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Budget: More Cops, More Surveillance; Less Crime?

by David Dean
Apr 2006

Just in time for budget season, Mayor Bloomberg has again managed to make his public safety agenda the center of attention, with the goal of putting more police officers on the street. While crime is down so far in 2006 — more than 2 percent over a year ago, according to the latest CompStat numbers available online — the city has seemed captivated of late by high profile crimes. For a day or two, at least, Mayor Bloomberg was able to take over the top spot on the television and the tabloids from the investigation into the murder of John Jay College graduate student Imette St. Guillen (though, it should be noted that the media saturation of the St. Guillen story was quick to resume).

On March 21st, Mayor Bloomberg, flanked by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Public Safety Committee Chair Peter Vallone, and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly (who was apparently taking a break from his quest to ensure that Darryl Littlejohn, the bouncer who has now been indicted for the murder of St. Guillen, will never get an impartial jury anywhere in the tri-state area) announced that New York City would be expanding the size of its police force during the 2007 fiscal year (video).

Over the coming year, the city will hire 800 new uniformed officers and 400 new civilian employees. The new civilian employees will take desk jobs that are currently performed by uniformed officers, allowing those officers to be reassigned to patrol duty. The new influx of cops on the street, said the mayor, “is a smart investment that will prevent more crimes, improve our quality of life, and help us continue making the safest big city in America even safer.” The new hires will be in addition to the recruits who are hired two times a year to fill vacancies created by retirement and other attrition.

The announcement came as something of a surprise. While the City Council and others, including some in the local media had been calling for an expansion of the police force for several years, few expected the announcement when it came, on the eve of budget hearings before the council’s Public Safety Committee. Bloomberg’s preliminary budget for the 2007 fiscal year did not include funds for the new officers, nor did the materials presented to the council in advance of the hearings there. According to the Bloomberg, his Executive Budget for 2007 (which is usually released in the spring) will include funding to cover the salaries of the 1,200 new police department employees. The estimated cost of the new hires will be $33.8 million in the 2007 fiscal year, increasing to $80 million in the 2010 fiscal year. The mayor also noted that the city would pursue any federal funding that might be available (from the Department of Homeland Security) to offset a portion of the cost of the added personnel.

Funding Other Public Safety Initiatives

While the largest city-funded expansion of the police department’s uniformed force since 1993 made the biggest headlines, it is not the only highlight from the proposed 2007 public safety budget. At the March 21st City Council hearing, Commissioner Kelly detailed a $9 million plan to install more than 500 closed-circuit cameras throughout the city, including in many of the Operation Impact zones that the department has targeted in an effort to reduce crime. Kelly also told the Public Safety committee that it was unclear whether or not the expansion of uniformed personnel would result in a decrease in the amount of overtime needed in the department’s budget. The department will also be adding 286 school safety officers, a reflection of the administration’s ongoing concern with safety in the city’s schools.

Will More Cops Keep Crime Down?

But, as could be expected, the big story was the expansion of the police department’s uniformed ranks, and the assumption that more police on the street will prevent crime levels from rising, and perhaps even continue the downward trend.

It is, admittedly, impressive that the current administration has presided over a roughly 25 percent decrease in crime over the past five years. This is especially true given the disarray in the wake of September 11th, the recession and corresponding budget problems, the shift in focus at the police department from straight crime fighting to counterterrorism, and the substantial decrease in the number of uniformed personnel since Bloomberg has been mayor.

The city estimates that the new hires will bring the uniformed headcount up to 37,838. As the Times notes, this will still be fewer unformed officers than the department had just before September 11, 2001. However, 2001 marked a high-water mark for the department, the culmination of a decade of expansion, fueled by the city’s Safe Streets/Safe City program, begun under the Dinkins administration, and by the federal Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, a highlight of the Clinton administration’s mid-1990s anti-crime agenda. The phasing out of the COPS program and the federal money that went with it, certainly had something to do with the shrinking police department over the past several years.

The theory that informed COPS, that more police on the street means less crime, also seems to be behind the current expansion. There is debate, however, over whether more cops has much effect. As the Times noted in a piece entitled “Counting Heads Along the Thin Blue Line,” police department size, and the ratio of officers to civilians, varies greatly throughout the country, and does not always correspond to crime rates. And, while some studies have shown the COPS program, for example, to be an effective tool for reducing crime, this view is not without dissenters.

Also of concern is the effect that more police will have on the overall functioning of the criminal justice system. Especially given the department’s philosophy of aggressive, proactive policing, it is reasonable to expect more arrests. Newsday has already reported that the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the agency that investigates citizen complaints against police officers, faces cuts, and may lose a number of investigators. Similarly, there is a concern that without budget increases for the city’s district attorneys (which, in fact, have faced substantial cuts in their budgets in recent years) and indigent defense bar, those organizations may be stretched too thin.

David Dean, a student at New York University School of Law, worked as a policy analyst in the Mayor's Office of the Criminal Justice Coordinator.

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