Troop Surge January 3, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Minority Crime, Police & Law Enforcement.trackback
NY police credit rookies for declining murder rate
A 5-year-old program that sends rookie police officers to crime hot spots in New York City has helped the city achieve the lowest murder rate in 45 years and will be doubled in size in 2008, police officials say.
New York police said there were 494 homicides last year, down from 596 in 2006 and the lowest since 548 in 1963 when the city began keeping records of the total number of murders.
When asked last week if there was a single reason for the decline in crime, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly cited Operation Impact, which sends rookie police officers to narrowly defined areas that have suffered from high crime, some no larger than a housing project or a shopping corridor.
This month, all 914 members of the most recent police academy class will join the program, bringing the size of Operation Impact to more than 1,800 officers.
“You might have a high crime precinct, but the crime might be confined to a relatively small part of the precinct,” said police spokesman Paul Browne. “It’s important to put the boots on the ground and to increase police visibility dramatically.”
But the decision to dispatch the least experienced officers on the most difficult assignments has given ammunition to watchdog groups that have accused the NYPD of harassing blacks and Hispanics in low-income neighborhoods.
In other words, those critics of the NYPD are just as much equating murder and violent crime with blacks and Hispanics as this medium does.
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