Smartphone poll: New Yorkers trust the NYPD but safety a concern

New Yorkers feel less safe than they once did but still trust the NYPD, according to results released Monday from an innovative smartphone poll gauging public sentiment about city cops.

Widely known as the ”sentiment meter,” the poll results create what one official described as something similar to a FICO credit score for each neighborhood, based on survey takers' opinions about their safety and trust in police. About 7,500 smartphones each month are sent short questions, with polling going on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The survey shows as a pop-up on smartphones. 

The data, released for the first time Monday after nearly three years of development, showed poll results citywide but not for individual precincts. The system was initially funded with $1.5 million in seed money and has also received city money through the City University of New York, officials said. 

In an interview last year, Michael Simon, founder of the Brooklyn startup Elucd, which does the polling, said it can anonymously target phone users down to a precinct sector of several square blocks.

On a scale of zero to 10, New Yorkers rated their trust in the NYPD at 6.6 in the month of August. Their sense of safety dipped from a high of 6.8 in February to 6.3 in August, according to data made available to Newsday. The baseline for each score, beginning in September 2016, was 6.1 for trust and 6.5 for safety.

NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill said the polling results so far are headed in the right direction, although he acknowledged that a spate of shootings in the spring and summer may have been responsible for the dip in public sentiment about safety.

 “The level of trust continues to be on an upward trend, there are dips and it has started to go up,” O’Neill said in an interview with Newsday on Monday. “Safety, over the last three or four months, that has gone down about five points."

O'Neill said as long as the overall polling numbers keep going up, "I feel good about it. You establish a baseline, you keep going from there.”

Earlier this month, O’Neill said the department was “still trying to nail down on how the local precinct, [housing police], transit district command can utilize that information to help improve and build trust throughout the city.” 

Monday, O’Neill said he was still attempting to address that issue.

“We are in the process of trying to get this to a point where precinct commanders and borough commanders understand that it is important to know how the people that live in your precinct, the people that work in your precinct, how they feel about, and how they trust the NYPD, and how they feel about their personal safety,” O’Neill said.

The polling by Elucd is an important component of the NYPD’s much publicized Neighborhood Policing program. According to a law enforcement source who didn’t want to be named, it was first broached to the de Blasio Administration at a 2016 City Hall meeting. The concept was supported by John Linder, a consultant and close adviser to former NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton. Officials noted that the Elucd polling system had been used to help in the successful presidential campaigns of Barack Obama.

The initial NYPD funding for the polling came through a contract between the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and CUNY John Jay with additional funding from the NYPD, said police department spokeswoman Devora Kaye. The NYPD is currently processing a new contract in accordance with city rules to have a “direct contract with a qualified vendor,” Kaye said. A total of $3 million in city funding was spent on the sentiment meter from 2017 to 2018, the spokeswoman said.

A spokesman for Elucd declined to comment while contract negotiations with the city were underway.

O’Neill encouraged smartphone users to take the poll seriously if it shows up on their devices.

“If as a New Yorker this comes up on your phone, take a second, answer it. Answer it honestly, and that will enable us to do our jobs better,” he said.

By Anthony M. DeStefano

tony.destefano@newsday.comtonynewsday

Anthony M. DeStefano has been a reporter for Newsday since 1986 and covers law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs from its New York City offices.