Policing Strategy Called Success
By Staff Reporter of the Sun | June 28, 2007
A new study says the city's plummeting crime rates can be credited to Operation Impact, an initiative that floods crime-ridden neighborhoods with rookie police officers.
The program, which is in danger of ending because of a recruiting crisis, sped up falling crime rates in most violent crime categories by as much as 57% in precincts where it was implemented, a three-year study by policing experts Dennis Smith and Robert Purtell found.
Grand larceny and rape saw the most dramatic declines. Commissioner Raymond Kelly praised the findings, noting that two thirds of the recruits who graduated yesterday would be used in the program.
