Just before the Norwood News went to press for this issue (Oct. 4-17), we received a letter with a packet of valuable information from the New York City Police Department. Almost exactly five months after we filed a Freedom of Information Law request, the NYPD had delivered crime statistics for each of the sectors within the 52nd Precinct, which includes all of the neighborhoods in our primary coverage area — Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham, as well as University and Kingsbridge Heights.

That means we now have crime statistics on your specific neighborhood, not just the monolithic precinct as a whole. We will be analyzing this data and offering it to you in coming editions of the paper.

We would like to thank the NYPD for providing this information in a relatively timely manner. (Last time we FOILed for sector stats it took 13 months and a story about our struggle to get the stats on NBC’s local news show to get them to send us the information.)

For years, the Norwood News has sought to get this more detailed crime information out into the open for public safety purposes. The idea is simple: provide data that local groups and residents can use to improve public safety. Groups can use the information to better target resources. Residents can use the information to be more aware of crime trends in their neighborhoods.

Former Norwood News editor Jordan Moss recently wrote an in-depth story on the sector stats saga for City Limits. In the piece, Moss tracks the bill, sponsored by Council member Fernando Cabrera (who represents Kingsbridge and University Heights) and inspired by the Norwood News coverage, that would require the NYPD to release these statistics on a regular basis.

After introducing it in early 2011, the bill has gone nowhere and Cabrera says Speaker Christine Quinn, who’s counting on the support of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly for her mayoral run in 2013, is responsible for holding it up. (The NYPD doesn’t want to release the stats because they will bring increased scrutiny and cause cracks in its narrative that crime is down all over the city.)

“This is a problem whenever you have a speaker that runs for mayor,” Cabrera told Moss. “You have too much politics involved.”

Moss also spoke with Monsignor John Jenik, whose parish, Our Lady of Refuge, sits smack in the middle of Sector G, a notoriously high crime area within the 52nd Precinct. Our front page story contains an item on a shooting on 194th Street and Valentine Avenue, which is two blocks from OLR. He breaks down the argument for sector stats simply:

“I don’t live in the precinct,” he says. “People don’t live in precincts. We live in neighborhoods.”