While the NYPD released alarming crime statistics about public parks at the end of the summer, including reporting that Flushing Meadows Corona Park is the second most dangerous green space in the city, those numbers do not represent the entire picture, said one Queens legislator who said the city needs to provide more reliable crime statistics for many more public spaces.
Councilman Peter Vallone (D-Astoria), the chairman of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, is sponsoring a bill that would mandate the NYPD to submit crime reports to the Council on all public parks and playgrounds that are larger than one acre.
Seven years ago, Vallone introduced similar legislation that required the city to begin reporting at all on felony crimes in parks. The Council passed that bill, but it resulted in the NYPD only reporting on the city’s 31 largest parks, including such sites as Central Park, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, and Forest Park.
Should his most recent bill be given the stamp of approval, the number of parks for which the NYPD provides crime data would skyrocket from 31 to 870. The bill would likely be one of the last to be sponsored by Vallone, who is leaving office as of January because of term limits.
At a recent public hearing on the legislation, a number of concerns were raised about Parks Enforcement Patrol Officers – namely, there aren’t enough of them to go around. With data being provided on parks large and small, some have said the number of PEP officers would need to dramatically increase.
Vallone has long been an advocate for increasing the number of officers.
According to the NYPD’s summer report, Forest Park had the second highest number – 27 – of serious crimes reported last year. There were more felonies reported in Central Park than any other large park in the city. Of the 37 reported crimes at Central Park, there was a rape, two robberies, and five felony assaults.
By Anna Gustafson