[eno_]

Of course it is ridiculous. But so is $100k per solved crime. That number has to improve by 10X before you are even in the ballpark of being effective against crime. At current solution rates and prices, the NYPD amounts to trowing money away at a furious pace while doing almost nothing against crimes other than murder (maybe rape, too, I don't know the stats). Against robbery and burglary, the NYPD is impotent.

So far, according to your numbers, the number of police will fall, by next year, to something like 20% below peak levels.

Did the budget number decline, too? In 2001 it was about $3.5 BILLION. A big number, no matter how you slice it. Is it 20% lower now? Will the number of solved crimes per cop go up? What, if anything, is being done to improve that number.

[newwahoo]

First of all I think your analysis is flawed in two major ways. "Crimes per cop" is meaningless unless you can get a handle on how many there are actually involved in the work. I have no idea how many that is given all the units I mentioned earlier. Second, there is no way to account for the amount of time street cops spend doing non-enforcement duties such as giving directions, writing tickets, responding to accidents and ambulance calls, guarding hospitalized prisoners, sitting on DOAs, filling out reports and answering BS calls. Like it or not, we're all things to all people and we're expected to perform a myriad of tasks other than law enforcement.

You should check this out:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/pct/cspdf.html

Its the page that lists all the crime stats by borough and precinct. If you look at the 10-year stats just about every major category shows a large double-digit drop, making NYC the safest large city in the country. I can tell you that crime in every precinct is also mapped out with coded pins on each location so that the command can allocate its resources accordingly. Each precinct commander is then held accountable at monthly Compstat meetings and raked over the coals if criminal patterns are not addressed.

I think there is lots of room for improvement though, and with the budget cuts the department is already doing more with less while crime continues to fall. But this isn't an exact science. Criminals have a lot of places to hide along with people willing to shelter them. A lot of crimes produce either no willing witnesses (especially with regard to drug or gang-related acts) or useless descriptions of the perp and then you're left with nothing to go on.

The three easiest things that would improve matters actuaqlly have little to do with us. I'd like to see fewer petty criminals released with "time served" or put on parole/probation. There should also be a LOT more people in institutions for mental health. They don't seem to rob or steal that much but they do often snap and violently assault people (including us). I'd also like to see concealed carry on a "shall-issue" basis for New Yorkers but I'm not holding my breath.