Crime declines in NY amid major police policy changes
New York’s mayor and police commissioner said that crime statistics released Monday prove it is possible to usher in a less aggressive style of policing and lower crime at the same time.
Police in New York City said they made 54,000 fewer arrests last year than they did in 2013 as part of a conscious effort established in 2014 to restore battered relations with minority communities. Officers made only a third of the low-level marijuana arrests they were making in 2011 and they have dramatically curtailed a practice of halting law-abiding people in the street and searching them for drugs or weapons.
And yet crime hasn’t spiked, as some pundits had predicted.