A generation ago, an average of six New Yorkers were killed every day in New York City.
But that was then and this is now as the NYPD announced the lowest crime statistics in New York City modern history.
“I think it is very exciting and we should celebrate,” Councilmember Jumaane Williams told PIX11.
The clause for celebration is that murders in New York City have dropped 13 percent in just the last year, shooting incidents down by more than 20 percent and that overall crime has dropped five percent since 2016.
It is proof, Williams says, that the end of stop, question and frisk and the introduction of real neighborhood policing works.
“Community police is a community oriented police force,” Willians told PIX11, “where the police have more tools just to arrest someone. The police become problem solvers,” Williams added.
At a joint news conference Mayor de Blasio and New York City Police Commissioner James O’Neill announced that the number of murders last year, 290, was the lowest since 1951, compared to the all time High in 1990 of 2,245 murders.
“Neighborhood policing is a game changer,” Commissioner O’Neill said at a news conference.
“The last time we were this safe was the 1950s,” Mayor de Blasio said. “In 1951, the Dodgers were playing at Ebbetts Field.”
And while some suggested the city’s economic growth may be driving this drop in crime, others like retired detective sergeant Wally Zeins, says it has more to do with recruitment and training at the NYPD Police Academy headed up by Deputy Chief Theresa Shortell.
“The whole policy is they want people from the inner city, from different ethnic backgrounds,” Zeins told PIX11. And that’s going to make the big change.
