NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Arrests increased in March, but New York City crime rates remained high despite programs targeting gun crime and transit crime implemented by the NYPD and Mayor Eric Adams.
Crime in March increased by 36.5% compared to last year. This increase included every major category of violent crime except homicides, which dropped from 38 in March 2021 to 32 in 2022.
Arrests for the “seven major felonies,” murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny, and grand larceny of a motor vehicle, have increased by 28% from 3,140 arrests in March 2021 to 4,025 in March 2022.
The increase in arrests has not translated to a decrease in violence though. Overall crime increased 36.5% from 7,232 to 9,873 incidents over the course of the past year.
“The NYPD will continue to provide fair, effective, and responsive policing that best reflects the needs of the communities we serve,” said Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell. “But the NYPD needs the steadfast commitment of all its partners, pulling in the same direction, to realize our goal of public safety for every New Yorker.”
The crime rate increase comes despite a series of initiatives the Adams administration and NYPD have embarked on in an attempt to reduce crime including reallocating police to subways and forming specialized anti-gun teams.
The Neighborhood Safety Teams comprised of over 400 officers tasked with reducing gun violence were deployed to 30 different precincts where 80% of shootings took place in 2021.
These teams, which were deployed March 14 after a 50-hour training course, arrested 410 people for illegal firearms in March 2022.
Despite this program, shootings increased by 16.2% compared to March of last year.
More data will be needed to determine the efficacy of the teams, given how new they are, but the introduction of 1,000 new police officers to the subways to combat the increase in violent transit crime started in late January and followed a similar increase in May.
Enforcement of “quality of life” crimes on the subways has increased 78%. That means more tickets and summonses for crimes like urinating in stations, lying down on subway cars and fare beating.
Violent transit crime is up 52.5% since last year despite the increase in police presence implemented by former Mayor Bill de Blasio in May 2021 and Adams in January 2022.
Violent transit crime has hovered between about 35 and 55 incidents per week, according to the NYPD’s data program CompStat. That range has remained more or less constant over the course of the last year and the increase in police presence does not seem to have had an impact.
NYPD representatives blamed recidivism for the increase in crime rates at a press conference on Wednesday and pointed to a number of anecdotes of individuals who have been repeatedly arrested.
Sewell and Adams have pinned the blame on the bail reform initiative championed by progressive New York lawmakers and called for the law to be repealed or changed.
A study from the Brennan Center for Justice, a non-profit connected to the New York University School of Law, found that bail reform has had no impact on violent crime rates.
Across nearly 100,000 cases where someone was released pre-trial due to the change in bail laws between July 2020 and June 2021, only 429 cases led to a rearrest for a violent felony involving a firearm, according to the Albany Times Union. That number represents just 2% of total cases.
Roughly one-fifth of all cases resulted in a rearrest for misdemeanors or non-violent felonies.
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander released a report based on this data that found “the share of people awaiting trial in the community who are rearrested remained nearly identical before and after the implementation of bail reforms.”
The bail reform law still allows for judges to implement bail for almost all violent felonies, which could explain why the changes have not impacted recidivism.
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