Influx of Cops Helps Cut Crime, but Residents still feeling Wary

CROWN HEIGHTS, Brooklyn — Brooklyn’s most dangerous neighborhoods are getting safer, thanks to an influx of cops.

Murders, thefts and assaults are down in traditionally violent precincts like East New York’s 75th, Police Department statistics show.

“Nine more people are alive [now] than this time last year in the 75th Precinct,” said Assistant Chief Gerald Nelson, the NYPD’s Brooklyn North borough commander. The 75th led the city in homicides last year, with 31.

“I feel great because I see that we have made a difference, [but] we still have a ways to go,” Nelson said. “I’m knocking on wood.”

The NYPD’s effort to cut crime by dispatching 645 rookies to high crime areas for six months apparently is working.

Overall, crime in Brooklyn North has decreased by more than 3%, with murders down by more than 20% and burglaries down by 12%.

And residents are noticing.

“Things are better. They seem to be at a calm,” said Jannie Neeley, 52, an MTA train driver who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant’s 81st Precinct.

“I do feel a little more comfortable,” she said. “It seems like people that I used to see around the neighborhood are just not there anymore, and I see a little bit more of the police around. Maybe that’s what drove them away.”

Neeley’s neighborhood, where violent trends have earned it the nickname “Bed-Stuy Do Or Die,” has seen more than a 12% drop in crime.

Felony assaults are down from 148 to 115 so far this year, compared with the same period in 2007, and car theft is down by 21%.

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Aside from having a roving force of cops in the Brooklyn North command, extra officers have been assigned to the 73rd, 75th, 77th and 79th precincts, Nelson said.

A new class of rookies, graduating this week, will be reassigned to the improving areas, but their number has not yet been released, although Nelson said Brooklyn North will not be abandoned. “We just don’t pull out of what we took over [from the criminals]; it will just go back to what it was,” Nelson said.

Increasing police presence in Brooklyn has also produced a 10% crime reduction in Crown Heights’ 71st Precinct and a more than 3% decline in Brownsville’s 73rd Precinct. Though homicides have decreased in East New York, residents aren’t entirely comfortable.

“Am I feeling 100% safer? No,” said Laura McCarther, 60, who has lived in East New York for 38 years and admits that things are on the mend, but could get better. “I’m still not going to take a walk down to the park after dark. Not just yet.”