Addressing a public safety issue raised by the Norwood News, Councilman Fernando Cabrera has drafted legislation to require the New York City Police Department to share neighborhood crime statistics with community boards and the general public on a quarterly basis.

Currently, the only stats made public are precinct-wide, the so-called Compstat reports that are compiled weekly and posted online at the NYPD’s website. But those stats cover large geographic areas – almost 150,000 people in the case of Community Board 7 — comprising many neighborhoods.

When crime goes down in a precinct, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it has gone down in a neighborhood or series of blocks, which is why the Police Department carves precincts into sectors – for the purpose of identifying problem areas. But New Yorkers rarely see these breakdowns.

The Norwood News did publish sector stats provided by the precinct a couple of years ago, but the information has been kept under wraps ever since. The Norwood News submitted a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request to the NYPD last June for the data and followed up in October. The NYPD has yet to comply with the request, despite indicating specific dates by which it would in two letters to the paper.

Greg Faulkner, Cabrera’s chief of staff, said his office decided to address the issue legislatively following the paper’s coverage, and when Norwood News reporter Alex Kratz raised the issue with Chief Philip Banks III, head of the NYPD community affairs department at a 52nd Precinct Community Council Meeting at Scott Tower, Banks said he didn’t know why the information wasn’t being provided.

A Norwood News editorial in May stated: All we’re asking for is information that will keep residents better informed and more able to help the NYPD keep our streets safer.

Since the editorial, the Bronx News Network has regularly published a clock ticking off the number of days and hours since the Norwood News first filed a Freedom of Information law request last June — as of now, 377 days.
Faulkner said the legislation will probably go through several drafts before it hits the Council floor.