NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell announces quality-of-life crime crackdown
NEW YORK -- The NYPD announced a new initiative Wednesday afternoon to crack down on quality-of-life crimes.
Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell is not calling the new program "Broken Windows," but she might as well call it "Broken Windows 2.0" because uniformed cops are now being ordered to crack down on what she calls the "precursors of violence" -- public drinking, public urination, dice games that lead to disputes, and even unlicensed and unregistered drivers.
As CBS2 political reporter Marcia Kramer reports, she's following through on a promise Mayor Eric Adams made to make sure his NYPD was not the NYPD of his predecessor Bill de Blasio.
On the day he took office, standing in front of the 103rd Precinct in Jamaica, Queens, where he was arrested and beaten as a teenager, Adams promised he would make a difference in the lives of New Yorkers and make the streets safer.
"Cops did not feel encouraged to deal with the quality-of-life issues. You can't run a city where people can walk into a store, take whatever they want off the shelves and walk out, and no one is responding. That's not acceptable," Adams said on Jan. 1.
Wednesday, he took another step towards that goal as his police commissioner announced a new quality-of-life crackdown. Uniformed cops, often acting on community complaints, will go after the kinds of crimes that often lead to bigger crimes, crimes that were reportedly ignored under former mayor Bill de Blasio and grew proportionately.
For example, so far this year, there have been 3,193 complaints of drinking on the street compared to 1,552 for the same period in 2019, and 9,013 complaints about loud parties compared to 3,339 in 2019.
There has been a 139% increase in 911 calls reporting knives in the transit system and a 71% increase in reports of drug sales in the subway.
In her very first interview with CBS2, Commissioner Sewell said she would address quality-of-life crimes, including turnstile jumping.
"Turnstile jumping in and of itself, it may seem like it's benign, but what is the underlying issue here? We're talking about shoplifting. Is the person hungry? Is there another problem that can be addressed through social services?" Sewell said in December.
The plan was immediately criticized by the Legal Aid Society, which predicted it would end up sending more minority residents to jail. A spokeswoman called it a botched opportunity for Mayor Adams to address the root cause of crime, one that will "set our entire city back decades."
