Police put skywatch on Washington and Sterling

well i woulnt mind if they parked that skywatch thing in front of my building it would make me feel safe. i bet there has not been to much crime on that corner with that skywatch thing.

Subject: skywatch price

So today in the NY Post, the cost for a skywatch was listed at $90,000. Thought I'd throw that out there. I'm not sure where one would find stats on the effectiveness of the skywatches. Like I said in an earlier post, I'd rather see cops on the street than cameras policing us.

Re: Per Capita crime stats: Good point. I did think about that after I posted, but didn't have the info on how many people live in each precinct. I kind of assumed more people lived in Manhattan precincts, but there is that old saying about assumptions.

However, if you look at each Brooklyn precinct then as King Without a Crown did in his post about the 77, as compared to other Brooklyn precincts, I think it's clear that location matters, within the borough itself, though perhaps this also has more to do with precinct per capita size than I would think? I haven't crunched the numbers, but my gut is telling me no on that. Population size makes a difference, but not enough to demonstrate the disparity between different neighborhoods. How else to explain that Brooklyn has twice the number of murders than Queens, while the difference in population size between the boroughs isn't all that great? (All numbers for current crime stats were found on the NYPD's website).

However safe NYC may now be, and I consider it pretty safe myself, NYers are still effected by crime that happens in their neighborhood. Consider for instance, the guys who work in the bodega where Mohammed was assaulted and recently someone was shot. They may not have been injured, but I can't imagine that they are not at all rattled by having witnessed a beating or a shooting or both. What about the kids who live and play on the block by the bodega? I would argue that people are effected in many different ways when they witness or hear about crimes on their blocks and it doesn't alway equate to an unnecessary fear for their own safety. Talking about crime isn't necessarily fear mongering.

So I'll throw this out for you. I had a friend at an old job who lived in this neighborhood (Crown Heights/Prospect Heights, depending on who is trying to sell the neighborhood to you) with two kids. Here was her approach to living here: She didn't talk to many people on the street and she didn't let her kids play outside in front of the building ever. She had emigrated to the area from Trinidad. Now some might say that she was overreacting, but I'm not going to judge her because I think she was just doing what she felt was right for her family. It is a fallacy I think to say that gang or drug activity doesn't effect the people who live in the neighborhood where it occurs. It matters.

...And that concludes another zany episode of The Rhodamine Show!

Be here next week when our guests will be...

Actress Marisa Tomei

Chef Bobby Flay

And

Dr. Maximilian Der Overlord of ICX Tactical Platforms
with stupid "Skywatch Tricks"!

Good Night and don't forget to tip your waiters.

everytime i pass it I want to whistle the tune from "The Great Escape". Can't help it.

Flo wrote: Perhaps Rhodamine with his big beautiful mind and his sharp internet searching skills can get us the details.

your sarcasm is duly noted. i wish i had the spare time to keep sinking into this largely tangential and increasingly unfriendly chitchat. lol. im not interested in arguing and youre not interested in logic, so... thats that.

hit me on PM if you care so much beyond all the rhetoric. otherwise, laterz!

*flounce*

http://www.thesentinel.com/302730670790449.php

Flo wrote: sentinel story was funny...

should all nyers plan a facemask day?

again, off topic and i am completely out of date on this one, but i find the streetview on google map a little creepy too. I know it's not surveillance technically... http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/index.html
I had no idea this existed and was looking for directions and found myself looking at a photo of my parent's house and did not like that one bit.

did they get all of these shots by driving around? every highway and byway?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View

Carnivore wrote: [quote=Flo]did they get all of these shots by driving around? every highway and byway?

http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/31/the-google-street-view-vehicle-revealed/

lol. im pretty sure the van is a ruse. word on the street is that they use ESP to generate the streetview images :shock:

Flo wrote: they were really really really hard to fold?

have you tried folding googlemaps? have you?!

there are some places, indeed, that the little yellow man can not go:

Blurred Out: 51 Things You Aren't Allowed to See on Google Maps

I copied an entry on the Crown Heights Board here because it seemed to belong here....it is below

Won't UB My Nabor
ENTP


Joined: 13 Aug 2007
Posts: 54
Location: The Crown of Kings
Wed Dec 24, 08 4:49 pm EST

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I am pretty sure there is a long trail about Operation Impact on this board, but I could not find it. In any event, here's a good article from the NY Times about the positive impact of Operation Impact in its designated zones, including in Crown Heights (71st precinct is mentioned specifically).

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/nyregion/24.....tml?pagewanted=1&_r=1

December 24, 2008

Police Project Credited With Cutting Crime in Tough Precincts

By AL BAKER and KAREN ZRAICK

Along Linden Boulevard in East New York, the officers of Operation Impact patrol the Pink Houses with all the rigor of a military patrol, a clannish band of partners whose uniforms shout authority even when they do not speak.

They tread the maze of eight-story buildings, inspect the interior staircases, aim their flashlights into the nighttime darkness of rooftops and — on a recent frigid night — coat their lips with layers of ChapStick.

The police officers in this outpost in the eastern end of Brooklyn are part of a mini crime-suppression operation, one reliant on money, manpower and labor. They are the tip of the New York Police Department’s crime-fighting spear.

“We feel really proud of the job we’re doing here,” Officer Kevin Martinez, 24, said as he walked his beat in the Louis H. Pink Houses, a public housing project of 1,500 apartments in 22 buildings.

“When they see us here, they feel safe,” he said.

So far this year, police officials are praising the results: Impact has driven crime down across the 75th Precinct, a place once so violent that newspapers called it “the murder capital of New York City.” The number of homicides reported in the precinct this year has dropped to 16 by last weekend, down from 33 in all of 2007. Fifteen years ago, 126 people were killed there.

A similar story can be told in 19 other precincts using Operation Impact, the broad anticrime program devised by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, in which rookie officers join with supervisors to flood the city’s toughest neighborhoods. By focusing on such high-crime plateaus, the Police Department is poised to end another year with even less overall crime.

Yet a stormy economy is not receding.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is tightening budgets and warning of tough financial times. Joblessness is up. Homicides have increased slightly; after dropping to 496 last year — the lowest number in more than four decades — the city hit that number last week. By 5 p.m. on Tuesday, the city had 502 homicides, the police said.

At the same time, the Police Department, with 94 percent of its $4 billion operating budget devoted to personnel costs, is facing budget reductions of $45.4 million for the remainder of this fiscal year, which ends in June, and $167 million in the 2010 fiscal year. On top of that, City Hall wants the department to find ways to save $285.7 million more.

After the next cut is made, the Police Department’s uniformed force will have shrunk by 4,400 officers, from a peak strength of 40,800 in 2001. The incoming Police Academy class in January will have 250 recruits; the department had previously anticipated hiring 1,100. An additional 1,100 officers set to graduate on Dec. 30 will join the 1,300 officers already in Operation Impact posts — effectively doubling their strength.

But if promotions and retirements create dangerous shortfalls in some precincts, some Impact officers may have to be moved to other spots, Mr. Kelly said. “We’ve had contracting and expanding numbers of cops in Impact, so the concept will remain,” the commissioner said in an interview last week. “But the numbers may vary.”

When asked if New York could ever return to crime levels seen in the late 1980s, he said: “Never. We’d never let that happen.”

A preliminary Police Department analysis of this year’s homicides showed that, as in past years, the typical killing occurred indoors, on a weekend night, with a gun fired by someone the victim knew. Among the 280 killings analyzed so far in which the police have identified both the victim and a suspect, 63 were found to have been committed by strangers, the police said.

But a new trend may be emerging: Guns, while still the deadliest weapon, were used in fewer cases citywide, 272, down from 298 last year. Conversely, the number of people killed by knives or other sharp instruments spiked, to 123 from 76 last year. Other methods included “blunt impact,” or a beating with an object; strangulation; and arson.

In the 75th Precinct, where crime levels have been driven down from peaks reached two decades ago, Mr. Kelly said he was still committed to supporting a system in which the entire 5.5-square-mile precinct is treated as one large Impact zone divided into three parts.

Inspector David P. Barrere, the precinct’s commander since 2005, said Operation Impact had put officers in the midst of crime, forcing criminals to relocate out of the areas where they are comfortable.

The officers’ presence might change the path a drug dealer takes from a stash house to a corner where he sells narcotics. It might alter a gunman’s escape path from the scene of a robbery, or alter his hideout location.

Once the criminals are “displaced,” said Inspector Barrere, other officers in the precinct — from anticrime units, narcotics enforcement units or regular patrols — can swoop in to make arrests. The officers on Impact posts speak with people in the community and pick up tips — a nickname or a location where crime is prevalent — and those bits of data can be run down with computers in the precinct or at 1 Police Plaza.

“It’s faster, smarter and better policing,” said Inspector Barrere, 43. “It’s more organized, with maps and computers.”

The crime rate has fallen even though the precinct’s overall police head count dropped to 356 officers from 403 officers three years ago. The number of Impact officers has fluctuated, and now there are 89 officers assigned to Impact. The inspector hopes more will join them in January.

“If you have to do it with less police officers, does it get more difficult? Absolutely,” Inspector Barrere said. “But does that mean we cannot continue to succeed? Absolutely not.”

Residents of the Pink Houses interviewed the night the Impact officers visited said that they did feel safer than in years past, though crime was still a fact of life. “It probably is more safe, but everyone still does the same things,” said Donna Pettiford, 37. “It hasn’t stopped the people in my building from selling drugs.”

A couple of residents complained that the officers tended to be rude and aggressive in demanding identification. Rob Wright, 40, a Fresh Direct deliveryman, said he kept his company jacket on even when he was off so that the police know he is a working man.

“These are kids to me,” he said of the young officers. “They have to learn to respect people. If it was another neighborhood, they’d know how to act then, if it was an all-white neighborhood.”

Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said, “We realize in areas where there is more police contact with the public, there will be some complaints.”

“We emphasize in training with our officers that they conduct themselves professionally at all times,” he added.

To the west, in Brooklyn’s 71st Precinct, Operation Impact officers work in teams of 12, in two shifts each day. In the Impact zone this year, officials say, they have helped drive crime down more than 40 percent in the heart of the precinct, which covers parts of Crown Heights and Flatbush.

There have been no killings in that zone, but in the rest of the precinct, homicides are up, to 16 through last weekend from 11 all of last year.

Deputy Inspector Peter J. Simonetti, the commander of the precinct, said six of the killings were related to gang incidents, a reflection of an increase in gang violence that he said he was addressing.

Inspector Simonetti said he hoped to keep the same number of Impact officers in place next year: 48. In a system new to that precinct, Mr. Kelly said, mobile teams of Impact officers will swarm in at times — groups of officers known as Incident Response Teams.

“Everybody would like more cops,” Deputy Inspector Simonetti said. “But we will work with what we have.”

To understand the future of crime fighting in the city, Edward Skyler, the deputy mayor for operations, said one must understand the past. He said that the cut the Police Department is now enduring is small compared with the one it took early in the Bloomberg administration, and that crime has come down by 30 percent in seven years.

“It bodes well for their ability to continue to reduce crime even with less resources,” Mr. Skyler said.



Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Hatemail wrote: Gone after a month...

imagine that... back to status-quo with no change save for whomever got the overtime pay for manning that pointless thing. hey, its not all a loss though... maybe theyll do their part to stimulate the economy by blowing their overtime pay at circuit city