What a trip to the "Big apple" can do...

When we visited New York I was impressed by the amount of police officers on the street, you literal saw them everywhere. Not in a bad manner by the way, not with the feeling that anytime something could happen, they were just there. When we booked a guided tour in the evening which lead us through Manhattan and several neighborhoods our guid told us of the decrease in crime over the last years. It was the effort of Rudy Giuliani who tried (and with succes) to swipe the streets of New York clean from criminal activities.

It kept on my mind and still does because I was overwhelmed by the size of the city compared to our city (Zutphen) and the (government) organization such demands. So I started reading and searching on the internet just to get to know a bit more about the backrgounds of it, and I must say a very nice research subject :)

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The New York Police Department

The NYPD is the world largest municipal police. It was founded in 1845.

Some facts:

• +/- 36.000 (?!?!) uniformed police officers divided in 14 ranks
• 19.000 civilian employees
• They work from 76 stations (presincts)
• 8.839 police vehicles
• 11 boats
• 8 Helicopters
• Responsible for policing 8.5 million people in the city (Holland total has 17 million people)

So it's a enormous organization who serves the puclic safety and crimefighting.

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Crime Statistics

While surfing over the internet of course my first point to look was the site of the [NYPD (New York Police Department)](https://www1.nyc.gov). And I was impressed (and surprised) of the information they share online about the crimes and offenses. Since Rudy Giuliani they have been using a Computer aided proces named ["compstat"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompStat). It offers a dynamic approach to crime reduction.

On the website, if you click on the right links, you can read and download all sorts of reports on crime rates. In detail per week or historical by year, by type of offense... Almost anything... I think that is awesome to see and of course they show a sense of transparancy to the public. (although it can be coloured of course).

Historical statistisc

I will use a kind of top down approach to go from the historical figures to the present a clear overview. Otherwise we would drown in figures, years, months and so on :)..

Seven mayor felony offenses

This selection is about the 7 most heavy felony offenses and shows the amount of occurences in the years from 2000 (the start of the compstat program) untill 2017. As you can see overall rates are decreased massive thoug the figures are still enormous. Take murder and manslaughter, in 2000 there were 673 cases of it, that is almost 2 a day. By the year 2017 it is decreased more then half but stil remains 292.

Seven non-mayor felony offenses

In the seven Non-mayor felony offenses it isn't all a decrease of incidents. For instance Forgery/Fraud/ Identity theft doubled compared to 2000 in 2017. I can't find the reason for it but maybe it has to do with the digitalizing of society where it is so much easier to 'steal' an identity.

Misdemeanor Offenses

Like with the non-mayor felony offenses history the misdemeanor offenses show also a decrease on most offenses but with some a increase. an explanation for this can be that the focus has been on the mayor offenses because they have the biggest impact on the city. But overall the decrease goes on...

The historical data is really massive, it is also possible to get all the statistics per presinct. I won't bother you with that because then this post would be endless :)

Weekly statistisc

The NYPD provides overall citywide statistics, which are updated weekly. Within these reports you can see and compare former years agains the same time now. It gives a detailed look per week and also amazes me by the amount of criminal incidents, of course when you look at the ammount of citizen you can expect a large number of incidents, but the nature of the incidents and felonies is something we (in Holland) are not very familiar with.

Only think of the organization behind providing all this information in this detailed views... It's quiet amazing isns't it...
Well, It got my attention and I have formed a bit of a picture on how massive and big the New York Police Department is, it is beyond imagination from the perspective of the dutch law enforcement..

I hope you like this little revelation on the NYPD

Have a great day

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