New York, NY – NYPD to Continue Cracking Down on Quality-of-Life Offenders

New York, NY – A panhandler’s too-honest sign – “I won’t lie, I want the money for beer!” – got him a few laughs and a quick trip to jail after it was spotted by cops who work directly for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

Raymond Citron set up shop along the Major Deegan near Yankee Stadium, hoping to cash in on slow-moving rush-hour traffic.
The 37-year-old petty criminal caught the eye of some cops whose job includes making note of quality-of-life crimes – like panhandling and urinating in public – for the commissioner.

Citron, whose rap sheet includes drug selling and possession, was arrested and issued a criminal summons for panhandling.

Despite budgetary constraints, the city has pledged it won’t stop cracking down on quality-of-life offenders.

“We won’t cede an inch to the squeegee men, turnstile jumpers and graffiti vandals,” Mayor Bloomberg promised in his recent State of the City address.
“Not on our watch.”

He said the city would identify the worst offenders of such petty crimes and publicize their names in a list of the “dirty dozen.”

The NYPD broke crime’s grip on the city in the early 1990s with its “broken window” theory of crime prevention: Catch petty infractions before they fester into larger problems.

But last year saw a 6.3% decline in the number of criminal summonses, a drop some critics fear signals an end to a successful policy and means the NYPD’s shrinking force lacks manpower to keep on top of petty crimes.

Even with the decrease, more than half a million summonses were issued last year – the second highest number since former Mayor Rudy Giuliani started keeping track of low-level crime in 1995.

Under Giuliani, the number of criminal summonses issued rose to 431,462 in 2001 from 169,309 in 1995.

Bloomberg’s police administration has by and large surpassed those tallies, rising to 505,028 last year from 377,769 in 2002. Only 2007 had a higher tally: 539,515.