There has been a recent increase in crime in Astoria.
I have been New York’s #1 advocate for more police, and was successful in getting 800 officers added in 2007, and helping stop the elimination of another 900 in this year’s budget – but this is nowhere near enough. Our police force has been allowed to attrit from 41,000 on Sept. 11, 2001, to about 35,000 today, because of budget cuts forced on the city due to Albany’s incompetence.
At the same time, Albany has eliminated crucial crime fighting tools, like the Rockefeller drug laws. Already dealers are laughing about their new "get out of jail free card (60 percent of the drug dealers arrested since the elimination of these tough laws have opted for treatment for "marijuana addiction" in order to avoid jail).
Recently Albany also eliminated an extremely useful NYPD database used to quickly apprehend criminals. For example, if a robbery occurred near an ATM, police could quickly access information on people who had been stopped near that ATM recently to gain a lead. While this information should not have been kept indefinitely, a compromise should have been reached allowing it to be kept for one year and then purged. As usual, Albany was incapable of doing this despite Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s personal visit to the Governor.
As a result of less cops and weaker laws, certain crimes in the 114th Precinct, and everywhere else, have been increasing. Burglaries, robberies, and car thefts are up this year, and we already have almost twice as many murders as we had ALL of last year. While the murder on 28th Street and Ditmars Boulevard and the attempted murder near Mike’s Diner on 31st Street involved targeted individuals with drug histories who did not live in this neighborhood, that is little consolation.
Quality of life crimes have risen as well. Once we overlook graffiti, loud radios, litter in the parks, a growing homeless population on 31st Street – just to name a few – worse crimes follow like night after day. But without beat cops, bike cops, and neighborhood patrols, this was to be expected.
It is NOT the fault of the NYPD. The blue line has been stretched too thin, and without Commissioner Kelly and the work of the men and women of our force, this would have happened much sooner.
While we live in one of the safest neighborhoods in one of the safest big cities in America, if we don’t stop this slide, it will be even harder to reverse. Concrete steps need to be taken, and taken soon.
We need to lose the attitude – in our Courts, our Legislatures, and our streets – that the war on crime is over and won, and therefore we can continue to eviscerate everything that allowed us to bring this city back from the brink in the early 90’s.
We need more cops, longer jail sentences, and tougher laws. We need Albany to reform its wild spending ways, and stop taking $14 billion more from NYC than it gives back so we don’t have to continue to choose between our cops, firefighters, District Attorney’s Offices, and everything else as the city makes cuts Albany forces it to make.
As a former prosecutor, I can tell you beyond any doubt that the people responsible for these new crimes have committed many prior crimes. I saw the same criminals over and over. Catching them and keeping them away from our kids for a long time is the only proven method to once again to regain our streets.
It worked with "Safe Streets Safe City" (a program started by my father as Speaker in 1991 to increase our police force and bolster our court system and jails), and it will work again – if we the people rise up and demand it!
