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Crime Stats Hit All Time Lows In NYC

Ang Santos
/
WBGO

New York City officials say overall crime was at all-time recorded lows in 2016.

Mayor Bill de Blasio says there were less than a thousand shootings in 2016.  The lowest figure since all-time recorded high’s in 1993.  He points to better neighborhood policing.

“Crimes are being stopped before they happen because the focus is on the right people and the right places.  The information is there coming from so many neighborhood residents who are working in deeper partnership with the NYPD.  That combination of the right strategy, the right targeting, and the right information, is proving to be essential,” said de Blasio.

Stop and frisk incidents are down over ninety percent since de Blasio took office.  He says the tactic wasn’t working.

“Obviously there’s times when arrests are the right thing to do, there’s times where other tools work better.  So over these last three years, arrests are down twenty percent, and crime continues to go down at the same time,” de Blasio said.

NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Operations, Dermot Shea, says felony assault was the only recorded crime statistic up in 2016.

“We had a very low year in overall index crime.  We were down in murders in New York City.  As the Mayor and Police Commissioner mentioned, we were under a thousand shootings.  It’s not often that all three of those things happen in the same year,” Shea said.

Gang related crimes, robberies, and carjackings were some of the other statistics that were at lows.