New York police commissioner Bill Bratton said at a press conference on Monday that while he is still concerned about the work slowdown by NYPD officers, “they are returning to normal.”
“These are still not what we’d call normal numbers,” Bratton said, “but we are pleased that officers are engaging again.”
He hastened to add that the NYPD “never completely stopped working”.
Figures released Monday by the NYPD reveal that the scale of the slowdown shrunk last week compared with previous weeks, which Bratton called “a stark improvement.” However, they showed that officers remained slowed down through at least part of last week.
Total arrests for the week beginning 5 January stood at 4,690, an increase of 2,289 on the previous week – but still almost 40% lower than the same week the previous year.
Similarly, summonses issued for parking and moving violations both increased, going from 1,791 and 749 to 5,550 and 5,331, respectively. That still left them lagging 73.8% and 65.3% behind the same week the previous year.
Criminal summonses jumped to 1,484 from 347, which is still down on the previous year by 70.6%, and arrests by the Patrol Services Bureau increased by just over 600 to 2,236, just half last year’s total.
Bratton admitted on Friday that “quite clearly” there had been a work slowdown, but he insisted that it was “being corrected.”
The precipitous drop in the summons and arrest numbers started in late December immediately following the murder in Brooklyn of Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, two on-duty police officers,.
On Sunday the New York Post revealed that NYPD leadership was pushing back against the slowdown, ordering precincts to present their arrest numbers to borough commanders and even banning vacation days entirely in some districts until the summons shortfall is made up.
However, on Monday Bratton strenuously denied that this was the case.
The slowdown was reportedly initiated after the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA), the police officers’ union, circulated a memo among officers, but the union has so far denied that there is even a slowdown in operation.
In a statement on Sunday, Pat Lynch, the president of the PBA, said that “making threats and moving the department back towards the quotas that initially created the ill will with the community will only make morale among police and the relationship with the community even worse.”
He said the PBA would be “monitoring management”.
