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Where Crime Is Up Across the Board, More Police but Not Many Jitters
By Al Baker
August 22, 2011
Though crime is all around him, Sal Bucak is not afraid of the streets.
True, he said, thieves last week snatched his neighbor's cellphone at the No. 1 train's entrance, down the block from their homes in Upper Manhattan. Detectives told him it was the second strike in days by criminals at the West 190th Street stop.
And yes, he said, some Catholic nuns did dial 911 two weeks earlier, after seeing a burglar sneaking into his building on Fort Washington Avenue — one in a series of residential break-ins, usually via fire escapes and windows left open to salve a summer night's heat.
Still, Mr. Bucak said that all the shootings, killings and drug dealing that led his neighbors to call this area of Washington Heights and Inwood a mini-Vietnam two decades ago made the recent spike in crime seem tame.
"This sudden increase in crime, in the last month or two, I'm more worried about the politicians than the break-in guys," Mr. Bucak, 68, a retired architect, said last week as he sat on a bench near Fort Tryon Park, looking out over the streets where he and his wife have lived for the last 30 years.
Nonetheless, for a Police Department that closely tracks shifts in crime numbers, a disquieting truth has emerged: the 34th Precinct, which covers Washington Heights and Inwood in Manhattan, is the only precinct to show an increase this year in criminal complaints in each of the seven major categories measured by the department's CompStat program. (Over all, the precinct is up 23.6 percent in major crimes.)
As crime has increased, the department has made a flurry of strategic deployment decisions involving uniformed and plainclothes officers, as well as the precinct's commander, Deputy Inspector Jose A. Navarro, who was transferred to a less exalted job in the department's hierarchy last week.
Paul J. Browne, the department's chief spokesman, said early last week that Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly "never talks about transfers." But several people within the department said the move reflected a numbers-driven culture in which commanders bear intense pressure to outperform past crime-fighting successes. Two people said Inspector Navarro, who took over the 34th Precinct in October 2009, endured a difficult CompStat session two weeks ago in which commanders at One Police Plaza grilled him about the area's burglary and larceny numbers.
"It sends a message to other commanders," one officer, who insisted on anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject, said of the commander's move.
The 34th Precinct is one of 34 precincts that show an increase in overall crime from the first of the year through Aug. 14, compared with the same span a year ago; 42 precincts show a decline in crime over that period.
To be sure, the current spikes in the 34th Precinct are not in violent crime or shootings, but in burglary and grand larceny — property crimes often involving the theft of jewelry, electronic devices like smartphones or even victims' identities.
With that in mind, a borough-wide team of plainclothes officers specially trained in investigating grand larcenies was dispatched to the 34th Precinct in early July, said Assistant Chief William T. Morris, who oversees the 12 precincts north of 59th Street. That team augmented an influx of uniformed Manhattan North Task Force officers sent in to supplement the precinct's standard patrol force.
Earlier this month, Chief Morris said, an Operation Impact zone, which had been withdrawn from the precinct in the winter, was re-established, with teams of 50 new officers and seasoned supervisors assigned to a grid of streets east of Broadway: from Wadsworth to Amsterdam Avenues, between West 181st and West 193 Streets.
Four smaller burglary zones have also been set up. In these precisely mapped hot spots, plainclothes anticrime teams move in buildings' shadows, and uniformed officers walk up and down interior staircases. Community affairs officers remind residents to lock their doors and windows. Detectives inspect secondhand dealers' licenses and urge pawn shop operators to put their written records online.
"Look at these pin maps," Chief Morris said on Thursday, standing over colorful maps of the 34th Precinct's burglary zones spread across his desk. "We know where they are occurring. We know where and when to focus our resources. It's done on a day-to-day basis. It isn't just a broad-banded 'Go here; go there.' It's very scientific."
Community leaders said they welcomed the influx of new officers, but some said they opposed the departure of Inspector Navarro. His transfer was first reported by The New York Post on Aug. 17 .
George R. Espinal, the president of the 34th Precinct Community Council, said that three Democratic elected officials — Senator Adriano Espaillat, Assemblyman Guillermo Linares and City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez — could not dissuade Mr. Kelly from approving the transfer, and he said that the council was gathering letters from residents opposed to it.
In one letter, Elizabeth Norment, a resident who is a spokeswoman for the Anti-Noise Coalition of Inwood, said Inspector Navarro had improved the area's quality of life. "His departure could seriously compromise the momentum he has created in crime prevention and community relations in Inwood and Washington Heights," she wrote.
Mr. Linares, in an interview in his office on Sherman Avenue, outlined a rich and sometimes tumultuous history of police-community relations in Washington Heights. Though he said the current lagging economy, punctuated by high unemployment, was seemingly making people "more desperate," he was committed to maintaining the neighborhood's hard-won sense of safety and public order.
"This is a community that's nowhere near where it was in the '90s, when we were in a war against drugs and violence," he said.
In the northern areas of the precinct, along Dyckman Street and Broadway, the influx of young professionals and college students is evident, as couples push baby strollers and families gather around restaurants' sidewalk tables. Mr. Linares said that the area had become a magnet for clubs and other businesses and that waves of Mexican immigrants had been joining the Dominicans who began arriving in great numbers several decades ago.
On Fort Washington Avenue off West 181st Street, Edwin Algarin, a real estate agent, said he feared that crime could worsen. "All of a sudden, I don't know what's going on here," he said as a steady crush of traffic inched south toward the George Washington Bridge. "Maybe we ought to send Bloomberg a message: 'Send more cops, something's wrong.' "
Of the seven homicides in the precinct this year, four have led to arrests, and detectives are focusing on suspects in two others. The murder of Miguel Rodriguez, 21, of Yonkers, remains the most mysterious. Mr. Rodriguez was killed early on Aug. 3 outside Dyckman Furniture by a single bullet that struck the side of his head. Investigators say they believe that Mr. Rodriguez and some friends clashed with another group.
Ivan Rodriguez, 32, who works in the furniture store, said the neighborhood seemed safer than it did years ago, even with the shooting. Still, he said he wished there were more officers walking beats and standing on street corners, rather than just riding in patrol cars and making traffic stops, which is what he mostly sees.
"I feel like it can get worse than it is," Mr. Rodriguez said. "That can definitely happen."
Robert Caplin for The New York Times
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