NW Bronx cops join city ticket slowdown

Criminal summonses, parking tickets and moving violations plummeted in the 50th Precinct, which protects the northwest Bronx, from about Dec. 8 to around Jan. 11, according to NYPD data. The statistics showed policing has started to return to normal since about Jan. 12.

The trend here mirrored a citywide slowdown in policing that came amid a widely reported rift between the NYPD and Mayor Bill de Blasio. Police union officials excoriated the mayor for his comments about anti-police protests following a Staten Island grand jury’s Dec. 3 decision not to indict a police officer in the death of Eric Garner while he was under arrest.

NYPD CompStat figures for the period from Dec. 1 to Dec. 7 in the 50th show a -87.9 percent change in criminal summons, which are issued for minor violations like public drinking. There were five summonses that week, compared to 39 in the same time span one year earlier. Parking summons saw a -39.7 percent change: there were 167 such summonses, compared to 277 a year earlier.

Trends worsened and then plateaued until about Jan. 4. The period from Dec. 22 to Dec. 28 saw zero criminal summonses (compared to 28 a year earlier), zero moving summonses (compared to 53 during the same week in 2013) and a -85 percent change in parking summons (35 such summonses, compared to 234 a year earlier). Dec. 20 saw the murder of two Brooklyn police officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.

“It’s been a tough couple of weeks because of the loss of the officers,” Deputy Inspector Paul Rasa, the commanding officer of the 50th, said earlier this month. “We’re here. We’re committed to keeping the community safe all year.”

There were incremental increases in the numbers of criminal, parking and moving summonses from Jan. 5 to 11, with the numbers increasing yet again in the period from Jan. 12 to 18.

Throughout the fluctuations in criminal and other summonses, the number of arrests for major crimes such as murder, rape and robbery — traditionally low in the 50th Precinct — remained steady.

In the city as a whole, parking tickets increased from 5,550 (from Jan. 5 to 11) to 14,399 last week. Moving summonses and total arrests saw similar increases.