Crime hike blamed on NYPD being stretched

Increases reported by City Hall on Friday in some serious crimes such as murder and rape, as well as longer response times for police and pothole repairs, are a result of the NYPD and other city workers' being stretched to the limit, said some city officials.

"The fact that crime and response times are up should not come as a surprise to anyone," said Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria), who heads the City Council committee on public safety. "This is the inevitable result of having almost 7,000 fewer police officers" since 2001.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg noted in the latest edition of the Mayor's Management Report for Fiscal 2011, which began July 1, 2010, and ended June 30, 2011, that the city was holding the line or improving over the prior year in a majority -- 56 percent -- of 145 key areas for delivering city services ranging from public safety to administrative services.

"Even as New York City is emerging from the most difficult fiscal crisis in a generation, the data show that city agencies continue to provide the high-quality services that New Yorkers have rightly come to expect," Bloomberg said in a statement.

Still, the data showed some negative developments that were troubling to some. Among the quality of life indicators that took a hit were the number of potholes that had to be filled and the nearly doubling in the time it took to fill them -- from 5.6 days in fiscal year 2010 to 10.8 days in fiscal year 2011. Overall, the city filled 295,297 potholes in 2010 and 305,001 in fiscal year 2011, an increase of 3.2 percent.

"Those pothole figures bear out what I have heard from the ground," said Councilman James Vacca (D-Bronx), of the council's transportation committee.

Because of furloughs of some workers earlier and a tough winter, the city was playing "catch-up" in pothole repair, Vacca said.

A spokesman for the city said pothole repair crews were diverted to help cleanup in the 2010 tornado and blizzard. Furloughs weren't a factor.

"I still get complaints about potholes, especially on highways," Vacca said about the summer months, when repairs were usually long completed.

While overall serious crimes were down from fiscal year 2010, the report said murders, rapes, robberies and felonious assaults all increased in fiscal year 2011. Murders, in particular, increased, to 526 in fiscal year 2011, up from 496 in the prior period. Cops took longer on average to respond to crimes in progress, hitting 8.4 minutes in fiscal year 2011 compared to 7.5 minutes in fiscal year 2011. The NYPD also had cops undergo 289,608 hours of counterterrorism training, down from 320,071 in fiscal 2010.

"Response time is still 20 percent faster than it was in [fiscal year] 2000, when it was over 10 minutes and when the department had about 6,000 more officers," said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.