Less than six months ago, the city’s cop critics were demanding that we end police tactics such as stop, question and frisk as well as NYPD attempts to keep criminals out of housing projects.
Today, the same people are screaming about the rise in shootings and gang violence in the projects and certain precincts.
I’m not yet ready to say, “I told you so.” Over the two decades of New York’s dramatic drop in crime, we’ve often had temporary spikes in certain areas.
So far, the NYPD has always been able to bring them under control by concentrating its forces on the “hotspots.” If the current situation is no more than temporary in some local areas, the cops will deal with it.
That is, if they’re allowed to enforce the laws.
The problem will come if these are not merely local spikes, but an emerging citywide phenomenon. This is what happened during the crack wars of the 1980s.
In that case, it was impossible for police to concentrate in a few locations because most of the city was consumed by crime. Not until the police force was increased from 31,000 to 41,000 officers, who also employed new tactics, did the NYPD bring the situation under control.
There is no evidence as yet that the spikes are some kind of precursor of a citywide deluge. On the other hand, there are nightmare scenarios just over the horizon.
One is that the drug cartels may be coming back. In the 1980s, Colombian drug lords deluged the city with crack cocaine. The resultant wars between machine-gun-wielding gangs over control of turf pushed the city’s body count to well over 2,000 a year.
This time the Colombians are selling heroin to Mexican gangs, which have targeted New York and other markets. The city’s special narcotics prosecutor announced recently that more heroin was seized in New York City in the first few months of 2014 than in any year since 1991.
Heroin has already flooded Staten Island, prompting a record number of deaths from overdose. In Manhattan it killed the Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. Let us hope that this traffic doesn’t produce drug wars like those that have raged on both sides of the US-Mexico border.
Another major cloud on the horizon is terrorism.
It is no secret that the Iranian regime has a fully developed plan to carry out a strike against New York if its nuclear facilities are threatened.
Other terrorist groups are reported to be planning a wave of assaults in the United States.
One very frightening possibility is that a state-sponsored terror team might attack us in the same way that one invaded Mumbai, India, in 2008 — shooting up tourist sites and eventually killing 166 people.
One problem in Mumbai was that special anti-terrorist squads couldn’t be quickly assembled, yet the regular police weren’t up to the problem.
Thus we need to ensure that New York’s elite counterterrorist teams — the finest in America — are not, as some have urged, diverted from their basic mission and sent to fight ordinary crime.
The mayor has turned down the City Council’s offer to provide 1,000 more cops to the NYPD.
As it happens, the city had 40,000 officers as recently as 2000; the count fell to today’s 35,000 as a result of choices made during tight fiscal times since then, especially the 2008 crisis.
Yet the city seems to have a lot of money available now for various other programs, so 1,000 more cops is an entirely reasonable proposal.
Indeed, a thousand new recruits could be given a few months’ basic training, then sent out to quiet precincts to work in teams led by outstanding sergeants and field officers — which would be a far more rounded education than the Police Academy provides.
In turn, the more experienced precinct officers could be detailed into the housing projects.
I suppose it is laughable to suggest that the current situation may provide a means by which cop critics can grasp the realities of policing a big city.
But some of them could be taken behind the scenes in the gang, drug and terrorism worlds to learn what the police are up against.
Thomas Reppetto is the former president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City and author of “American Police: 1945 To 2012.”