Transcript: Mayor Adams Announces Citywide Crime Statistics for the Third Quarter of 2024

October 8, 2024

Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard, Public Information, Police Department: Thank you for coming to the third quarter crime briefing. We're going to get right into it. You're going to hear from the mayor, the police commissioner, and Chief LiPetri on the crime numbers. We'll then take some questions on the crime. 

After that, we will be available to do some off topics later, probably around 2:30 if you have questions on some cases or some other things that have taken place in the city. So we'll just do questions on the crime after this, and then we'll break. All right, so without further ado, I give it to the mayor, Eric Adams.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thanks so much, Tarik, and really thank the men and women of the New York City Police Department. You must have heard me say it over and over again, the prerequisite to prosperity is public safety, and that is what we are going to be judged by. That is our economic stimulus package. That is the comfort level for all New Yorkers. 

New Yorkers want to be safe, and I have been zero-focused on accomplishing that task. And what you're seeing is the foundation of this Department with the the men and women in place of starting from Commissioner Sewell to Commissioner Caban and now Commissioner Donlon. You're seeing an infrastructure that's well organized, well prepared and knows how to execute on a clear plan that we started at the beginning of this administration. And when we came into office, our priorities were clear. New York will be not only the safest big city in America but we want New York to be the safest city in America and we are continuing to move in that direction.

We heard from the public over and over again, public safety, public safety, public safety. Every town hall I attend there is a clear partnership between the residents and the men and women of the New York City Police Department and not only being reactive to crime but proactive, what Commissioner Stewart has done with Community Affairs, he has redefined that unit to make sure we do everything from teaching young people how to play golf, how to get their real estate license, how to fly planes. What do we do with new parents that need basic supplies? It's a full, all hand on deck approach to how do we deal with public safety, both proactive and reactive. 

Today, I'm proud to say that New York City continues to be the safest big city in America. We have been able to achieve this through tough and smart on crime, both on our streets and in our subway system. Nothing personifies that more than yesterday, October 7th, when we commemorated the loss of lives of 1,200 individuals. And we heard much noise about protests and disruption of our city. Commissioner Weiner and her team did an amazing job on the intelligence, sharing the information, making sure that we were at the right places at the right time where people were able to protest peacefully and family members were able to commemorate the pain that came from that vicious attack from Hamas a year ago. 

But we have also made sure we remain laser focus on one of the number one enemies in our city, handguns and guns and the use of guns. This administration has removed over 18,500 guns off our streets, out of our neighborhoods and out of our communities. We've arrested violent criminals. We've taken more than 29,000 close to 30,000 ghost cars off our streets and illegal mopeds off our streets. Something that New Yorkers have been talking about. 

These ghost cars and illegal mopeds, they have been a menace to our city. And the Deputy Mayor Banks, former Deputy Mayor Banks, what he has done in partnership with Commissioner Tisch over at the Department of Sanitation to zero in on ghost cars. We partnered with the governor to handle this at our tolling booths. But we now are doing an initiative where we go in through the night and finding these ghost cars, and we have been successful. Over 1,000 have been removed thus far. 

But we also looked at the menace of cannabis. This administration closed more than 1,100 illegal smoke shops. And we put more cops on the streets and on our subways, and the results are clear. We're also going after the root causes of crime to make sure this city and our communities are safer, investing in upstream solutions, education, affordable housing, and holiday school program and early intervention. You think about it, and I always want to remind us, August was one of the safest Augusts in recorded history for gun violence. Many people thought it was going to be a very dangerous summer, And the NYPD and our partners, both the crisis management teams and our patrol force responded and made sure we were able to successfully move through August without the violence that was expected in the area of gun violence. 

Because of our efforts, New York City has had nine straight months of crime reduction. Nine straight months of crime reduction. Our public safety strategy is working, and our streets and subways are getting safer. Crime continues to trend downward in New York City. Overall index crime was down 3.1 percent. In September, 3.3 percent for the quarter and 2.0 percent year to date. Murder, burglary, grand larceny, and grand larceny auto are all down year to date. In September, we also saw decreases in murder, robbery, burglary, grand lossy, and grand lossy auto. 

Additionally, transit crime. We started out the beginning of the year in January with a bump in transit crime. We immediately responded. And because of the efforts, transit crime was down 8.7 percent in September and 4.8 percent for this quarter and down 5.1 percent year to date. Yes, transit crime is down. The transit system is getting safer and safer every day. And First Deputy Commissioner Tania Kinsella is going to be spearheading a new initiative that we're going to be doing around those with severe mental health issues, showing that we are not only going to deal with the actual crime, but how people are feeling at the same time. And I said it repeatedly, our transit system is the lifeblood of our city and keeping New York City safe on the subway system really is the barometer that many New Yorkers use to determine if their city is a safe city and we're going to continue to do that. 

We're breaking the cycle of crime in our city and making our city and communities safe and I want to really thank our interim Police Commissioner Donlon for coming in and just leading from the front a great team of men and women that just know how to to do it and know how to do it right. And all the members of the New York City Police Department and outgoing Deputy Mayor Banks, I really want to thank him for his service on what he did of breaking down the walls of all of our law enforcement agencies and realizing we have one team and that's team New York. 

And so again, the men and women of the NYPD, cannot thank you enough. Job well done. More work to do, we know that, but we're going to get that job done and I want to turn it over to interim commissioner, Commissioner Donlon. Thank you.

Interim Police Commissioner Thomas Donlon: Well, good morning, everyone. First, I want to thank, say thank you to Mayor Adams for his continued support of the NYPD and for his unwavering commitment to public safety. 

The mayor mentioned reactive and proactive, and that's so, so important. Reactive, responding to an incident, and the follow-up, the proactive measures that we take as a Police Department amongst all the different departments. Everybody understands their defined role and how to address a certain situation and to work with the task force, which is very, very important, our federal, state, and local partners. And that's just a tremendous effort by all involved. I also want to thank the mayor for his trust he's placed in me to lead this great organization. And I've always felt that way. Throughout my law enforcement career, I worked with the NYPD on many different levels, and they are truly, I believe, the greatest police agency in the world, and that comes from my experience and from my heart. 

The second to none in our responsibility to continue this department's criminal work, reducing crime and improving the quality of life, is led by chief of the department, Chief Maddrey, who has also done an outstanding job. And I speak with Chief Maddrey quite often. And what I see in him is his passion, desire to continue the good work of the men and women of this Police Department. And I just want to acknowledge his efforts. 

Murder is [at] a five year low and we continue to reduce shooting incidents and victims. This doesn't happen unless there is dedicated efforts by the individuals involved in these investigations. And since 2022, the NYPD has taken more than 18,600 illegal guns off our streets, including over 5,000 guns this year alone. At the same time, felony arrests are up at a 26-year high of another 9 percent from 2023. We made more than 3,000 gun arrests in the first three quarters of 2024. When you put it all together, it is truly remarkable, and credit goes to the dedicated officers and civilians who keep our city safe. 

Just one final comment about the civilians. You know, I'm a big, major proponent of our investigative analysts. They work very, very closely with all the different departments. And what they do, the work they do is very tedious, time consuming. But they provide us valuable information, which helps us to conduct arrests and also follow up investigations, which is very, very important. 

There should be no doubt that in anyone's mind that the men and women of the NYPD are the reason why New York is the safest large city in the world, I believe in the world. I thank them for everything they do, and I'm honored to have the opportunity to build upon this historic legacy. Now I'll turn it over to our resident expert, Chief of the Crime Control Strategic Bureau Michael LiPetri. Thank you.

Chief Michael LiPetri, Chief of Crime Control Strategies, Police Department: Thank you, commissioner. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You know, the commissioner and the mayor mentioned 18,000 guns approximately recovered over the past four years. 
When you do an analysis of those guns, we see the shortest medium time frame that we've ever seen of time to crime. I mean, you purchase a gun, and that gun is used in a crime in New York City, 4.6 years, medium time frame. So what does that mean? It means New York City police officers are disrupting the flow of guns to New York City. What does that mean? 500, 600 less victims than just a few years ago in shooting reductions. 

When you look at our summer plan, which started in May and just ended a couple of weeks ago, I just want to give you an analysis of that plan and what went on during those tough hours that over a thousand extra officers from all across the city, mainly new officers that just graduated the academy, in those zones, which encompassed 32 precincts, 7 PSAs, and 73 zones, which is about 10 square miles of New York City. Obviously, a very small percentage of the approximate 300 square miles.Index crime, down. Shootings, down 10 percent. Murders, down 36 percent. Arrests, up 25 percent. Gun arrests, up 16 percent. Oath summonses, up 100 percent. 12,000 oath summonses issued in those zones to the right individuals doing things that New York City residents complain about, the quality of life issues, so obviously successful.

The mayor talked about the safest July ever, I'm sorry, the safest August ever. Well, if you combine July and August, two really tough months, second lowest ever in the CompStat history with 165 incidents. only beaten by 2017 with 162. The NYPD is getting to levels pre-pandemic when it comes to violence. We talk about a robbery decrease in the third quarter. Well, the second quarter we saw an increase. We took a look at it and what we did see was the same areas that we were patrolling for the shootings are the areas that we saw an increase in robberies. So it helped. So we saw a decrease in robberies for the third quarter. 3100 robbery arrests for the third quarter, highest in 16 years. 

So we have the highest 28 year high in index crimes. We're at that four consecutive years of 26 year high in gun arrests, 16 year high third quarter robbery arrests. What we also have seen, unfortunately, our shoplifting crime continues to be at unprecedented levels. Take a look at it. You'll look to see the arrests of the individuals that we are putting into the system. 21,000 shoplifting arrests this year, up 2,000. And as we've always say, shoplifting is a recidivist-driven crime. We have approximately 575 people this year that have been arrested for over 6,000 shoplifting arrests. 16,000 for their career criminal life, just shoplifting those 575. That's 30 percent of all the arrests. You look at their total arrests for their lifetime, 25,000 arrests. 

I have a perfect example. David Almanzar, career criminal, five-time convicted felon, eight-time convicted misdemeanor. Most of those misdemeanors all started as felons. He gets arrested and he pleads to a robbery in the end of last year. So in November of 2023, this individual pleads to a shoplifting gone bad, where he takes cell phones, and you're gonna see a pattern. He continues to prey on AT&T, T-Mobile, and mom and pop cell stores. So he takes a plea, and he's promised a program, and the judge says, okay, if you finish this program, you will get a misdemeanor. That's 11 months ago. 11 months ago, he pled to that. 

Let's see what he's done since then. 13 days after taking that program, he gets arrested for fleeing police officers in the Bronx. The detective squad in multiple Bronx precincts arrest him seven times. The value that he gets arrested for, for those seven grand larcenies and robberies of cell phone stores, was over $16,000. And again, he's out on a program. After that, in April of this year, he gets arrested again for six more shoplifting robberies. All six of these committed after the program had started. The value of those steals, $20,000. So you used $36,000 worth of merchandise stolen from mom and pop stores, T-Mobile stores, and AT&T's. All these cases, by the way, were merged into one case. 

This individual, by the way, is still walking around the streets of New York City. Again, he pled to a program 11 months ago. He was supposed to be back for that program, never returned. Bench warrant after bench warrant after bench warrant. He gets re-arrested 13 times since then, and the judges continue to let this individual prey on New Yorkers. 

That's what's wrong with shoplifting in New York City. There needs to be collaboration, cooperation between many different agencies. Not just the NYPD making 21,000 arrests this year, and still seeing an uptick in shoplifting. Thank you very much.

Deputy Commissioner Sheppard: All right, so we'll take some questions on the, again, the crime numbers, the third quarter, all year to date on the crime numbers. Anybody needs updates on anything other than that, we would reconvene and do that later. All right. Call us.

Question: So as you mentioned, August was really, really good, kind of the calm [inaudible]. I'm wondering kind of what strategies you're looking for in August, as far as I understand. And then conversely, we're seeing some felony assaults going up here today. Those are, you know, assaults that can lead to people with permanent injuries. What kind of strategies are going into improving some of those things?

Chief LiPetri: Sure. I'll get into your first question. Again, the NYPD is precision-based on an in-depth data analysis of what's going on in the city. It is a multi-bureau approach to street-level crime. We drill down on, again, 3 percent of the land mass in New York City accounts for 33 percent of the shootings in New York City. And those hours are between 5:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. And Friday and Saturday, we see it go a little later to 04:00. 

That's where the officers were. Saturating patrols on foot every single night. Thousands of extra offices in those areas in New York City. But it's not just the patrol offices. We've asked our Detective Bureau to do things differently. We asked our Intelligence Bureau to do things differently. Our Housing Bureau, our Transit Bureau, all working together, and that was measured every single day. It's a process, and the process showed that it worked. And again, that is because of all the hard work of all the men and women across New York City. 

As far as the felony assaults, we see three categories that are driving our felony assaults this year. We see the category of assaults on police officers, which we've seen a sharp uptick over the past few years. We also see an increase in domestic related assaults, and we do see an increase in stranger assaults. Those three categories are driving our family. 

Question: I guess for both the mayor and the commissioner, this administration has talked repeatedly about building trust with various communities as a way to help fight crime. The more cooperation you get from residents in different neighborhoods, the more likely you are to tamp down crime. So with that in mind, I just wanted to ask you about the monitor's report yesterday which talks about what they see as an increasing problem, and that is the continued under-reporting of stops that are captured on body-worn camera footage. Does that, do you feel, get in the way of building that trust even more and driving crime down even more?

Deputy Commissioner Sheppard: Rocco, I think that's a question for Commissioner Gerber, for Legal, who's reviewed that report.

Chief John Chell, Chief of Patrol, Police Department: Rocco, I'm not sure if you're aware, we started probably the first ever nationwide Compliance Stat. That Compliance Stat in part is based on the monitor's report. And look at the monitor's report, she will say that we are making great strides in documenting our stops and with more work to be done. So we are working closely with the monitor. When we have our Compliance Stat, either her or definitely her staff is in every one of those meetings. And we directly go after this problem, and we are doing a good job in this, and she'll admit that, but we still have work to be done. 

So it's being addressed, it's building the trust you're talking about, and we're being as transparent as we can to fix a problem that was kind of now dealt with for years until this administration came into play. So I'm proud of that, and I'll pass it to Mike Gerber to continue that.

Deputy Commissioner Michael Gerber, Legal Matters, Police Department: Yeah, so just to build on what Chief Chell was saying, so that report, which came out yesterday, that looks at data from 2022 and 2023, so it's not 2024 data. Compliance Stat started beginning of 2024 really to address the concerns that are raised in that report. 

So, it's looking at historical data, and it's an issue that the monitor, as Chief Chell said, you know, has flagged for us. And we've been working to develop Compliance Stat with the monitor's team is there every time. The monitor's report says, you know, is that obviously they don't have the data yet for 2024, so they're not weighing in on 2024, they're not weighing in on Compliance Stat and the effect that it has. I think what you're going to see is Compliance Stat having an effect on the issue of underreporting. And you know, Compliance Stat covers many things, but one of the things we focus on is precisely the issue that the monitor's talking about, and that is the underreporting issue. It made us a priority for the whole department. 

Question: Has either the monitor or the department worked out a percentage that either side feels is the standard that needs to be reached before the judge decides the monitor is not needed anymore?

Deputy Commissioner Gerber: So that issue plays out, obviously, on various subjects. Look, with regard to underreporting, the monitor says in her most recent report, and this is no surprise, is that if you have significant underreporting, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, for the monitor to assess our compliance, and that we need to reduce underreporting. 

Is there some target number? No, not that I'm aware of, but we agree with the monitor that there is a need to reduce underreporting, and that is exactly what Compliance Stat is all about, and I think you're going to see the results of that with the 2024 numbers. All right.

Question: I have another question about assaults, sort of why do you think this is such a difficult problem? They've been hard to bring down. They sort of remain up, probably 5 percent right now, but why? Why are assaults so difficult to bring down? assaults are difficult to bring down?

Chief LiPetri: Well, again, when you look at the categories that are driving assaults, domestic assaults, if you ask me, we have the most aggressive domestic violence prevention program in the country. It is not based solely on making arrests. It's based on helping the victim prior to a domestic incident. And we're very, very aggressive with it. It is a subject of many talks at CompStat. It's a subject of our domestic violence stat that falls out of the chief of department's office. 

When you look at the stranger assaults, a lot of that, if you look at who's committing those stranger assaults, You know, we do see a correlation between mental illness and stranger assaults. The data's there. It shows it. So that is driving the uptick in stranger assaults. And assaults on police officers are at unprecedented levels. Police officers in New York City today are more engaged than they ever have been. You know, they're engaging career criminals, they're engaging individuals that, quite frankly, should not be walking around the streets of New York City. And they're dangerous, and they're assaulting New York City police officers. And we're leveraging the prosecutors across the city to keep that felony at arraignment. 

We also want that felony to stay for the process of the arrest, and that's not what we're seeing. We are seeing a felony assault arraignment high that we have never seen before, and that's a great thing. But we also wanna make sure that that person becomes a convicted felon for assaulting a New York City police officer.

Interim Commissioner Donlon: Just one other point about proactive cases. When the Police Department opens up an investigation, very proactive, and that can lead to five, 10, 15, 20 other cases. You develop leads, develop informants, sources, so it's very important that the P.D. takes the time an effort towards this progressive way of handling investigations. That's so important, so you need to understand that, that it does lead to other investigations and hopefully solving criminal activity.

Question: Just to drill down on the categories, You said stranger, domestic violence, and police. What percentage does stranger assaults make up of those numbers?

Chief LiPetri: So stranger assaults have risen by 60, so the raw number is 60 complaints from the last quarter to this quarter. Assaults on police officers driving the felony assault number for the quarter with an increase of 75 victims, offices, and domestics was an increase of 36 victims.

Deputy Commissioner Sheppard: All right, thanks everybody.

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