July 3, 2024 Office of the Mayor News
Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard, Public Information, Police Department: All right, everybody's getting seated. Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for coming in. Let me just give you a run of show real quick. We're going to have the quarterly crime briefing first, and then we'll take some on-topic crime questions about the numbers for the quarter. Then we will reset the room we will take questions on July 4th and some off topics. All right so again it's going to be the crime briefing and questions on the numbers for the quarter and other questions you have for maybe the first six months on crime and then we'll reset and we'll take July 4th and we'll take some more topics. All right so without further ado I'll kick it over to the mayor, Eric Adams.
Mayor Eric Adams: Thanks so much, Deputy Commissioner Sheppard and really thank all of you for being here. I say it over and over again, the prerequisite to prosperity is public safety and justice. The city must be safe. It is something that not only I have personally dedicated my life to but the many women who are here have dedicated their lives to doing so. To have a former chief of department to being the deputy mayor of Public Safety, first time that's happened, and to have a commissioner that has spent over 30-something years dedicated to keeping the city safe and having his dad who was also a member of the Police Department. So there is, on this panel, a lot of history on running towards danger so that New Yorkers won't have to experience danger. That is in our blood and that is what we're going to continue to do.
And so I'm really pleased and what Commissioner Caban and his entire team, Chief Maddrey, chief of Department, Chief of Patrol John Chell, Deputy Commissioner Daughtry, how all day all night, I communicate with them and they have one mission and that is to go after the bad guys so they don't do bad things to good people in this city. And we put in place many initiatives and those initiatives are working.
Over thousands of thousands of protests that we're witnessing in the city, particularly after October 7th, you're seeing the presence of dangerous people who have arrived in our city. A proportion, a small proportion of those who are part of the migrants and asylum seekers that have arrived here, some of them are participated in gang behavior. It is not a representation of the large number of migrants and asylum seekers who are here to pursue the next step on their dream to be in America. We do have a small number. I want to really thank First Deputy Commissioner Kinsella and Deputy Commissioner Weiner, who traveled to Colombia to do an investigation on the presence of a group, a dangerous small element of gang behavior that we were not allowed to take foothold in our city. They'll continue to investigate and look into this.
We want to thank the men and women of the New York City Police Department. They have been really addressing the issue of violence and disorder in our city, and we cannot thank them enough. I say it over and over again, heroes don't wear capes. They wear blue uniforms, and they are continuously providing the service that we expect with the level of professionalism that we want.
We're moving towards our day of independence tomorrow. We're excited about the 4th of July, that's going to be the next phase of this conversation, but we want to thank DSNY and NYPD. We're going to continue to ensure that people are able to celebrate our independence in a level of safety. Commissioner Wiener will tell you that as of this point, there are no credible threats to our city, but she and her team will remain vigilant to make sure we are prepared, and we're going to ensure that we have thousands of officers deployed for tomorrow's night's celebration, including uniform and plainclothes officers as well to make sure that it is a great celebration.
Fireworks may be fun, but you could have fatalities. Last year, over 9,700 injuries and 8 deaths nationally from fireworks misuse or malfunction. We want people to use them according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission and to please keep them out of the hands of children because they could be extremely dangerous. Like I said, we're focused to make sure that this is a great celebration and that the entire city will be able to enjoy the Fourth of July.
Six straight months, crimes has decreased. This administration has inherited a 40 percent increase in crime when we took office, we saw everything from shootings to illegal mopeds, dirt bikes, ghost cars. We have had a full frontal assault on disorder. When you have six straight months of a decrease in crime, it says that the initiatives that we have put in place, they're working. We know that if it bleeds, it leads, that some of the cases that take place would be on our front pages, but in reality, New York City is the safest big city in America. Safest big city in America.
Then when you look at our transit, January we had a bump, Commissioner Caban reached out to me and stated that we need to have zero focus on our subway system. Chief Kemper kicked into gear. Deputy Mayor Banks stated that we need to deploy the right personnel. We put 1,000 officers in the system after the January bump. You saw February, March, April, May, and June, a decrease in our subway crimes. A real operation, 1,000 new cops in the system. A partnership to deal with those with severe mental health illnesses and going after those habitual repeaters and focusing on something that was ignored for eight years, those who refused to pay their fare and it became just so routine that we said we're not going to allow it to happen in our system because taxpayers should not have to pick up the cost of those who have money and refuse to pay. That led to the six straight months that we are seeing.
Homicides are down for the year to date as well as the quarter of this month. Grand larceny that we were having a problem with in the beginning of the year, Commissioner Daughtry and Chief Chell started putting in a real initiative to go after that. Now we have a double digit decrease in grand larceny. Shootings are down, burglaries are down and transit crime as I indicated are down. I cannot say that enough because that's the lifeblood of our city that transit crime is down.
Transit crime, if you take out, I believe 2019 and Chief Kemper, you correct me. When we were in the heart of the pandemic, you remove that year when no one was on the system, transit crime is down for more than 14 years. We have not seen the level of decrease in transit crime. If you remove that one year, if you don't, then it's the second most low level of crime. That's how well Chief Kemper and his teams are doing. We introduced technologies, cameras, data-driven officers’ deployment with Chief LiPetri, who's really our quarterback on knowing where we should be and what we should do. That has given us what we have produced, six straight months of decreasing crime.
We're into the summer months. It is extremely, and it has always been, as long as we can remember, that summer months is a challenging period. Many people are outdoors. We have a lot of entertainment outdoors. We did it last year. We're going to do it this year. We gave a lot of alternatives to our children, from Summer Rising to DYCD, some of the youth employment programs, to Midnight Basketball that we're doing. We're going to do everything possible to keep our young people in safe places. At the same time, the NYPD is going to be there. Job well done, commissioner. Now I'll turn it over to you.
Police Commissioner Edward Caban: Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. Good afternoon, everyone. On behalf of all of our executive team here and the entire New York City Police Department, thank you for being here, and welcome to One Police Plaza for our second quarter crime briefing.
As the mayor said, we talk about the first half of 2024. The men and women of the NYPD continue the critical work that has made New York the safest big city in America. Major felony crime is down in four of seven categories year to date, including reductions in murder, burglary, grand larceny, and auto theft. This work led to a 2 percent drop in overall major crime for the first six months of this year compared to last. Crime is down across all of our operational bureaus: in our patrol precincts, housing developments, and in our transit system. Furthermore, both shooting incidents and victims continue their city-wide declines in 2024, extending the downward trend we've seen over this last two and a half years.
From day one, the mayor's administration made it very clear that our top priority is combating gun violence. The work our officers are doing it in every New York City neighborhood is making a real difference. We asked them to go out there and get the guns. That's exactly what they're doing. Since 2022, the NYPD has taken more than 17,000 illegal firearms off our streets, including more than 3,400 guns seized in just the past six months alone. I can tell you these weapons will never again threaten innocent New Yorkers. We also work closely with our law enforcement partners to make sure that the violent criminals who carry them are brought to justice.
The results we see don't happen overnight, and they're by no accident. It's the hard work, dedicated, thousands of officers that are out there across dozens of department-wide units that brought us to today. As we head into the summer months, we're going to be working even harder. Our summer violence deployment plan, which we rolled out in early May, puts uniformed officers in the neighborhoods that need them the most. I can tell you — thank you very much, Mike — we had great success in this program of 2023 when we saw lower crime, fewer shootings across our deployment zones, this summer we expect to repeat that success. We expect to build upon it, keep driving down crime disorder citywide.
Another example of significant sustained progress is what's happening right now in our subway system. In the first half of this year, major crime in the transit system is down almost 7 percent. It was down almost 15 percent for the month of June. As we sit here today, major subway crime is 11 percent below our pre-pandemic levels. This is a clear case of the NYPD identifying an issue, creating a plan to address it and executing the plan effectively. New Yorkers demand and deserve a safe transit system and that's exactly what the NYPD is going to give them.
Another aspect I want to mention before we get deeper into Mike's numbers is the work of our Housing Bureau. There are nearly a half million residents, employees and visitors across 2,100 NYCHA buildings citywide and keeping those people safe is a full time job of our nine Police Service Areas working in close collaboration with resident patrols, community groups and development managers, We're talking about over 154,000 families and 50 percent of NYCHA residents are either seniors or children, so this work is incredibly important. And the men and women of our Housing Bureau don't get enough credit for the great job they do. Thank you, Martine Materasso. In the first half of this year, major crime in housing is down almost 3 percent compared to 2023. It's down 8 percent for the month of June. I can tell you this is moving in the right direction. With the leadership team we have in place, we're confident it will continue that way.
There's no doubt that the NYPD's work makes our city a better place to live, work, and visit. Every gun we take, every violent criminal we arrest, every case we close it's all for one purpose and that's to keep our community safe. That's our job, that's our mission, and together with the people we serve, that's exactly what we're going to do. I'll turn it over to Chief Michael LiPetri to provide some further details. Chief?
Chief Michael LiPetri, Chief of Crime Control Strategies, Police Department: Thank you, good afternoon. The police commissioner talked about the historic gun arrests in New York City. If you look at the quarter, we're trending at the same three-year average that we have over the past three years with over 1,000 gun arrests for the quarter. You've got to go back 29 years to have similar gun arrest numbers. 29 years, there was four times the amount of shootings in New York City. We're taking basically the same amount of arrests for guns than we were 29 years ago with four times less the shootings.
That's precision policing. That's putting the officers in the areas where we see, unfortunately, the most violent. We've identified about 10 square miles of New York City that accounts for 25 percent of the shootings between an 8-hour and a 10-hour block. That's where the thousands of officers are being placed this summer. That's where they've been placed since May. Last year's success with the summer plan, we rolled it out, we continue to roll it out for the spring, the winter, the holiday season right up until the summer season. 32 precincts, 72 zones, seven housing PSAs are involved with the men and women out there every single night to protect New Yorkers.
We talk about the reduction in violence shootings you just go back two years. So for the first six months of 2022, we're down 195 shootings, 237 less victims. Compare quarter two this year to quarter two of 2021. Down 50 percent in shootings from this quarter to the quarter in 2021. That's 226 less incidents, 271 less victims.
We talked about the reduction in victims in four of the seven major crimes. There are some upticks in three others. I'll explain them. We have an uptick in felony assaults. What's driving those felony assaults, unfortunately, are elderly assaults — well, I should say 65 and older — stranger assaults, and domestic violence victims. I think an example of who's committing an elderly stranger assault is a perfect way for me to describe what happened to a retired 65-year-old member of the service. A few weeks back in Midtown Manhattan, viciously assaulted by an individual who, not surprisingly, is a convicted firearm felon out on probation.
When you look at an uptick in robberies, we see shoplifting, violent shoplifting robberies have increased. We have individuals that continue to drive our retail theft, and we have an overall decrease in retail theft, with over 14,000 retail theft arrests this year. I have to talk about this index driver, [Maximo Marino.] He has 36 felony arrests. 36 felony arrests. Not sealed. 36 felony arrests in two years. I'm going to batch them, basically 20 in 2023, 20 in 2024. Tens of thousands of dollars he has stolen, merchandise worth tens of thousands of dollars, from Sephora and from Lululemon. That individual gets arrested approximately 20 times last year for felonies. He spends a few months in Rikers. He pleads to two grand larceny felonies. He goes in front of the judge for his sentencing, and the judge says, okay, you can come back in six days, and then we'll sentence you.
Guess what? He didn't come back in six days. He was warranted. He was out up until November. Guess what he did between he warrants and November? We, the NYPD, identify him in 21 more felony grand larceny retail thefts. That's what we identified him as. He probably did 100. He goes back to Rikers for a few more months. Before he gets out of Rikers, the Detective Bureau arrests him for those 21 crimes. He gets put in front of three different judges in three different boroughs. Guess what? He gets non-monetary release from each one of those judges. Guess what? He's walking around the streets of New York City right now, again, committing shoplifting crimes, and he has six bench warrants. That's what's wrong with the system. No accountability, no consequences, and a revolving door of justice when it comes to recidivism and retail theft.
I do want to touch on the increase in rapes. Obviously a very sensitive topic, falls into three categories. We see an increase in our domestic-related rapes, we see an increase in acquaintance rapes, and we see a small increase in stranger rapes. We've also seen over the past quarter, we do have more victims coming forward in the past with crimes that happened months ago. We encourage that. We have vast ways that somebody can report a rape in New York City. They can report it as a law enforcement referral to other agencies. They can write in a complaint. They can walk into any precinct. That's what we encourage.
Working with our advocates, our special victims, highly skilled, which Joe's going to talk about, an arrest being made on horrific crime in Central Park. We encourage that. Seven major arrests, again, 26-year high. Gun arrests, 29-year high. Arresting individuals that commit crimes in New York City. Thank you for your arrest. Joe?
Chief Joseph Kenny, Chief of Detectives, Police Department: Good afternoon. I'm just going to update you on a sexual assault that took place in Central Park nine days ago. On Monday, June 24th, at approximately 1:36 in the afternoon, a female, 21 years old, was the victim of a sexual assault, which was an attempted rape. This took place inside of Central Park in the vicinity of West 104th Street and the West Drive. This area is a secluded section of the park. The survivor was there to sunbathe.
At this time, the perpetrator approaches our survivor and exposes himself. She gets up and tries to run from the location, but she is knocked to the ground by her attacker. Once on the ground, the male was on top of her and attempted to forcibly rape her. She fought back, and she fought back hard. The survivor began to physically struggle with the perpetrator while screaming for help. It is believed that her actions caused the attacker to climb off of her and run away.
Patrol officers from Central Park Precinct responded to several 911 calls reporting that a female was being attacked. Once at the scene, officers were provided a description of the attacker as being a male black, 6'1, wearing a t-shirt, black shorts, and wearing a baseball cap. Numerous officers and detectives from multiple units responded to the scene to assist in this investigation. They included uniformed officers from Central Park Precinct and Patrol Borough of Manhattan North, ESU K-9 Bloodhounds, the Central Park Police and Detective Squad, Manhattan North Homicide Squad, all members from Manhattan North Detectives, Manhattan North Video Collection Team, the Manhattan Special Victims Unit, the Special Victims Major Case Team, and of course the Crime Scene Unit.
Detectives immediately fanned out to interview potential witnesses, and luckily, one witness came forward and was able to provide responding detectives a possible direction of flight, pointing out where the perpetrator may have exited the park. Detectives were able to conduct a video canvas to follow this person to West 104th Street where they were able to pull video from a commercial establishment that gave us a clear image of the perpetrator's face. This image was submitted to our facial recognition system, which produced a match. It is important to note that any facial identification match is not considered enough evidence to establish probable cause for an arrest. This is merely a clue.
This FIS hit was a match to Jermaine Longmire. He is a male Black, 43 years old. His date of birth is 1-17-1981. He resides a short distance from where this crime took place, 60 West 104th Street. He has eight prior arrests in New York City, and he has an substantial arrest history out of state in Florida, Maryland, and New Jersey. A computer analysis of Longmire revealed that he was warranted on an open bench warrant in New York City. The crime he warranted on? A forcible touching arrest from March of 2024, where Longmire approached a woman from behind and forcibly grabbed her buttocks.
Further computer work revealed that he was also a perpetrator involved in a two-incident forcible touching pattern that took place in the transit system in 2023, once again, where Longmire would run up behind unsuspecting women and forcibly grab their intimate parts.
Armed with this information, members of the Fugitive Enforcement Unit located and apprehended Longmire for this open bench warrant on June 26th. At the same time, members of the Special Victims Unit were working to establish probable because to arrest Longmire on one of the incidents that was included in that transit forcible touching pattern. He was arrested on one of those incidents and held in jail on $7,500 cash bail.
As I stated earlier, the Crime Scene Unit responded to this incident and collected numerous items of evidence. Among the items collected were the survivor's clothing, in particular her bikini bottom. This article of clothing was processed by our Forensic Identification Section at the lab for potential subject DNA. Once the examination was complete, Jermaine Longmire's DNA was discovered on the survivor's bikini bottom. Working with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, all of this evidence was presented to a grand jury who indicted Jermaine Longmire for attempted rape and sexual abuse in the first degree. He was produced today in court, where special victims placed him under arrest, and he was charged for this new crime.
He is charged with attempted rape in the first degree and sex abuse in the first degree. I'd like to take this time to thank District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his staff for their assistance in this case. I would also like to thank the men and women of the Detective Bureau who worked so hard to bring this case to a successful conclusion. In particular, Lieutenant Vic Paribello and the Manhattan Special Victims Unit, the Special Victims Major Case Team, and the NYPD Lab. Thank you.
Question: Yes [inaudible] the increase in the [inaudible] statistics in the quarter and the six months and June, you've seen increases and you've seen increases in people who are coming forward with old reports of arrests. Given that two months ago we had the Harvey Weinstein decision reversal of his rape conviction and there was some criticism that because of that we were going to see a reluctance of victims to come forward. You're not seeing that, are you?
Chief Kenny: We are not seeing that. [Inaudible.]
Question: As the secretary for the 49th Precinct Council, I'd like to invite you and the commissioner over to our national night out on August 6th. However, and I want you to see how hard our officers work, all 74 of them down from a high of 250. And as you said, all crime stats are down. Here's the latest 49th Precinct crime stats which show for a two-year period, crime is up 34.89 percent and not one category is down. You have 9 000 units of new housing coming in through a Metro-North rezoning and other new housing including two 200 bed homeless men shelter. Former Commissioner Shea, when I asked him, said that these crime figures do not accurately report total crime because much crime goes unreported.
And let me just finish one more thing and my last thing will be you also have 50 people who are currently incarcerated in Rikers Island that will be given apartments in an empty building on a Jacobi campus, free to go wherever they want and [H + H] says these people they said they were fought stage four cancer but now they admit that these people will be as have as little as diabetes. What do you have to say to that?
Mayor Adams: First of all I thank you for using your downtime to be a citizen that participates in the precinct council because that's what we need, we need everyone to be actively involved and that's how we go about crime. And making our city safe, I know people often look at just the police, but I think when you look at Chief LiPetri’s analysis of those cases where a criminal justice system that has a revolving door, that gets in the way of us going after those crime stats that you're talking about.
The advocacy that you're showing right now for the NYPD, I want that advocacy with the lawmakers that are making these rules, Iwant the advocacy for the judges that are letting them go free, I want that advocacy to be shown when we see laws being passed that impedes us from making our city safe. It's not just the NYPD, we are doing our job. You heard that arrest are up, we're apprehending bad guys. You're seeing bad guys that are repeatedly being arrested and turned back into the street. That makes our jobs very difficult.
So I need you to help me, and I'm coming up to the precinct council to hang out with you, with the treasurer because you have the pocket full of money, because you're the treasurer and I want you to join me when I go to the City Councils, to Albany, to the federal government. Let's be a partner to bring down crime.
Chief LiPetri: Yes, I can just touch a little bit about the 49th Precinct. They have seen an uptick in crime, no doubt about it. The two-year uptick is more than an uptick. It's a 35 percent increase. Again, a 75 percent increase in seven major arrests in that two-year, over a 300 percent increase in OATH-related summonses, hazardous summonses, a 66 percent increase in hazardous summonses in the 49th Precinct in that two-year. One thing that we did see was areas that did concern us, and that's why the 49th Precinct this year became a summer zone. We've identified areas in the 49 where we removed those additional offices. We did not have that in the 49th precinct last year, and that's why we wanted to expand it. The 49th was one of the expansion commands, and they do have a zone.
Chief Jeffrey Maddrey, Chief of Department, Police Department: Sir, just so and I know you're aware that we just had a leadership change there. We brought back our old face, old squad commander Captain Theanthong. We already see the difference already. For the week, 28 days, he's pushing crime down. He was the squad commander there. He knows the place well. He's collaborating with the PSA over there. He's going to make a big difference over there.
Mayor Adams: What are the numbers? How are we looking? Hold on, because I want to address that. How are we looking at manpower? Can we have a conversation about manpower?
Chief LiPetri: With the graduating class, obviously speaking to Chief Maddrey, we are going to be moving hundreds of offices into the Bronx and then distribute them to the precincts.
Mayor Adams: When we finish, I want the information about that location. They told you the people who were going there were due to cancer patients? We should not do a bait-and-switch. I want you to give me the information of that location.
You said it was 40 people? 50 people?
Question: Jacobi Hospital [inaudible].
Mayor Adams: Got it. Okay, so let's see who's actually going there to that location. All right? Again, thank you for being on the precinct council. A lot of people don't volunteer, and I appreciate you doing that.
Question: I have a question about the East 14th Street corridor in the East Village. From 1st Avenue to Avenue A, residents have been saying they've got a really big problem there, from the marketplace to some different types of illegal behavior. I have two questions. One, for Chief LiPetri — is that when you identify blocks or sections of the city that are troublesome — is that block in that category that you described? Then for the mayor, the question is, what's the plan? Because currently it's not working, whatever the plan has been.
Mayor Adams: And the plan is working. I have been there several times, several times. I walked that block from the water all the way down to up and down Lexington Avenue. I have called the platoon commander and the precinct commander to meet me at the location because it was a mess. We cannot be in a city where we walk past disorder and when you look at 14th Street and you see the number of vendors, the number of drug users, it is unacceptable. Our city is not going to live that way and I have told the precinct commander several times that this is not acceptable. You should not be walking down your block seeing what we saw on 14th street. There has been several initiatives there, and Chief Maddrey, you can go into some of the things that we're doing there, to constantly repeat.
Now, we have those who believe that vendors should be allowed to line the streets and do what they want, and they are decision makers in government. We're constantly fighting against that, like we did on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens. We need 14th street to be fixed and not just a Band-Aid on it and I've been very clear, on all of my visits there, that it was unacceptable. We saw one visit we did, there was this big mound of plastic bags just to find out that someone was sleeping under it. Not acceptable. Precinct patrol officers must patrol their sectors and they must make sure conditions are corrected it, not ignored. What are we doing over there?
Chief John Chell, Chief of Patrol, Police Department: We just redeployed a 24/7 uniformed cops to that one street, 14th, A to Avenue 1. The 14 store owners, we're getting them together. We're doing crime prevention surveys for all those 14 stores. The one problematic smoke shop on that block, we shut it down last week with the help of the sheriff. We got the local councilwoman involved with the CO yesterday walking that street. If you know 14th Street, it's the border between the 13 Precinct and the 9 Precinct, so there's no borders here. Both precincts are responsible for about one block.
I was out there last year with the peddlers on the street by the train station. We cleared it up, so we revamped our whole plan for that area. We look at the 3-1s over there. There's one person who's called over 2,000 times for rollerblading and skateboarding. We spoke to him to please stop jacking up 3-1 numbers. Homeless encampment, the homeless is an issue over there. We've done numerous operations, so we've been doing a lot of work over there, but we have to do more. And we just revised… Command South, borough commander is here, we just revised our whole plan for that one strip for the community.
Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry, Operations, Police Department: I just want to add one more thing into there also is that we just I just received a shipment of cameras in where we're going to be redeploying them onto the 14th Street corridor which would give the ability for the precinct desk officer to monitor them real time inside the precinct and also we're going to give the ability to the precinct NCOs and neighborhood coordination officers to be able to monitor on their smartphone so in the event that an encampment or vendors do pop back up they can see it and go address it without being called.
Mayor Adams: It's a real problem, 14th street, and I've been over there several times. It's a real problem and we're going to fix it. And it hasn't been a problem just one year, two years, it has been a problem and has been ignored. And we just don't accept disorder being ignored. Doesn't matter if it's an encampment, someone sleeping on the side of the highway, just total disorder that we witnessed when we came into this administration.
And it's not acceptable and I'm not happy what I see on 14th Street. I spoke with the councilperson over there, I walked with the leaders here. We can't allow streets to look like that and we mentioned Chief McCarthy of Manhattan South, we cannot thank him enough. Chief McCarthy has been handling thousands of protests in this city, particularly after October 7th, and dealing with the public safety aspect of it. We want to thank him for the job that he's been doing and it's not an easy job. It's not an easy job on what he's been experiencing.
Chief Chell: I want to add, Chief McCarthy, Crime Manhattan South is down 12 percent for the year, so he's doing a tremendous job.
Assistant Chief James McCarthy, Commanding Officer, Patrol Borough Manhattan South, Police Department: If I can add, also, just over the past week, the feedback that we've gotten from the residents of Stuy Town and the business owners on 14th Street, very positive, all right? They're very happy with us, and our plan's working, and we're just going to have to stick with it.
Deputy Commissioner Stewart: All right, so before we go forward, do we have any more questions on actual crime numbers? Because remember, we're going to get to the off topics and we're going to get to July 4th. Crime numbers?
Question: Okay. I had a question about the sexual assault and felonies. What is the breakdown in terms of how many against the elderly, how many against domestic?
Chief LiPetri: Sure, I have most of it. If not, I can give you everything that you're looking for. As far as increases of victims in certain categories of rape, we're up 25 victims of domestic violence rapes for the quarter, we're up 33 victims of acquaintance rape victims, and we're up 16 victims of stranger rapes, and that's for the quarter.
Chief Kenny: Just to show the importance of the sexual assaults, the police commissioners, we've upstaffed the Special Victims Unit tremendously. We're constantly recruiting, we're getting new talent in, we're at staffing levels that we haven't seen in years, which is going to bring the case load down, which is going to result to more arrests. We're really taking it seriously. Special Victims has had a complete turnaround.
Question: Hey guys, how are you doing? I had a question about the hate crimes. Are those mostly stemming from the demonstrations or any more… Can you explain a little bit more about the nature of those crimes, who's doing them, the victims and where that's originating from?
Chief Kenny: Hate crimes in general right now, we're showing an increase of 34 percent, that comes out to plus 87 crimes total. 344 versus 257, all right, so it's plus 34 percent. Jewish hate crime is 206 of those 334. That amounts to 78 percent of all reported hate crime, and really is the cause of the total increase overall.
As far as protests, we're seeing hate crimes, some at protests, but the majority of them are separately reported incidents, which we're encouraging people to report. Same as sexual offenses. See something, say something. Whereas in previous years, the majority of the hate crimes, in particular against the Jewish community, were types of crimes that were harassment, graffiti, criminal mischief, swastika-driven, we've seen a change since October 7th where it's been an increase of assault 3s where people are actually laying hands on other people.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Chief Kenny: Yes, correct.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Chief Kenny: We’re up 34 percent.
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