**LEAD STORY**
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has been gaining ground on an old nemisis in the past two years. The nemisis has been ... crime. Crime and violence has been as familiar to the "Big Apple" as the Empire State Building and the Yankees.
But since January of 1994, when current Police Commissioner William Bratton took office, overall crime has dropped about 27 percent in New York. Homicides have declined by almost 40 percent. In one precinct alone, the 75th in Brooklyn, homicides dropped by 63 percent in two years. From 129 murders in 1994 to only 47 in 1995.
What is the reason for this dramatic drop in such a short period of time? Bratton is not shy about where he thinks the credit should go. The Commissioner said, "It's not the economy, demographics or the weather. We are a results-oriented organization."
Jack Maple, Bratton's deputy commissioner on crime strategies says that he thinks that smart, efficient policing is proving to have an impact on the crime rate. But crime experts and criminologists, including those at ERRI, are not totally convinced that the police are by themselves totally responsible for such a dramatic drop in crime as it is being reported in many of the major cities in the United States.
While criminologists do acknowledge that the NYPD's aggressive approach to crime certainly does have "some" impact, they say that there is also evidence that the decline in crime, in at least some of the major cities, may be due to simple demographics.
Points of note are, there has been a decline in the number of younger males in what is considered to be the peak crime-committing age group. Many experts believe that crime will drammatically rise, again, in a few years when the number of males in the crime-committing age group rises. Some criminologists even believe that the crime rate will rise to levels that have never been seen before in this country.
Some criminologists also believe that "turf battles" for the lucrative crack cocaine market may have subsided. After all of the dealers have shot it out with each other, the survivors have become "major players" who now just peacefully divide the turf. Rather than gunbattles, "corporate mergers" are occuring and "sales territories" are being assigned, rather than fought over.
The experts at ERRI believe that the biggest reason for the decline is that repeat offenders are now just being locked up for longer periods of time and not as many repeat offenders are on the street. You could couple this point, with the fact that there are fewer males in the crime- committing age group.
Criminolgists have been debating the reasons for the decline with Police Commissioner Bratton for a while now. Bratton even recently debated the subject at the convention of the American Society of Criminology that was held in Boston. Bratton argued that police can make a difference if they intelligently analyze crime patterns and target known "hot spots" of criminal activity.
Analyzing crime patterns and deploying forces to offset crimes is nothing new to police work. Bratton said that he and Maple plan their strategies like military campaigns. The Commissioner added that for too long, police have believed that crime was beyond their control. Officers could only race from one call to another. In the past little time and effort was set aside for strategy or analysis. Today, Bratton and Maple say, that is no longer an acceptable response to the crime problem.
Deputy Commissioner Maple said, "Our shareholders are the people of this city. They invest $2.7 billion a year for police protection. We have to deliver less victims." If anything, Bratton's and Maple's approach and dedication to trying to solve the problem should be applauded. The only thing that is being debated is whether or not the strategies and tactics, themselves, are responsible for the drop in crime. At NYPD headquarters, Maple and Bratton plot their strategies in the "War Room." Maple said, "I honestly believe that if we are relentless, we can change behavior."
Some of the tactics that the NYPD now uses is cracking down on seemingly petty things. They now crack down on public drinking, loud music in public, street prostitution, and people who demand payment if they go up to a car in traffic and clean the windows, known as "squeegee pests." When Bratton came to office, officers were ordered to issue summons for these petty offenses. What that did was give officers legal justification to check for outstanding arrest warrants on the offenders. They were also allowed to conduct a search.
It most probably will take a number of years to prove who is right in this debate of who and what is responsbile for the drop in crime. Aggressive police strategies or just "shifting" demographics?
(c) EmergencyNet News Service, 1996, All rights Reserved.