Mayor Launches Drive Against Graffiti
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Hastening to make good on a pledge to wipe out graffiti in the city, Mayor Bloomberg announced yesterday a new police department task force that will comb the city finding and arresting taggers and other graffiti artists.
The new squad, which Mr. Bloomberg hinted at during his State of the City address on Tuesday, is supposed to build on the city’s previous multi-agency effort, which was, for the most part, coordinated by the mayor’s Community Action Unit. The CAU not only scouted for graffiti but also either painted it over or gave communities the materials they needed to do the clean-up themselves.
“We want to send the message that we will not tolerate graffiti or other low-level offenses or disorder in our neighborhoods,” Mr. Bloomberg told reporters in Brooklyn yesterday.
According to CAU figures, their teams removed almost 57 million square feet of graffiti from more than 6,000 sites across the city in 2003 and cleaned up 10,000 sites in 2004.
The idea, borrowing from the “broken windows” theory of crime-fighting associated with Mayor Giuliani, is that graffiti vandalism is just a precursor to more serious crime. Leave windows broken, or graffiti uncovered, and it sends the signal that lawlessness is acceptable, the theory goes.
That’s why Mr. Bloomberg is so focused on those kinds of crimes. All told, there will be 12 neighborhoods in Staten Island, 10 neighborhoods in Queens, nine areas of Brooklyn and Manhattan, and seven neighborhoods in the Bronx that will be the focus of the new task force, Mr. Bloomberg said.
The mayor also unveiled a roster of new crime-impact zones throughout the city yesterday. In an effort to prevent serious and violent crimes, the NYPD will deploy more than 1,000 police officers to new impact zones citywide.
A similar effort last year, known as Operation Impact, led to a 26% drop in crime at impact zones and contributed to the overall decline in New York City crime figures, the administration said.
Also in the crosshairs is the 75th Precinct in East New York, Brooklyn, which is one of the largest precincts in the city and leads the city in homicides, robberies, and assaults. The Police Department announced yesterday that it had launched Operation Trident, which will focus exclusively on reducing crime in the 75th.
