NY the safest big city
Mayor touts low crime rate on the basis of FBI preliminary
report, but he bristles when asked to defend the validity of the numbers
BY SEAN GARDINER
STAFF WRITER
Mayor Michael Bloomberg boasted yesterday that New York City
last year was once again the "safest" of the top 10 largest American
cities.
In response to an FBI report released yesterday, Bloomberg announced that based
on a per capita breakdown of the so-called index crimes - murder, rape, robbery,
assault, burglary, grand larceny and auto theft - New York had the least amount
of crime among the top 10 largest cities last year. Chicago wasn't included on
the list because officials there incorrectly reported the number of rapes.
The city had 2,922 index crimes per 100,000 population, according to Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, Dallas topped the list with 9,244 index crimes per 100,000.
New York City also ranked 24 on the list of the country's largest 25 metropolises,
and 211th lowest out of the 230 U.S. cities with a population of 100,000 or more,
Bloomberg said. Last year the city was 219 out of 230.
"New York City has not only retained its title as the safest big city
in the country, it had defied the odds and become even safer," Bloomberg
said, with Police Commissioner Ray Kelly next to him.
The mayor's proclamation came at a City Hall news conference prompted by the
release of the FBI's preliminary Uniform Crime Report, a compilation of crime
statistics submitted by nearly 12,000 law enforcement agencies around the country.
However, the FBI preliminary report didn't include a ranking or city populations.
A spokesman for the FBI said any per capita crime computations of the 230 cities
was the doing of "hizzoner."
Bloomberg bristled yesterday when asked by reporters to defend the validity
of the numbers.
Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, has maintained
that some police supervisors, under pressure to keep crime numbers at their historic
lows, are downgrading criminal complaints to avoid having them counted as an index
crime.
Albert O'Leary, spokesman for the Police Benevolent Association, said they
know of four precincts where officials have or are suspected of "cooking
the books" and added, "we know it goes well beyond that."
Bloomberg said any suggestion the numbers aren't legitimate is "an insult
to the men and women of this Police Department."
According to the FBI's report, the city's crime reduction last year came mostly
through a reduction in property crimes, particularly auto thefts which were down
12.6 percent.
Violent crime was down by 6.9 percent in the city but that was only slightly
better than the other nine million-plus population U.S. cities, which averaged
a 6.5 percent decrease. But while the other large cities had less than a 1 percent
decrease in property crimes, New York City went down by 5.4 percent.
New York City not only has the largest police force, at nearly 37,000 members,
but also the most cops per capita, with one officer per every 215 residents. That
type of protection comes with a big price tag, the mayor said, estimating that
between the police budget, pensions and other costs the city is paying more than
$5 billion a year.
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