Some days, the commanding officer of the crime-ridden 32nd Precinct, Inspector Thomas Cody, doesn’t leave his desk. There isn’t time.

One thing he has to worry about is CompStat, the New York Police Department’s scrupulous statistical analysis of crime in the city. The data is compiled weekly and when there’s a spike, especially in one of the major felonies, it’s Inspector Cody who has to answer questions.

“This is my life,” Inspector Cody said Wednesday evening, holding the CompStat packet for his precinct.

With CompStat showing spikes in four of the seven major crime complaint categories for the year to date in his precinct, the pressure has been mounting in recent months, Inspector Cody said. There have been seven more murders than last year for the January to June period. Felony assaults and grand larceny have risen, and rape has more than doubled.

Although Inspector Cody is unequivocal about the positive effect of the statistic-oriented policing in the city, he said the “stat” phenomenon has gone too far.

“It’s a little played out,” he said. “The answer to everything today is another stat.”

The rapidly escalating rape numbers – a trend citywide as well as in Harlem – is an example of the way statistics can misrepresent crime, he said. Many of the rape complaints in the 32nd Precinct are statutory, not rapes committed by violent predators or during a domestic violence incident, he said.

Before CompStat, commanding officers were like kings or queens – sovereign and untouchable, he said. They were hardly seen around the precinct, much less held accountable for the crime rates.

The introduction of CompStat in 1994 under the police commissioner, William Bratton, and his first deputy, Jack Maple, marked a radical change in city policing. Where the old method was to merely respond to crime, the new focuses on crime prevention. Commanding officers, on both the precinct and borough level, must explain crime spikes at weekly, three-hour CompStat meetings. The chief of the department, Joseph Esposito, and the deputy commissioner of operations, Garry Mc-Carthy, run the meetings. Inspector Cody said he has to appear at these meetings about once every two months, when his patrol borough is called down to headquarters at One Police Plaza.

Under Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Inspector Cody said, the sessions have become less frequent, which he’s thankful for.

What Inspector Cody would rather have than another “stat” is more manpower and better technology to assist the 240 police officers at his Harlem precinct. Although his domain is a mere square mile with about 60,000 residents, it has more than the average precinct’s share of crime. It’s not as bad as it was in the early 1990s, when crime was up all over the city, he said, but the precinct is known to be the most violent and robbery-prone area in Manhattan.

“On a hot summer night, everybody is out in the streets,” he said. “Life is very cheap with the street culture. Oftentimes it’s as simple as a look” that leads to a gunfight, he said.

Getting extra manpower is more than just a budgetary issue, he said. With a low starting salary for new recruits, Inspector Cody said he is worried about the next batch of police academy graduates.

“That starting salary is pathetic, and I don’t know how they are going to attract anyone,” he said. “They say the standards are not being dropped, but I think they are going to slip.”

Last summer, the chairman of a three-person arbitration panel, Eric Schmertz, made the decision to lower pay for new recruits to give more money to senior members of the department. A new recruit’s salary is now $25,100 for the first six months of his employment. Once the recruit has finished the police academy, the salary is boosted to $32,700. After another half year, it rises to $34,000. Applications to take the summer police exam have dipped 26.4% since the recruits’ pay was cut, according to police.

The 32nd Precinct headquarters hasn’t changed much over the years. There are some computers around the station and a high-tech fingerprinting device the size of a refrigerator, but some of the radios are outdated and many officers rely on their cell phones, despite a rule that says they shouldn’t carry them while on duty. A plasma screen sits dark and unused in the roll-call room, ready for a videoconference should the commissioner decide to call one. So far, it’s hardly been used, Inspector Cody said. When it comes to technology, the department is making slow progress, he said.

The real preventive policing, he said, involves the community.

One of the latest patterns of crime in the neighborhood involves children and teenagers robbing each other of cell phones and iPods. When the number started increasing, Inspector Cody changed the deployment of his officers in some areas, and he didn’t stop there. His youth officers visited the parents of many of the repeat offenders to get their help in stopping such robberies. Overall, robberies are down 25% for the year in the precinct.

Although the problems in the 32nd Precinct are numerous, Inspector Cody won’t be worrying about them for much longer. Commanding officers don’t usually stay at a precinct for more than four years. Inspector Cody has been at the precinct for three years.

A son of a police captain, the Brooklyn native said he wouldn’t be leaving the police force any time soon. His sister and brother are also on the force. With 24 years under his belt, he could retire with half pay, but he’s hooked, he said.

“I still like coming to work every day,” he said. “I’m not leaving.”