station inspections in the past five weeks, creating “a blanket of public safety that riders, at all hours of the day and night, can see and feel as they make their way to and from school, work or home.”
“The subway system is for everyone,” she added. “It is the lifeblood of our city. It must be — and it will be — safe.”
After laying out her plan, she took questions from the audience of mostly moneyed New Yorkers who help fund the Police Foundation.
For reasons not clear, reporters, who normally attend the event and meet afterward with the commissioner, were not invited this year. A source who attended the event provided the Daily News with a transcript of Sewell’s comments.
Sewell, who met the city press corps Dec. 15 — the day she was named commissioner by Mayor-elect Adams — has taken questions from reporters gathered at hospitals after police officers were shot, but has yet to have a formal news conference at Police Headquarters in lower Manhattan.
Police sources have said Sewell, the former Nassau County Police Department chief of detectives, has been busy getting up to speed on the inner working of the NYPD and the various issues that dominate the headlines.
Sewell also said training started last week for the nearly 500 cops who will constitute the neighborhood safety unit and concentrate on gun violence in 34 commands around the city.
The new unit follows the disbandment by former Police Commissioner Dermot Shea of the plainclothes anti-crime unit, whose officers were credited with taking guns off the street, but also harshly criticized for being involved in too many shootings and accused of unconstitutional street stops and raids without warrants.
Neighborhood safety unit officers will have dashcams in their unmarked cars and wear bodyworn cameras. They will not don a traditional uniform, Sewell said,
but rather clothing that clearly identifies them as cops.
And, she added, “They are receiving training in constitutional and civil rights before they are assigned to their commands.”
She said the focus on gun violence also includes daily 10 a.m. meetings with other city agencies, an apparent nod to the holistic approach that Adams promised — incorporating correction, probation, parole and others.
“Participants pore over the shootings, the suspects, the guns and the shell casings,” Sewell said. “They dive deep into the cases and the facts and they connect the dots.”
But she also noted the continued efforts of NYPD Kids First, a mentorship and employment program viewed as a way to prevent teens from getting pulled into gangs.
Last year, Sewell said, 1,877 people were shot in the city, with 46% of the shootings classified as gang-related..
“And we know that 35% of the people pulling the triggers were between the ages of 18 and 24,” she added. “An increasing percentage of these shooters are 14 or 15 years old. Some shooters have been as young as 12.”