Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's Speech on Criminal Justice Initiatives Before the Citizens Crime Commission
July 1, 2003

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Ezra, Tom, thank you very much. I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to come and talk about the break-up of the famous marriage, that’s in the papers today, or crime, but, maybe I’d better focus on something I know something about. When I asked Commissioner Kelly for help in preparing my remarks today, he confessed that he was worried. He said that, the way crime is going down, we may be putting him out of a job. But I assured him that we’d always find something in this administration, maybe as a lifeguard or something like that.

The fact is, we’re now at the 18-month mark of our Administration, and it really is a good time to take stock of our achievements, not just in suppressing crime, but really in other areas as well.

We are moving forward with a comprehensive plan to revive Lower Manhattan. We’ve launched the most ambitious affordable housing program New York has seen in the last 15 years. And perhaps most importantly, we’ve begun the process of turning New York City’s public schools around.

And despite the economic devastation produced by 9/11 and by the national recession, we’ve kept the City’s finances in order during two of the most difficult fiscal years in recent memory. Our financial problems have, in many ways, been even worse than those New York City faced during the 1970s. I think we’ve addressed them head-on, laying the groundwork for a recovery that is already showing signs of getting underway. In the process, we’ve maintained, and even improved, the delivery of basic services. I think we’ve put our house in order from a fiscal point of view, we’ve done it without gimmicks, we’ve done it responsibly, and we’ve done it in a manner that, when people look back, they will say, “This administration faced the tough times and did the right thing, whether it was politically popular at the time or not.”

When it comes to doing more with less, which is really what our job is, our success in fighting crime tops the list, and is, I believe, key to the long-range recovery of this city. Even as crime has begun to increase elsewhere in the nation, and despite a reasonable apprehension that a souring economy might produce soaring crime, we remain the safest large city in the U.S.

Because we’re driving crime down, New York continues to be a magnet for talented and ambitious people from around the world. It’s why the Republican Party felt secure in selecting New York as the site for next year’s national convention. It’s a major reason that we haven’t seen the kind of business exodus many people predicted after 9/11; indeed, major corporations like Pfizer and General Motors are giving us their votes of confidence by making significant new investments here. And real estate prices, a measure of whether people are leaving the city or not, have maintained their high level. In fact, if you take a look at co-op prices in Battery Park City, today they are higher than they were on Sept. 10, 2001.

It’s important not only to acknowledge our success, but also to appreciate how and why it’s been achieved. For example, we're using data to pinpoint the neighborhoods hardest hit by crime, and the criminals who are the greatest threats. We're deploying our resources to focus on those targets. We’re accelerating the use of technology in fighting crime. And we’re bringing the entire criminal justice system to bear.

The cumulative result has been a new, sharper and successful focus by the NYPD and other criminal justice agencies on problem people and problem places.

Eighteen months ago, the “smart money” was that, in the face of the worsening economy and our fiscal constraints, which forced us to lose 3,000 police officers by attrition, the crime-fighting gains made by the last Administration were bound to erode. From the first, our Administration has been determined to prove the smart money wrong.

Aggressive quality of life enforcement has been the foundation of the NYPD’s crime-fighting success—a strategy I might remind you Ray Kelly first championed in 1993 during his first tenure as Commissioner. And we’ve maintained that strategy. That’s why in our first week in office, we launched Operation Clean Sweep, aimed at offenses like aggressive panhandling.

Over the last 18 months, since Ray Kelly and I went to a street corner in Queens to announce that initiative, the NYPD has issued more than 161,000 summonses and made more than 15,000 quality of life arrests. In the process, we’ve also made arrests for more serious crimes; in one instance, a man arrested for trespassing turned out to be wanted for shooting a police officer in New Mexico.

We found that the vast majority of quality of life complaints are noise-related. Calls to the city’s 311 hotline confirm that, too. So, last October, we also launched Operation Silent Night. It targets areas in which there have been a high volume—excuse the pun—of community noise complaints.

To date, it has produced more than 4,000 arrests, including more than 800 felony arrests, and over 60,000 summonses. It’s wildly popular with New Yorkers eager for some peace and quiet in their home neighborhoods. And by curbing disorderly behavior, it has helped prevent the kind of serious crime that is on the rise in other cities.

The results are confirmed by national crime figures—just released a week ago. On the FBI’s overall crime index for 2002, New York ranked safest among the 10 largest cities in the U.S.

We ranked 203rd out of the nation’s 225 cities of 100,000 or more population. That puts us right between Garden Grove, California and Henderson, Nevada.

We won’t rest on our laurels. We’ve kept a focus on quality of life enforcement—and that’s one reason that crime in the transit system, for example, is down 15% so far this year. We also continue to devise new ways to drive crime down.

A key element has been Operation Impact. Back in January, a new class was about to graduate from the Police Academy. Before sending them out on the street, the NYPD took a long, hard look at Compstat figures to find the areas where high incidences of shootings and other serious crime have persisted.

Based on that analysis, we “flooded the zone, ” to use a football term. We assigned some 1500 rookies—along with experienced detectives and officers from the narcotics, vice and gang divisions—to “impact” areas in all five boroughs.

Any way you look at it, Operation Impact has lived up to its name. Last year, between January and the end of June, there were some 6200 serious crimes in the impact areas. This year, January to June, that same period, we drove that number down to 4000—a 35% decline. And shooting incidents in impact areas are down 41%.

As a matter of fact, the success of Operation Impact is a major reason why, through the first six months of this year, crime is down citywide 8%. Shooting incidents are down more than 8% as well, this year.

Take a look at homicides; so far in 2003, they’re averaging about one- and a-half a day. We’re running close to our last year’s record-setting pace of 566 homicides—when Manhattan, for example, had the fewest homicides in 100 years. Because, shootings and assaults are down from last year’s numbers at this time, we might even break that record this year as well.

As Police Commissioner Kelly has pointed out, to match that record, you’d have to go back to the days when Mickey Mantle played center field in Yankee Stadium and Hershey bars cost a nickel.

That’s a direct product of the exceptional dedication and resourcefulness of the City’s police officers, great management, and of aggressive policing strategies like Operation Impact.

And even though the rookies assigned to it now need to go to posts filled by officers leaving the force, we’ll continue to fund the Operation Impact program through overtime until the next Academy class graduates in six months. It’s just too important to keeping crime down in this city to let it lapse.

But ultimately, there’s only so much that the NYPD alone can do. They’re only one part of a criminal justice system that is all too often a “system” in name only, its components operating disjointedly, and even sometimes at cross-purposes.

We’ve got to go on beyond the NYPD. The key to expanding our crime-fighting success lies in more effective coordination among prosecutors, courts, the Probation Department and other agencies. And over the last 18 months, I’m happy to say, the City’s Criminal Justice Coordinator, John Feinblatt, and his staff have done an outstanding job of bringing those agencies together.

We began some eight months ago with Operation Spotlight. It targets the small group of chronic criminals responsible for a disproportionate share of low-level drug offenses, shoplifting and other misdemeanors. When we analyzed the data we found that roughly 28% of such crimes are committed by only about six per cent of offenders.

Defendants who meet “Spotlight” criteria are flagged at arrest; their cases are targeted for prosecution in dedicated courts. The result: more of them are going to jail, and for longer sentences. The percentage of Spotlight defendants receiving jail sentences has increased by 46%; sentences longer than 30 days have increased 57%.

Building on that success, we’re now applying the same strategy to higher-risk criminals. That includes establishing new felony probation violation courts in each borough. We’ve made the review and processing of their cases swifter and more efficient.

And the result is that probation courts now send a tough new message: violate probation and there are serious consequences. Through the first five months of this year, for example, jail sentences have been handed down in nearly 60% of probation court cases in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

A third and final example under this heading: firearms cases. The NYPD’s Compustat figures show that just five police precincts in Brooklyn account for approximately 25% of all shootings in the entire City.

So in April, working with Feinblatt’s staff, the NYPD and District Attorney Charles Hynes, the state office of court administration launched a Brooklyn “gun court.” It exclusively handles all firearms cases originating from those police precincts, with the goal of giving them the intensive, high-priority investigation and prosecution they merit. We want to make sure that criminals using guns get the punishment they deserve.

I take that seriously and personally; earlier this year, I attended the funerals of two undercover police officers shot by gun traffickers. They were killed getting guns off our streets, and it’s our obligation to carry on where they left off. So it gives me a great deal of satisfaction to report to you and to the families and friends they left behind that over the last 10 weeks, 100% of the cases disposed of in this gun court have resulted in convictions and jail sentences.

We came into office 18 months ago determined to bring city government into the information age, so let me address that and its impact on crime. And new applications of information technology have been critical to our crime-fighting strategy. Technology is the key to identifying spotlight cases. It now permits us to alert every criminal justice agency when a registered sex offender is re-arrested.

We’ve also digitized domestic violence calls to 911. A year ago, it could take prosecutors working on domestic violence cases months to receive tapes of these calls. We’ve changed that. Now prosecutors can call them up immediately from desktop computers in their own offices, and present them at the arraignment of accused batterers. And I must say that when I was campaigning, district attorney Hines send some people to see me to push the whole idea, and that’s where it did originate. You’ve made a major contribution, district attorney Hines.

The result, let me tell you what’s happened: in Brooklyn, where digital 911 has been available the longest, case-processing time is down. That’s because 911 evidence graphically underscores the danger batterers present; judges are 70% more likely to require defendants to post bail when such 911 evidence is available.

The next step will be to provide all DA’s digital access to all 911 calls for all types of crimes—giving prosecutors an important new tool in criminal cases. We anticipate that this will be done this month. And we’re not stopping there. Our long-range goal is to build a public safety portal that will transfer real-time information across all criminal justice agencies. Because in the end, it’s technology that will help us integrate this still-too fractured system.

Over the next two years, we’ll be rolling out a series of technological innovations that will permit a police officer to click on a map and locate every probationer and parolee on his or her beat.

Within 24 months, a prosecutor will be able to call up digital photos of domestic violence victims, the crime scene and the history of police calls to the location.

And a police precinct will be notified automatically when a known chronic offender gets released back to that community.

Is there anything I’ve left out this morning? Just, actually, the elephant in the room—and now one of our city’s biggest public safety responsibilities: counter-terrorism. Our success in fighting crime over the last 18 months has been earned while we’ve simultaneously protected New York from terrorist attacks.

The NYPD, you should know, has about 1,000 officers assigned to duties directly related to safeguarding us from another terrorist attack; from uniformed officers on fixed posts at the Brooklyn Bridge to detectives assigned to Interpol and in various foreign capitals. Over 230 are assigned to the Counter Terrorism Bureau itself, over 100 are assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, compared to just 17 back on that tragic day, September 11, 2001.

By its very nature, it’s difficult to measure the success of counter-terrorism. You can’t generate Compstat reports to measure its effectiveness. But we can say that New York’s counter-terrorism strategy has been commended by the people in the best position to know.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has said that no city in the nation does a better job of protecting against terrorists. And in the now-famous words of one Al-Qaeda conspirator, the NYPD’s counter-terrorism operations made the “weather too hot” to attempt an attack on the Brooklyn Bridge. High praise indeed.

The NYPD has kept the weather hot; it’s part of how we’ve kept the city safe during the last 18 months. More than any other Americans, we know that preparedness is essential.

At the same time, our commitment to protecting New Yorkers from threats arising around the corner as well as from halfway around the world remains strong. Rest assured, we’re going to continue to keep driving crime down.

Later this morning, it will be my privilege to help administer the oath of office to 1,350 new police recruits—the first class of the new fiscal year. And when they graduate early next year, many of them will be assigned to the impact zones; they’ll go straight where they’re needed most.

That’s the strategy that has made New York the undisputed safest big city in the nation. It’s a title we’re proud of… and it’s one I intend to help the city hold on to so long as I’m mayor.

Thank you very much, and we’ll be happy to take a question or two, but I think the NYPD, the district attorneys, the courts, the probation officers, the corrections department, John Feinblatt, DOI, all of these agencies, really are all working together in a way that this city has never seen before, and whether it’s the courts or the district attorneys or those in our administration, they all really deserve a round of applause, thank you.