PBA says new crime statistics website gives New Yorkers realistic data they need on safety of their neighborhoods

The NYPD’s largest union is compiling crime stats and stories on a new website it says gives New Yorkers what they really need — a true sense of how safe, or dangerous, their neighborhoods really are.

The site, pbasafetytracker.nyc, is mean to counteract what the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association feels is a misleading narrative — that all is rosy despite serious crime concerns in some pockets of the city.

“Regular New Yorkers are our city’s real public safety experts,’’ said PBA President Patrick Lynch. “They see what’s happening on their own block. They know the ‘Safest Big City in America’ doesn’t feel that way on every corner.

“Their policing agenda should be the only one that matters,” Lynch added.

Mayoral spokesman Eric Phillips said there is no reason not to believe the stats.

“We believe New Yorkers should, and do, trust the statistics and website of the New York City Police Department,” he said.

The new PBA Public Safety Tracker is pictured here. (www.nycpba.org/community/pba-public-safety-tracker)

The PBA and other police unions have been critical of Mayor de Blasio and the City Council virtually from the time he was elected.

It peaked with the December 2014 executions of officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos in Brooklyn, with scores of cops turning their backs on the mayor when he showed up at Woodhull Hospital.

“There’s blood on many hands tonight,” Lynch said outside the hospital. “That blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall, in the office of the mayor.”

That was followed by what was widely viewed as a police slowdown, with arrests and summonses dropping in the beginning of January before returning to normal levels.

And even though then-Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and current top cop James O’Neill have repeatedly talked about how City Hall has helped the department, with more officers hired and funding for various initiatives and equipment, the unions have remained critical of how police officers are viewed by many of the city’s elected officials.

That, in turn, has had what they call a chilling effect, with more cops doing less out of fear of being sued or disciplined.

Earlier this month, the mayor appeared, as he always does, at an NYPD press conference to tout the continued drop in crime.

However, it came at a time when murders were up 8% for the year through June — 147 compared to 136 in the first half of 2017.

Lynch alluded to that, noting that New Yorkers need “real safety policies from city leaders, not just press conferences with cherry-picked statistics.”

A police source said it never looks good to talk about the declining crime rate — based on murders and six other major felonies — when the one crime that worries New Yorkers the most, murders, is actually up.

But the source said the mayor had long ago realized it is good for him, politically, to be seen as much as possible with O’Neill and other police brass.

Murders since that press conference have dropped and are now down 2% citywide through July 22, with 161 compared to 167 for the same period last year. They remain up 29% in the Bronx, however, with 54 compared to 42 last year.

The new website does not list every felony, but rather those that have received media attention.

It provides links to media accounts of those crimes, as well as official NYPD crime stats for the precinct and borough in which they occurred. And it allows viewers to email the union with “thoughts about conditions in your neighborhood.”

The NYPD said the stats show, without cherry-picking, that no big city is safer than New York.

“Hopefully, this website will highlight the brave members of the NYPD who patrol our neighborhoods,” said Assistant Chief Patrick Conry, a department spokesman, “and encourage residents to attend the Build the Block meetings to forge stronger partnerships.”

PBA President Patrick Lynch is pictured in 2017. (Todd Maisel / New York Daily News)

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PBA says new crime statistics website gives New Yorkers realistic data they need on safety of their neighborhoods