Five days after Police Commissioner Bill Bratton announced that the NYPD slowdown has ended, the city’s courthouses have indeed seen a “striking increase” in activity, reports the New York Daily News.
The paper reports:
“Low-level offenses are coming back through the system,” said Catherine Griffin, arraignments supervisor for the Legal Aid Society in Brooklyn.
“Two weeks ago, the average number a day was about 30, and the number (Wednesday) was 200.”
While the number of arrests and summonses for low-level offenses is still lower than it was at this point last year, the recent activity is a sudden increase from the previous few weeks:
Citywide in the past few weeks, arrests for misdemeanors and violations have surged 220%, from 156 on Dec. 28 to 499 on Jan. 11.
For perspective, on Dec. 28, 2013, cops arrested 660 people for small-time crimes. On Jan. 11, 2013, 643 were arraigned for those same types of crimes.
Police activity decreased after the Eric Garner protests began on December 3rd, the Daily News reported earlier, and saw a marked drop after two offers were ambushed and killed on December 20. At one point during the three weeks, summonses and ticketing dropped by more than 90% from the same time the year prior. No uptick in serious crime was reported, lending credibility to many critics of the NYPD’s current “broken windows” policing system.
However, there has been no examination into the policing system, complains Manhattan public defender Rebecca Kavanagh. She told the Daily News, “It was quite disappointing, really. I was hoping there’d be some examination of those policies.”
“The theory is they prosecute those people because it prevents more serious crimes…but everything continued as normal!” she said.
(Photo: Jay Miller)
