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5.22.14 — Bronx News that Matters

22 May

Former Council member Oliver Koppell, a veteran Riverdale-based politician who occupied several other key political positions, may have an uphill climb to defeat incumbent Jeffrey Klein, a Democrat who has formed a separate committee to partner closely with Republicans. Some key former Koppell allies are backing Klein, but
Koppell is gathering support and enthusiastically taking it on. City Limits files a detailed report.

Former assemblyman Eric A. Stevenson is headed behind bars for three years for taking bribes from a company wanting legislation to temporarily ban additional adult day care centers. In February, I reported in City Limits that Governor Cuomo was publicly struggling with a decision of whether to have the election to refill District 79 soon or wait until the regular primary on Sept. 9. The latter date won out and there won’t be an assemblyman in that district for another six months following the general election. The same is true for District 77, an office former-assemblywoman Vanessa Gibson left when she became a member of the City Council.

The city celebrated its Shop Healthy Program in the Bronx. Through advertising, the project highlights healthier foods which the Department of Health says works by drawing more customers to food that’s better for them.

Congressman Charles Rangel, who now represents part of the northwest Bronx, leads challenger Adriano Espaillat, now a state senator, 41 to 32 percent in a poll conducted by the New York Times, NY1, and Siena College. (Data chart included.)

And according to the Daily News, Rangel and another candidate in his district have a lotta dough. And Espaillat? Not so much.

The ninth murder this year in the northeast Bronx’s 47th Precinct took place on East 229th Street yesterday. That’s eight more murders than there were last year at this time. The New York Times covered this problem May 18 as well.

(To find out more about crime in your precinct or neighborhood, click here and here for city data from NYPD and DoITT. Tell Bronx Matters if you think this data is helpful or how it can be more helpful.)

Speaking of food, a historic pizza joint, Patsy’s Pizzeria, is opening a Morris Park location next month, the Daily News reports. According to the story, the 81-year-old Patsy’s is considered to be the first pizzeria that sold pizza by the slice.

The Ghetto Film School, based in Mott Haven, is partnering with 20th Century Fox to open a partner school in Los Angeles, the Daily News reports.

If you’d like to get e-mail updates on Bronx Matters blog posts, see bottom of page at left. Thanks! -Jordan

 

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Bronx News that Matters

19 May

Today, The New York Times reports on the heavy uptick in homicides in the Wakefield section of the 47th Precinct in the northeast Bronx. At this point last year there was one murder. This year, there has already been eight. Police Commissioner William Bratton is pushing a change in patrolling, having cops make contact with families “on every block in the precinct.”

Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, a long-time partner of former assemblyman, councilman, state attorney and school board president Oliver Koppell, is not supporting him in his bid to unseat incumbent Jeffrey Klein. Instead Dinowitz endorsed Klein on Friday. This is a big Bronx race but it has statewide relevance as Klein’s small Independent Democratic Conference has pulled Senate control out of Democrats’ hands. As leader of the IDC group, he often partners with Republican leaders regarding legislation.

BronxTalk (channel 67 on Bronxnet) highlights the push for a Hudson River Greenway going up through Spuyten Duyvil and Riverdale.

On Saturday, the refurbished gym in Our Lady of Refuge Church was renamed for Daniel Barden, one of the 7-year-0lds who died in the Newtown mass shooting. His mother attended OLR in the Fordham-Bedford Neighborhood (196th Street and Grand Concourse).

To check out some Bronx events coming up, click here.

NYPD Blocks Access to Neighborhood Crime Stats; Bill to Set Them Free Held Up in Council

26 Sep

If you want to know whether crime is up or down in your neighborhood, you’re out of luck. While the NYPD releases the data for precincts — which are as big as many U.S. Cities — on their summary CompStat reports on-line, they don’t make the stats for sectors within precinct available to the public.

The Norwood News (where I was editor until last year) began raising the issue of the sector stat lockdown several years ago and continues to do so under editor Alex Kratz.

Council Member Fernando Cabrera introduced legislation last year that would require the NYPD to post the sector data on the web monthly. It’s gone nowhere. I take a deeper look at what’s holding things up and the sector stat issue in general in this City Limits article. Take a look.

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WNYC: Bronx DA Has Highest Decline-to Prosecute Rate in City

23 Aug

In an alarming two-part investigation on WNYC this week, Ailsa Chang reports that under Robert Johnson, the Bronx’s district attorney for the last 23 years, the borough has the highest “decline-to-prosecute’ rate in the city. Johnson’s office says that by focusing just on cases where victims are willing to talk within 24 hours after an arrest, they can nail more criminals.

But the data shows that’s simply not true.

According to the Chang’s report: While the Bronx has the highest decline-to-prosecute rate in the city, for 13 of the last 16 years, state records show that it has had the lowest jury conviction rate for D.A. Robert Johnson’s entire 23-year tenure, except for one year.

in 2011, the Bronx D.A. declined to prosecute in 23 percent of cases, far higher than the next borough on the list, Staten Island, where prosecutors let 12 percent of possible criminals off the hook.

Here are links to the first and second reports.

And here’s an interview with Ailsa Chang on the Brian Lehrer show yesterday.

NYPD Still Hiding Neighborhood Crime Data

23 May

The previous post on that New York World stop-and-frisk map got me thinking once again about how critical it is for the NYPD to release crime data for neighborhoods rather than just precincts, which is what the weekly CompStat reports cover. Precincts have populations as large as many cities (for example there are about 150,000 people in the 52nd Precinct). The NYPD understands very well that precinct stats alone are not that not helpful in determining where particular categories of crime listed in the CompStat reports are the most prevalent. That’s why they generate more targeted data, called sector stats, for at least a dozen areas within every precinct in the city.

The NYPD rarely makes this data available. At the Norwood News, where I was editor until last September, we once got it from the 52nd Precinct commander, but NYPD brass prevented him and future commanders from sharing it again. So the last time we got it we waited more than a year for the agency to fulfill our Freedom of Information Law request and they complied only after an NBC-TV report (video) highlighted our editorial campaign to get them to release the data.

The data is critical simply because people have the right to know whether they are safe in their own neighborhoods. Precinct-wide data is not helpful in that regard. Crime may be down precinct-wide but it could be up significantly in a sector (which may be one reason the NYPD is locking down the info). New Yorkers should be able to easily find out where crime is going down and where it’s going up.

And they should have easy access to data that indicates what crimes are on the upswing. Lots of car thefts in the area? A spike in rapes? An uptick in assaults? Knowing this info would help residents ensure their own safety and also be on the lookout for crimes in progress. How can more eyes and ears on the streets not be useful to the NYPD?

Last year, motivated by the Norwood News’ reporting, Council Member Fernando Cabrera introduced legislation that would require the NYPD to release the sector stat data on a regular basis. It’s still in committee and we have a call into Cabrera’s office to find out more about its status. We’ll let you know where it’s at soon. In the meantime, take a look at the bill:

It’s not complicated. The NYPD collects this data on the taxpayer dime, yet keeps it hidden from public view. The legislation above would fix that. We hope to see action on it soon.

—Jordan Moss

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Stop-and-Frisk Map Covers Every Block in the City

23 May

The New York World has taken newly released NYPD data on stop-and-frisks and created a map illustrating which blocks in the city had the most stops. Five Bronx blocks had between 612 and 1179 stop-and-frisks in 2011. Three are in Mott Haven and the other are alongside Jerome Avenue and the Grand Concourse just north of East 170th Street. You can hover over any block to get the number of stop-and-frisks for each. Nice work.

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