"The 101: The NYPD and Victim Assistance," Highlighting Four Years of Enhanced Service to New Yorkers
November 29, 2018
Today, the New York City Police Department launched The 101: The NYPD and Victim Assistance. This booklet includes 101 ways the New York City Police Department works to ensure that New Yorkers who experience a crime feel safe, supported throughout the investigation process. Taken together, these initiatives demonstrate a groundbreaking approach to customer service.
The featured initiatives are a product of both internal and external consultation to inform the NYPD's work and ensure that the department is doing everything it can to help victims of crime rebuild their lives. Over the past four years, the NYPD has implemented Neighborhood Policing, the most ambitious reform of policing in New York City's history. The Neighborhood Policing strategy promotes public safety and drives down crime by building strong relationships with the community. The initiatives mentioned in this booklet demonstrate some of the most substantial ways that the department works to build trust with the community it serves.
"We know the NYPD is the gold standard in policing in so many ways and we know that we can always improve," Police Commissioner James P. O'Neill said. "How we interact with victims and survivors of crime is just as important as how we try to prevent crime for happening in the first place. It's about better internal policies and procedures, about building even stronger cases to help prosecute criminals, and about making everything we do more effective and more efficient. It's also about simple human interaction and ensuring victims have access to services, and that they know and feel we are doing everything we can to help them recover from the traumatic ordeal they are enduring."
Key initiatives include:
Mitigating Trauma- The Crime Victim Assistance Program (CVAP), developed by the NYPD and staffed by Safe Horizon, places two victim advocates in every precinct citywide.
- Privacy Screens: The NYPD privacy screens to block lines of sight at crime scenes, collisions, and in other instances of severe injury or death.
- Forensic Experiential Trauma Interview: Building on neurobiological research, the Forensic Experiential Trauma Interview allows investigators to more effectively and compassionately gather evidence from people who have experienced trauma.
- Domestic Violence Home Visit Follow-up Photos: Since bruises often develop 24-72 hours after an incident, officers are now trained to take additional photos of injuries several days after they occur.
- The Call Is Yours: In 2018, the NYPD launched "The Call is Yours", a multi-media campaign encouraging victims of any form of sexual misconduct to report those crimes.
- Motorized Wheelchair and Scooter Transport: The Emergency Service Unit (ESU) now has carriers to transport motorized wheelchairs and scooters to a police facility, court, or hospital.
- Build the Block Meetings: At small, neighborhood-based Build the Block meetings, neighborhood coordination officers invite people to discuss their ideas for making their neighborhoods safer.
- CompStat 2.0: CompStat 2.0 documents where crimes occur, providing the public with interactive crime data.
- Timoney Sex Crimes Case Review: Twice a year, victim advocates from five organizations review 200 closed, redacted cases and give constructive feedback that improves investigations.
- Quarterly Meetings with Victim Advocates: NYPD now meets with victim advocates quarterly. Advocates are invited to ask questions, voice concerns, offer recommendations, and provide the department with feedback on new initiatives.
- Coordinated Approach to Preventing Stalking (CAPS) Program: CAPS was designed to increase identification and reporting of intimate partner stalking cases, enhance stalking arrests and prosecutions, and link victims to critical services.
- NYC Ceasefire and Victim Services: NYC Ceasefire is a partnership-based strategy to address group-involved violence. It involves direct communication with people who are most at risk of gun violence victimization or perpetration. The program also provides support services for victims.
This booklet is best understood as a status report, not a final report. Our work is ongoing and the NYPD is continuing to focus on ways to better serve victims of crime.