The NYPD is policing with out borders.
Crime in infamous scorching spots is falling throughout the Large Apple, and the NYPD is touting its new technique that directs cops into focused zones, whatever the precinct boundaries they cross, officers stated this week.
“The idea is, quite literally, to flood the zone,” Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch advised a crowd at a enterprise breakfast in Manhattan Wednesday. “In a world of limited resources, you can’t flood the zone across a four-square-mile precinct, and you don’t need to, but you can do that across 10 problematic blocks.”
The plan, developed final summer season, has helped drive down main crimes throughout Gotham by 15%, police officers stated.
Six new “Specialty Borough Zones” had been created by 1 Police Plaza brass using crime knowledge to map areas round “crime clusters,” Michael Lipetri, the NYPD’s chief of Crime Management Methods, advised The Submit.
The areas typically stretch throughout a number of precinct boundaries.
“Perpetrators don’t know precinct boundaries,” Lipetri stated. “The analysis shows us where we need to be. So, we have some zones that encompass three precincts.”
The zones — Instances Sq. in Midtown, a hundred and twenty fifth Road in Harlem, Roosevelt Avenue, downtown Flushing and Jamaica in Queens, and White Plains Street within the Bronx — have all seen lowered main crime, in accordance with NYPD knowledge.
“It comes down to putting police officers in the right areas … at the right times,” Lipetri stated.
The brand new methodology, a collaboration amongst varied NYPD items, is meant to make cops extra fluid to function exterior the boundaries of the precincts they sometimes report into, officers stated.
The division has been recurrently sending 650 extra officers into these specialty zones since final summer season.
The zones themselves are additionally fluid and may be shifted throughout the town when crime surges in a selected neighborhood. Meaning, for example, extra cops can be stationed in areas the place pickpockets flourish throughout the summer season months and holidays, Lipetri stated.
“This is a multi-bureau approach,” Lipetri stated, noting that transit, narcotics and intelligence officers play roles.
In excessive foot site visitors areas like Instances Sq. and a hundred and twenty fifth Road, cops are wanting intently for grab-and-go thefts, like pickpocketing, Lipetri stated.
Because of this, grand larceny is down 32% and 30% in Instances Sq. and a hundred and twenty fifth Road, respectively, up to now this yr, in accordance with cops.
On Roosevelt Avenue, which The Submit uncovered because the infamous “Market of Sweethearts” for its open air intercourse commerce, cops have a watch out for prostitution, Lipetri stated.
Final week cops busted two girls for selling prostitution and three males for patronizing a prostitute in a basement brothel at 88-22 Roosevelt Ave., police sources stated.
Pictures of the brothel obtained by The Submit present a seedy scene of cots separated by curtains.
Six intercourse employees had been provided help and launched. Everybody else was charged, the sources confirmed.
