Violent crime down again in Queens

Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown has been doing more with less for years. In 2005 - Brown's 14th year as DA - Queens led the city for the third consecutive year in reducing violent crime.
Homicides were down to just 94 in 2005 from an all-time high of 361 in 1991. This year that number has been reduced an additional 24 percent.
The statistics are staggering, especially considering that Brown - who is running for re-election unopposed - has been prosecuting more crimes, faster, on a smaller budget. Since 2001, funding for the DA was cut by 20 percent.
&#8220We've seen reductions in our budget of close to $6 million dollars in city funding since July 2001 - cuts that have impacted greatly on our ability to provide the level of prosecutorial services that the people of this county are entitled to expect,” said Brown in a statement on the cuts.
&#8220As a result, we have today far fewer people available to perform the basic functions of our office, [including] case intake, hearings, trials, appellate litigation and our highly specialized investigative initiatives.”
Regardless, on a budget of just $35 million, this year Brown and his team will handle approximately 70,000 arrest cases by the end of December.
&#8220This office [has] made significant progress in our efforts to continue to lower the level of violence in the county and improve the quality of life of those who live and work here,” Brown said.
Other crime stats:
• 96 percent of the felony arrests that are prosecuted as felonies result in conviction.
• The number of auto thefts is expected to be fewer than 5,000 in 2006 - when Brown was first elected as DA in 1991, there were approximately 52,000 cars stolen in Queens County.
• Queens had a 13.9 percent decrease last year in shootings - the largest decrease in the city.
• The borough also had the largest decrease in the city in index crimes - 6.8 percent. Those numbers include violent crime and burglaries, grand larcenies and auto theft.
• Queens County has the best arrest-to-arraignment and arrest-to-sworn complaint times in New York City, with the highest percentage of cases arraigned within 24 hours (80.91). &#8220This means that those accused of crime in Queens spend as little time as possible in detention before they see a judge - and that we get our cops back out on the street more quickly to do their jobs,” said Brown.
• Queens has more violent felony convictions than any other county in city, and Brown’s Domestic Violence Bureau has the highest conviction rate as well.