By Alex Ginsberg
It may have been nothing like the chaos of the 1977 blackout, but with more than 200 burglaries and 11 shootings citywide, there was a definite spike in lawlessness during the 24 hours the city was without power last week, the Police Department said.
Those numbers spurred Mayor Michael Bloomberg to write Queens District Attorney Richard Brown, urging him to prosecute any blackout-related crimes to the fullest extent possible, Brown’s office said.
Police said crime overall was down slightly during the period the department examined — 4 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 14, to 9 p.m. Friday, Aug. 15 — but burglaries skyrocketed. The department recorded 235 break-ins, nearly double the number over the same period last year.
Citywide, there were 56 burglaries identified by the department specifically as looting and 182 arrests in connection with those incidents.
The hot spot according to police was the 113th Precinct in South Jamaica, where 10 burglaries were reported. There were also isolated incidents in Ridgewood, where a telecommunications store and a toy store were broken into. A liquor store window was also smashed, but nothing was taken.
One homicide occurred in the borough during the blackout, but that incident appeared not to be directly related to the power outage. A relative was arrested after a 61-year-old woman was shot to death Friday in the basement of her Jamaica home.
In the broader context, however, Queens appears to have escaped the worst. Police said the hardest-hit areas were in Brooklyn in Crown Heights, East Flatbush, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Coney Island.
