By Tom Tracy
It seems that cops from the 62nd Precinct are having a see-saw start to the New Year. While felony crime continues to drop in Bensonhurst and Bath Beach, robberies in the command have jumped but burglaries have gone down – a complete flip-flop to what happened in January 2006. Recent Comp-Stat statistics show that overall crime in the command in the first two weeks of 2007 has dropped by 25 percent. Officials said that 72 felony crimes occurred in the confines of the 62nd Precinct between January 1 and January 14. During the same span in 2006, 96 felony crimes were reported. Statistics show that burglaries in the command so far this year have dropped by nearly 48 percent. The number of robberies, however, has jumped by 300 percent, statistics show. Looking at the hard numbers, a total of 22 burglaries were reported to the 62nd Precinct between January 1 and January 14. The previous year, 42 burglaries were reported. Statistics also show that there were only three robberies to take place in the first two weeks of 2006. This year, 12 robberies took place in the same time span. Besides burglaries and robberies, there has been a 43-percent drop in felony assaults (from seven in 2006 to four this year), a 31-percent drop in grand larcenies, or non-violent thefts of $1,000 or more and an eight-percent drop in car thefts. By the end of 2006, the 62nd Precinct saw a nearly nine-percent drop in crime, with a 45-percent reduction in rape reports (five fewer than the 11 reported in 2005) a 21-percent reduction in burglaries, a 16-percent fall in felony assaults and a 10-percent drop in car thefts. The number of robberies in the 62nd Precinct increased, however, from 248 in 2005 to 251 in 2006. Over the last 14 years, ever since the NYPD first adopted the CompStat system, felony crime in the 62nd Precinct has dropped by 63 percent.
