NY COPS AND PROSECUTORS MUST BE ABLE TO CARRY OUT THEIR INTENDED DUTIES

NYC’s streets, where disorder is rampant

 

By Hannah E. Meyers and Paul Mauro

 

New York Daily News 

September 21, 2021 

A pair of masked gunmen opened fire on a Staten Island hair salon Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2021, wounding a teenaged girl and a woman inside

 

Recent NYPD crime stats show gun violence has crept back down, yet levels are still double what they were in 2019. Unfortunately, structural changes over the past two years in NYC policing and prosecution make it difficult to combat the seemingly benign street crimes that are tied to much of the city’s remaining violence and disorder.

A prime example is recent changes to the enforcement of street vendors. In November 2019, the “churro lady” viral video captured police escorting the unlicensed sweets-seller out of the subway. Although she only received a summons — her tenth over six months — the outcry against her “arrest” had enormous political impact. In fact, the NYPD stopped overseeing enforcement of street vendors, as Mayor de Blasio reasoned cops should “focus on major drivers of crime.”

So as of Jan. 15, the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection oversees how and where vendors operate. Since then illegal vending has become increasingly problematic. In the first half of 2021, there were 126 calls to 911 relating to unlicensed establishments. Compare that to 2018, where there were just 44, or the 50 in 2019. This increase in calls is troublesome as illegal vending creates street disorder and cover for other crimes. Additionally, DCWP still relies on the NYPD to accompany them when vendors won’t show permits or turn over their goods. This undermines the goal of fixing the optics of police manhandling street vendors and insanely duplicates costs to the city.

Beyond inconvenience, illegal vendors’ feuds and hustles pose real danger — leading, for example, to two separate daytime shooting incidents in Times Square this spring. In May, a 4-year-old girl was among three strangers hit when a CD peddler and repeat felon opened fire on his brother. The next month, a 21-year-old Marine visiting Times Square was shot when a gun was pulled during an argument between men also hawking CDs. Illegal vending is so inarguably tied to criminality that following June’s shooting, even ultra-progressive de Blasio called for a crackdown. However, the NYPD has not been reinstated as official enforcer of vending laws.

Even more deadly are illegal dice games, which, far from being innocuous fun, have led to multiple homicides over the summer. But since the DAs’ offices won’t prosecute offenders, cops feel disempowered from deterring games before they turn lethal.

Indeed, in 2020, of all adult arrests disposed of in the district attorneys’ offices of the five boroughs, the percentage of misdemeanor arrests that the DAs declined to prosecute — already higher in 2019 than in years prior — jumped from 11.6% to 19.5%. For felony arrests, the number climbed from 8.7% to 16.9%. Further, the number of cases prosecuted but dismissed in both categories rose by about a third. And even of those convicted, the percentages of those sentenced to jail or prison time was slashed by nearly half. While the pandemic has contributed to these numbers, shifts in state laws and attitudes among the city’s DAs portend that this trend will outlast court closures.

Disincentives for committing crimes have steadily disappeared, and predatory individuals are acting accordingly. In the first half of this year, there were an enormous 10,541 calls to 911 seeking help for criminal nuisances, which is up from the 8,800 calls in the same period last year and 6,003 for the first half of 2019.

Some of these predatory individuals operate within the city’s homeless population. But, as of July 2020, NYPD’s Homeless Outreach Unit of 86 officers was disbanded and their function shifted entirely to the city’s social services agency, the Department of Homeless Services (DHS). The police were also removed from overseeing security at the city’s homeless shelters, a role cops took over in 2017 after a string of violent incidents. In September 2020, DHS announced they would also be pulling their own cops from safeguarding 40 adult shelters in order to save money.

The impact has been predictable. In 2018, the NYPD made 2,521 homeless shelter arrests citywide; the next year, they made 2,105. But in 2020, homeless shelter arrests more than halved to just 924 — and in the first half of 2021, the NYPD made only 357 such arrests.

Under Commissioner Steve Banks, a 2016 de Blasio appointee whose career has included advocacy for homeless “rights” to occupy public spaces, the shelter population and Homeless Services’ budget soared. However, widespread citizen complaints over the public exposure, defecation, violence, and menace from homeless men contributed to the efforts now to more aggressively get the problem under control by daily removing encampments and inducing individuals into shelters. Sadly, these emergency band-aid measures won’t overcome the continuing systemic shortcoming.

New Yorkers are fighting an uphill battle against COVID to get back to work and school. Let’s put policing and prosecution back on their side.