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Shootings are up dramatically this year. Toddlers are being mugged in Brooklyn.
But Mayor Bloomberg doesn’t believe the city needs to hire any more cops.
“If crime were to spike, I’d be the first one to say we should add cops,” he said during his weekly WOR radio show. “[But] the murder rate continues to come down.”
While the murder rate is down 15.6 percent for the first seven months of this year, shootings are up 9.6 percent and overall crime is up 4.3 percent, the latest NYPD stats show.
But Bloomberg defended the leaner Police Department.
“When we came into office, we reduced the size by 4,000 or 5,000, and we’ve maintained that for 10 years, and every year we’ve brought crime down,” he said.
“What’d I miss here? Our job is not to employ as many of the people as to spend as much of the taxpayers’ money as we can. Our job with the Police Department is to bring crime down. It is phenomenally well managed.”
The Big Apple has suffered through bloody weeks this summer, with five people shot this past Wednesday night at Harlem’s famous Rucker Park basketball tournament.
City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Queens), who has been clamoring for more cops all year, said the 35,000 now on the force aren’t enough to maintain safety.
“Not only is the usual summer spike worse than ever, crime is increasing in every borough for the first time in 20 years,” said Vallone, chairman of the council’s Public Safety Committee. “Those are the stats. The mayor is like the little boy who didn’t cry wolf even though there is a giant wolf coming.”
Vallone said everyone he’s talked to in the department, from street cops to top brass, has told him “they absolutely do not have the manpower to deal with this current crime spike. I’m not sure who the mayor is listening to, but he needs to listen to the experts.”
Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, blamed police shortages for the shootings at the tournament and the killing by stray gunfire of a child at a Bronx basketball game.
“Tragically, a reduction of police presence from 10 officers to only two at Rucker Park allowed a gunfight to take place where five people were shot, and in a separate incident a lack of police presence allowed a shooting that took the life of an innocent 4-year-old boy,” Lynch charged.
But Bloomberg focused on the dropping murder rate and pointed to the 32 percent drop in crime since he took office in 2002.
“If you had more cops, would you get it down even more?” he asked, referring to the murder rate. “I don’t think so.”
The NYPD expects to have an average of 34,800 cops in the current fiscal year, which began July 1. At its peak, in 2001-2002, it had 40,700 cops.
The Police Department budget is $4.6 billion, more than any other agency except for social services and schools.
“Spending more money is not something . . .” the mayor said, stopping midsentence to conclude, “We don’t have the money.”