MIKE: NYPD TICKET BLITZ IS A MYTH

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

May 19, 2003 -- June 2, 2003 -- Cops have doled out fewer quality-of-life summonses so far this year than in 2002, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday - and he blamed the police unions for helping to fuel the perception of a ticket blitz.

"Every time there's a union election . . . there's a ticket blitz" in the Police Department, the mayor said on WRKS-FM.

The PBA is in the middle of electing its leadership, and administration officials have said that current union chiefs are floating the ticket-quota claim to try to show members they need them to fight for them.

But a spokesman for the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, Al O'Leary, said Bloomberg was simply shifting the blame.

O'Leary said cops are under intense pressure to write tickets for summonses that bring in revenue because of the budget crunch.

"We understand he's got to say something, but if you look at all the city agencies that are hyperactively writing tickets," you can't single out the cops, he said.

It's administration officials who have "everybody going nuts," he added.

But Bloomberg also tried to pin some of the blame for the ticket-blitz hype on stories featured prominently in the Daily News.

"What the Daily News has done is [say], 'You write in and we'll publish your name and picture and every crazy ticket you get,' and of course, out of the woodwork comes a lot of things," he said.

"We're actually running - in terms of summonses - behind where we were last year. I'm not so sure that's good, but it's certainly not that massive blitz that people complain about," he added.