By Alex Davidson
Betty Braton, chairwoman of Community Board 10, said she and other board members want their precinct included under the city's Operation Impact initiative that floods neighborhood streets with additional officers. She said the 106th Precinct has successfully worked to lower crime without the additional manpower, but more police in the neighboring 102nd Precinct in Richmond Hill and 75th Precinct in Brooklyn have encouraged criminals to head to Cross Bay Boulevard.
“There is a perception that the 106th is getting shortchanged,” Braton said in a phone interview Monday. “It is a tribute to the officers that they have been able to keep the (crime) numbers down.”
Repeated calls to the 106th Precinct were not immediately returned.
Currently the 103rd Precinct in Jamaica, 104th Precinct in Astoria, 105th Precinct in Queens Village, 109th Precinct in Flushing, 110th Precinct in Corona, and 115th Precinct in Jackson Heights are all part of the Operation Impact program.
According to citywide police statistics for 2003 from Jan. 7 through Dec. 7, the 106th Precinct had a nearly 20 percent drop in the total number of criminal incidents. The precinct covers the communities of Ozone Park, South Ozone Park, Howard Beach and Broad Channel.
Braton said she and others have been campaigning to get more officers to the 106th Precinct, which so far has not benefited from citywide measures to increase a police presence in high-crime areas. She said this task to do more with less may mean the precinct could be overworked in the future.
Frank Bruno, president of the Howard Beach Civic Forum, said there has been a rash of robberies along Cross Bay Boulevard, including a recent robbery of the Eckerd's store that has put crime on the minds of people in the area. He said his organization's vice president fielded a number of calls about incidents along Cross Bay Boulevard that created a feeling that crime was on the rise.
But Lt. Eugene White, spokesman for the Police Department, said crime is down in the 106th Precinct despite feelings in the community to the contrary. He pointed to recent statistics that showed drops in robberies and murders.
“It is not so much reducing crime but the fear of crime,” White said.
Braton, who agreed that crime is falling in the precinct because of officers' efforts, said there has been more of a sense that quality-of-life complaints have been rising in the 106th Precinct. She said since the inception of 311, the citywide database that monitors callers complaining about everything from potholes to car alarms, people in the Howard Beach area have noticed a spike in quality-of-life violations.
“I think what is happening now is that some things are getting lost in the shuffle,” Braton said of the 311 system that takes complaints and then funnels them to the local police precincts.
Reach reporter Alex Davidson by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by calling 718-229-0300, Ext. 156.
