Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill: Good afternoon, everyone. Happy New Year. Thanks for braving the cold to get down here today. Some of you didn’t have to go that far though. I think it’s – we’re actually up to 16 degree so it actually feels warm out.
Let’s get straight to it. In terms of crime reduction in New York City, 2017 will go down in history as the safest year we’ve seen in nearly seven decades. That span covers three generations of New Yorkers, some of whom believe that more 2,000 murders a year was not only a price of doing business in New York City but it might be normal and that nothing could be done about.
There were other who didn’t believe that to be the case, who refused to accept that life in our city couldn’t change for the better. Chief among these idealists were the men and women of the NYPD.
But we’re a realist too. We knew that reversing the decades-long trend of rising crime and disorder would take time. We knew that it wouldn’t happen on its own.
What we learned is that reclaiming our neighborhoods required the coordinated efforts of the entire police department along with the full and willing partnership of all the people we serve. New Yorkers are now understanding that public safety is truly a shared responsibility and together we’re proving year after year that New York is not the violent nightmare that we once read about in the press, watched on TV, and saw in the movies.
It’s our home and we’re willing to fight for it. Back then we knew it wouldn’t be easy but no cop ever took this job because it was easy.
Cops took this job to make a difference, to do good, and 2017 was further proof that they certainly do that every single day.
Mayor de Blasio is going to speak after me, then you’ll hear from the new Speaker of the City Council Corey Johnson. Congratulations, Corey. And of course Dermot Shea will then get into the details of the crime numbers.
It’s a lot to cover but one thing you need to remember about all of the information you’ll see and hear today is this – none of this happened by accident. I’d call it incredible were it not for the very credible reasons why it’s all happening.
For one, it’s the hard working NYPD police officers on the street right now and the thousands more who came before them over the past few decades.
It’s also because of committed community residents in every borough and on every block.
Neighborhood policing is a game changer. It’s established in 56 of our 77 precincts as of this month and in all nine of our Housing Bureau police service areas. We’re essentially restoring the role of patrol cop to problem solver.
These officers are connecting in local neighborhoods in ways they never have before. They’re encouraging residents to share the responsibilities of maintaining the peace and protecting their streets and blocks.
Information is flowing from neighborhood residents to the sector teams to the precinct detectives and when necessary to specialty squads like Gang and Narcotics.
These relationships are allowing us to tailor our crime reduction and prevention strategies to individual neighborhoods which makes all the difference. It’s also enhanced training, upgraded equipment, and cutting edge technology that enables the best cops in the nation to continue to improve.
It’s our focus on the real drivers of crime in our city and our unified coordinated efforts to combat that very small segment of the population responsible for most of the violence.
Again, nothing we do, do we do alone. This method of precision policing is carried out seamlessly in conjunction with our law enforcement partners especially in the FBI, the DEA, the State Police, the US Marshal Service, and the ATF.
Together, we’re building stronger cases than ever before against the individuals and groups who are driving crime. And our close collaborations with the city’s five district attorneys and the US Attorney’s Offices from the Southern and Eastern Districts enable us to pre-indict the criminals we’re targeting and to ultimately send them away with meaningful prison sentences.
These same partners are the NYPD’s critically important allies in countering the ever-changing and perpetual threat of terrorist attacks in the city that remains the nation’s principle target.
Most importantly, it’s our collective understand that public safety is the foundation for everything else in New York City. We’re proving that when the public and police work side by side we can make positive lasting change in our society. That change begins when people are safe and it’s sustained when they feel safe too.
Of course this doesn’t mean that we have time to sit back and rest because every success we had in 2017 is now in the past. Because the calendar turns over we must keep making our way forward together.
We welcome the challenge of 2018. We know that no matter how well we’re doing we can always do better. We must do better. That’s our obligation. As long as there are victims there could be no victory lap.
So, heading into this new year, we’ll never let up and our goal as always is to set the standard for effective, efficient policing in this country again and again. That’s what this is all about – fighting crime and keeping people safe.
Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you very much, Commissioner. Commissioner, congratulations to you, to all the leadership of the NYPD here at the dais. I want to just thank everyone who was a part of this stunning success.
A special thank you to Eric Cumberbatch, the Executive Director of the Office to Prevent Gun Violence in the Mayor’s Office and to your good colleagues in this work from the Cure Violence movement and the Crisis Management System. Eric, thank you and all your colleagues for all you have achieved this year with us as well.
A special thank you as well to the Chair of the Public Safety Committee in the City Council, Vanessa Gibson. Thanks for your great partnership.
What the NYPD has done is nothing short of stunning. It’s been done better than ever before. This work of the NYPD is literally at the high point in the history of this department. And the close working relationship with the community is at the high point.
The partnership with the community has made all the difference. Commissioner O’Neill and I were out in the 7-5 Precinct earlier in the week and had wonderful conversations with the officers there. They’ve achieved amazing things. A precinct that was once one of our violent now had an extraordinarily good year with major, major reductions in shootings and homicides.
But one of the stories that was so important to me was hearing from the Neighborhood Coordination Officers, talking to them about what their work meant in the community, what it meant to them as officers.
And I asked each one to give me examples of crimes that were stopped or crimes that were solved because of closer coordination and communication with the community. It was amazing how they started rattling them off.
The calls that came into their cell phone or the emails that came in from community residents who had gotten to know them, told them about a drug location where drug sales were going on that the police were able to stop, told them about weapons – illegal weapons that the police were able to seize, told them about someone they suspected was part of a robbery pattern who turned out to be the perpetrator.
This is priceless for our officers to have that kind of support and that kind of communication.
So, something very powerful is happening because of the neighborhood policing model. And meanwhile other great efforts that are happening separate respectfully different like the Cure Violence Movement that play another crucial role – all of this is happening simultaneously.
This is a new day in New York City, a different reality, and it’s working. The fact is in 2017, the safest big city in America had its safest year in modern history.
And let’s put in perspective what this means. The last time we were this safe was in the 1950s. The last time we had this few murders was 1951. In 1951, the Dodgers were playing at Ebbets Field. If you wanted to go to Ebbets Field on the subway, it cost you a dime to take the subway.
These are the kinds of things we used to hear from our parents and grandparents but they put in perspective how far back you have to go to get to this level of safety. For years and years I heard these conversations going way back to when I served as a staffer in City Hall in the early 90s.
No one believed it was possible to get under 300 murders. I’ve been in many a room where people said that’s a beautiful goal but one we’ll never reach. But these leaders and all the men and women of the NYPD reached the goal that many had thought was impossible – under 300 murders in a city of 8.5 million people, biggest population we’ve ever had in our history, 365 days in a year.
They have done what many thought was impossible.
That’s just one piece of the puzzle. Under 800 shootings is extraordinary. The fact that the number of shootings has gone down so rapidly is its own story. I know you’ll hear more from Dermot Shea.
Under 100,000 total major crimes. Another huge milestone that had been hoped for, for years but often seemed unreachable. All of this happened in 2017.
Look, another way to think about this compared to the early 90s – 2,000 fewer murders per year. Put that in human terms – what that means for the families who haven’t lost a loved one. Two-thousand fewer per year – that’s the level we’re at right now. We’ve got more to do always but we have now a model that we know works and can go farther and that’s the exciting part.
This model will only get stronger. Neighborhood policing will get stronger. The close working relationship with the community will get stronger. The training, the technology will get better.
We will go farther and all this had been achieved by changing and making a big turn away from some of the mistakes of the past.
We know the overuse of stop-question-and-frisk was holding us back. We now have a 93 percent reduction and that has been accompanied by the lowest crime we’ve ever had. I think that’s proof positive that we used to be making a mistake in this city. We stopped making that mistake. We made ourselves safer.
Fewer arrests. There’s another huge story and it’s an important example to the nation – 30,000 fewer arrests that in 2016 and substantially lower crime at the same time particularly huge increases in the most violent crime. That speaks volumes.
Compared to 2013 – so when you compare 2017 to 2013, just four years earlier – 100,000 fewer arrests. When you compare the year 2013 to the year 2017, but again with remarkable improvement in reducing crime.
It’s all about neighborhood policing. It’s all about precision policing and it is about giving our officers the chance to do what they do best. Another thing that struck me at the 7-5 precinct was officers talking about the freedom they had now to build relationships with the community, to use their training, to go out and figure out the solutions. And they talked about what the technology allowed them to do to come up with specific solutions to problems they were facing in their own communities.
The empowerment of our officers to take their professional training and use it is another big piece of this story. So, look, we understand as much as we are so proud of this progress, we know we have huge challenges, we know we are the number one terror target in this nation and we know the threat of terrorism continues to get more complex.
We have certainly felt that pain here and we’re going to continue to innovate – while driving down crime, continue to innovate ways of protecting the people of this city from terror.
And we look back on this year 2017. We look back at the victories. We also look back at the moments that leave us very sad and cause us to mourn – the loss of Detective Miosotis Familia and obviously the loss of one of the greatest heroes in NYPD history, Detective Steven McDonald.
These are people we will never forget and they will inspire us to go farther all the time. So, I couldn’t be happier as we close 2017 and we look to 2018 – could not be happier with the work of this leadership team and the men of the NYPD, couldn’t be more appreciative to our community partners.
Something very important is happening here in this city, and we’re going to go a lot farther with it in 2018.
Chief of Crime Control Strategies Dermot Shea, NYPD: Good afternoon, everyone. So, this year’s end-of-year crime statistics are probably the worst kept secret in New York City history. I think they’ve been well talked about and written about already. So, I’ll start with a few slides and take you back just to understand where we came from. In December of 2015, I was getting ready for an all-in conference that everyone up here on the P-D side attended at our new police academy at the time, College Point Queens. And the slide on the left – I just started it with a simple slide from Jack Maple, an inspirational slide. And then when I was putting the PowerPoint together, I said – draft copy, where do we want to be? Under 100,000 crimes; under 300 murders; and under 1,000 shootings. And then I said, this could go bad – do I really want to do this? And I can remember discussions at the time, we’re going to do it. And there’s that slide, and here you are now two years later and we did it.
I begin with that for a reason. I could not be more proud of the work of the uniformed men and women of this department – uniformed and civilian – of what they have accomplished this year. And these are not numbers – these are numbers on the PowerPoint – the real important numbers are the numbers that are not up there – the victims that didn’t have to be traumatized by any individual across the city, because as I go through these numbers you’re going to hear that we did not leave anyone out – every borough of New York City, down.
The next inevitable question that I’m going to get is, can it go lower? So, I’ll answer that right up front – I believe we can go lower. I believe we can go lower. We can do better. Crime can be pushed further down. It’s going to take a lot of cooperation and I think we’re going to get it.
Some of the highlights for New York City in 2017 – it’s our fourth straight, fourth consecutive year of index crime going down. Preliminary numbers – and they will change slightly – this year has New York City recording 5,500, roughly, fewer complaints than last year – again, fourth straight year. Every borough of New York City saw a crime decline. When you talk index crime, six of the seven index crime categories in New York City showed a decrease. One – rape – showed an increase. That raw number was an increase of four rapes [inaudible] and I think I have a slide of the last seven years of rapes in New York City. And that’s something that we are going to continue. We will not rest until we push that further down also. But that raw number of rapes was 1,446 this year – last year, it was 1,442. And you can see there the last seven years – it is a stubborn crime and we have work to do still on that front.
In addition to the lowest murders, overall index crime, and shootings, New York City also recorded in 2017 the lowest number of robberies, burglaries, and stolen vehicles that New York City has seen in the CompStat era. Housing crime – down eight percent – and that’s citywide. Housing homicides – I didn’t forget you, Jimmy Secreto – down eight percent this year. Last year, we recorded in New York City the lowest number of shootings occurring in housing that we had ever seen since we recorded those statistics. It was beaten again this yea by the men and women of the housing bureau. Housing shootings – down 18 percent this year, 37 fewer victims. That’s great news. Transit crime was up this year in New York City – up one-half of one percent. It comes to 12 crimes over the course of the year citywide.
A couple of things to point out – grand larcenies – we were plus-49 in Brooklyn; and grand larcenies – we were plus-31 in the Bronx. So, that more than compensated for the overall citywide increase, and that’s something that we’re going to continue to work at the push further down.
The average number of crimes system-wide continues to be around six crimes, and that is consistent. Domestic crime in New York City was down this year – more positive news – down six percent overall – domestic crime. And domestic violence murders – down 22 percent – 49 recorded, which is 49 too many, but down from 63 last year – a 22 percent drop. The lowest number of domestic murders by gunfire – less than 10 – that we have ever seen. So, fantastic news.
So, what’s next? The challenges ahead are the same challenges I literally could cut and paste – what I’m saying today – from two three years ago. Recidivism, gangs, and illegal firearms continues to be the focus of what we are dealing with, and it’s going to continue to be the focus as we move forward into 2018. And we’re not going to do it alone. We’re going to do it with who we’ve been working with over the last four years to get where we are today. Our many partners, some of whom are here today – State, City, and federal partners, community groups – neighborhood policing all coming together. We are going to go lower.
How have we done it? We’ve been focused. We’ve been efficient. And, again, we’ve done it with our partners.
I’ll finish with some of the arrests the Mayor alluded to. We’ve recorded a little over 286,000 arrests, which is a staggering number until you look at what we’ve done in the past. And remember, this is a city of 8.5 million, there’s a lot going on. We are down from four years ago 27 percent in arrests made. Four years ago, it was 393,000 – almost 394,000 at the end of 2013. When you look from seven years ago, which was the peak in New York City arrests – we are down 32 percent. It’s 136,000 fewer arrests from the end of 2010 until the end of 2017 – 136,000 fewer arrests – more efficient. It comes out to nearly 400 fewer arrests per day by the New York City Police Department at a time where we’re going to push crime further down.
And how are we doing it? It’s the opposite sides – the Police Commissioner mentioned, we are going to focus and we’re going to get strong sentences on those who are committing violent crime over and over, carting guns, arrested as part of patterns. We’re also at the same time going to arrest fewer people, as you have seen. But when we arrest somebody, we’re going to collect evidence, we’re going to present it to the grand jury, we’re going to get it, with Bob Boyce’s detectives, to the prosecutors to even have a greater and greater impact.
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