NY TIMES
For two straight weeks, New York City police officers have sharply cut back on making arrests and issuing summonses throughout the five boroughs, magnifying the growing divide between the city’s police force and its mayor, Bill de Blasio.
Officers made half as many arrests in the seven days through Sunday as in the same week a year ago. In the entire city, 347 criminal summonses were written, down from 4,077 a year ago, according to police statistics. Parking and traffic tickets also dropped by more than 90 percent.
Most precincts’ weekly tallies for criminal infractions were close to zero: In Coney Island, the precinct covering that neighborhood did not record a single parking ticket, traffic summons or ticket for a low-level crime like public urination or drinking, the statistics showed.
Standing with the mayor at a news conference on Monday, Police Commissioner William Bratton offered various theories to explain the decline: the large-scale protests over police practices last month; the mourning period for two Brooklyn officers killed on Dec. 20; the holiday season; a dip in 911 calls. He said the department’s leadership was actively studying what took place.
“I will look very specifically — precinct by precinct, tour of duty by tour of duty, sector car by sector car, officer by officer — and we will deal with it very appropriately, if we have to,” he said.
“We may see,” he added, “that things begin to return to normal on their own volition.