December 2, 2014

NYC: Crime Keeps Falling;/ If Carriage Horses Are Outlawed, Who Gains?; Hint: Not the Horses. / Helping Mentally Ill Stay Out of Jail

Mayor Bill de Blasio at a news conference in Brooklyn on Tuesday with Police Commissioner William J. Bratton and Public Advocate Letitia James. Credit Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times        

N.Y. Times

Mayor Bill de Blasio declared that New York, which his opponents once said would grow more dangerous under his watch, had in fact become even safer.
Robberies, considered the most telling indicator of street crime, are down 14 percent across New York City from last year. Grand larcenies — including the thefts of Apple devices that officials said drove an overall crime increase two years ago — are also down, by roughly 3 percent.
And after a record-low 335 homicides in 2013, the city has seen 290 killings in the first 11 months of this year, a number unheard-of two decades ago.
 
Even shootings, which had increased by more than 10 percent earlier this year, have receded amid a push by the Police Department to stamp out troublesome pockets of gun violence. There were just over 1,000 shootings in the first 11 months of this year, about a 4 percent increase over last year.
 
For Mr. de Blasio and his police commissioner, William J. Bratton, the numbers provided a kind of cushion for the criminal justice and policing reforms that both men are putting into place.
Officers will this week begin a pilot program of wearing body cameras in three police commands, Mr. Bratton said on Tuesday, and a wholesale retraining of the department’s patrol force is also starting. A new marijuana policy aimed at reducing low-level arrests, which was announced in November, has already resulted in a 61.2 percent decline in arrests in its first two full weeks.
 
Indeed, Mr. de Blasio pointed to 20 years of “momentum” that he inherited, referring to an “arc of continuous progress across different mayors, different commissioners.” He expressed pride in the performance of the Police Department over the first 11 months of this year, and declined to describe the continued decline as vindication of his reform-minded policies.Others were more ready to do so.
 
“Bravo!” wrote Joseph J. Lhota on Twitter, who as the Republican candidate for mayor last year ran ads predicting a return to the crime-plagued streets of the early 1990s if Mr. de Blasio were elected.
With a month still to go before the end of the year, the favorable crime numbers appeared to render a verdict on at least one question: Would a vast decline in the number of recorded stop-and-frisk encounters create an opening for violence to return? So far, Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Bratton said, the answer has been no.
Mr. Bratton said that by the end of the year there would be fewer than 50,000 such stops, down from a high of over 685,000 in 2011.
 
With fewer crimes, detectives have found themselves with more time to devote to investigations, said Robert K. Boyce, the chief of detectives. The rate at which homicide cases are closed — usually with an arrest — reached 77 percent this year.
“It’s the highest I’ve seen,” said Chief Boyce, who joined the department in 1983.
 
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Another Look At De Blasio's  Plans For Carriage Horses
 
A horse waiting for a customer at Grand Army Plaza, near Central Park. Legislation to be introduced in the City Council would ban carriage horses in the city. Credit Kirsten Luce for The New York Times        
 
 
Jim Dwyer, N.Y.Times
 
Mayor Bill de Blasio declared this week that he will carry out a promise made during the mayoral campaign: to rid the city of the carriage horse.
Legislation will be introduced in the City Council any minute now, the mayor said, but many details remain to be aired out.
That makes the moment pregnant with questions.
Such as:
Is the still-unseen de Blasio plan good for horses or for people interested in developing the Midtown West real estate where they live?
Once the horses are banished, what will become of their stables and the 64,000 square feet of lots that they sit on, their value swelling by the day?
 
And what of the 220 or so carriage horses that now live in sprinkler-equipped homes and enjoy regular veterinary examinations and five weeks in the country annually? The group leading the campaign to ban the carriage horse, New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe Streets, said it and other groups, like the Humane Society and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, would ensure the well-being of the steeds.
“We’d be happy to provide lifetime care for all these animals,” Allie Feldman, the NYClass executive director, said. This is an offer that sets off fireworks at Burgundy Brook Farm in Palmer, Mass., a sanctuary and rescue farm for work horses where a number of carriage horses have retired.
“The horses in New York City are some of the healthiest and best taken care of I’ve ever seen,” said Pamela Rickenbach, the executive director of Blue Star Equiculture, which runs the farm.
Offering them new homes is like giving away ice in the winter.
“Those horses are not going to have any problem with finding a home,” she said. “They are so well adjusted to begin with. They are selected for their intelligence and their temperament.”
Horses with jobs, like pulling carriages, have pretty good homes already, Ms. Rickenbach and others said. But, they said, there is a national crisis of homeless horses — beautiful creatures who are expensive to provide for.
“We are completely over-full and overwhelmed,” Ms. Rickenbach said. “It seems impossible to address the problems of the homeless horse. Every day I could send them horses that need homes.”
Many horses that either land at the rescue farm, or in the rural community she lives in, are “in need of medical attention, or they’re underfed, starving.”
New York City and the animals that live here are not immune to the laws of supply and demand, and the mayor and council members who support the carriage horse ban ought to look at an earlier example of good intentions with horses that went awry.
The United States effectively banned slaughter of horses at the end of 2006, according to a 2011 report by the Government Accountability Office, but the story took some bad turns.
“Horse welfare in the United States has generally declined since 2007,” the report found, citing increased abandonment and reports of neglect. “Abandoned, abused and neglected horses present challenges for state and local governments, tribes and animal welfare organizations.”
 
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NYC Aims to Divert Mentally Ill From Jail’s Revolving Door
 
N.Y. Times