Photo: Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner Bratton last week detailed the One City: Safe and Fair Everywhere initiative in Washington Heights. Courtesy of Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Unit
These are busy times for Commissioner Bill Bratton and the city Police Department.
Days after declaring the addition of nearly 1,300 new officers to this year’s budget, Bratton joined Mayor Bill de Blasio last week in Washington Heights to unveil One City: Safe and Fair—Everywhere, a “groundbreaking” neighborhood policing vision, according to the administration, designed to engage the community as a coequal partner to keep neighborhoods safe, support officers, and hold crime at historic low levels.
The plan has been constructed to solve the central problem in implementing the community policing ideal: providing officers with the time and training necessary to deepen relationships within the communities they serve, and transforming the role of officers from traditionally reactive responders to calls for service into something more—proactive problem solvers in partnership with the community. The result, which the administration has said is already being felt in four pilot precincts, including the 100th in Rockaway, is increased community engagement for officers, yielding collaboration and increased trust and respect between police and the communities they serve.
This, de Blasio said, reduces and prevents crime, improves quality of life for all New Yorkers, and builds stronger relationships between residents and cops.
“With One City: Safe and Fair—Everywhere, we take the next step and apply our vision on the grandest scale yet to ensure the people of this city have a police force that is deeply connected at the neighborhood level, where police officers are deployed consistently in those communities to build relationships and deepen trust, and community members are fully engaged and mobilized partners in the mission to keep our streets safe,” de Blasio added.
Key features of the plan include the division of a precinct into four or five fully staffed sectors, as opposed to the existing eight to ten sectors that often aren’t fully staffed; newly-drawn sector boundaries that closely conform with neighborhood boundaries; the establishment of Neighborhood Coordinating Officers in each sector to identify and manage community concerns; and dedicated time each day for NCOs to be out in the community to establish and nurture relationships. The plan establishes “true sector integrity,” where the same two officers are in the same sector every day with the potential for an additional two regularly-assigned cars depending on the sector’s crime rates; the designation of two newly-created Neighborhood Coordination Officers per sector who will have the resources and training to work within the community to leverage NYPD assets and partner agencies to help address local problems; the allocation of four cars and eight officers for precinct-wide rapid response; and the utilization of technology and databases at officers’ fingertips in the field.
One City… is a central pillar of the NYPD’s broad plan to define and implement new initiatives in five key areas: tactics, technology, training, terrorism, and trust.
“Today, the NYPD steps into a new era—an era in which the department brings policing in this city to a new level—where officers are empowered to achieve what so many aspired to when they joined the NYPD: To be the guardians and protectors of every community of New York, working in partnership with the residents of those communities and, ultimately with every public and private entity, to make every part of the city safe and fair for everyone,” Bratton noted.
By Michael V. Cusenza
michael@theforumnewsgroup.com
