City lawmakers will take NYPD officials to task Wednesday over crime figures that haven’t yet returned to pre-pandemic levels — and disturbing reports of cops allegedly refusing to take complaint reports.
Bronx Councilman Oswald Feliz, the chair of the Committee on Public Safety, scheduled the oversight hearing “to take a hard look at crime categories that require attention,” including felony assaults.
“We’ve made progress on many issues, including shootings and murders, but when we look at crime statistics from 2019, it is clear there is still significant room for progress,” he said in a statement.
Councilmembers are set to grill top-ranking NYPD officials — though notably not Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch — in what is gearing up to be a hourslong hearing in City Hall. The Mamdani administration is also not expected to send anyone from the mayor’s highly touted Office of Community Safety.
Feliz pointed to NYPD data that show major felonies overall were down nearly 6% year-over-year, but remained up nearly 25% compared to the same time frame in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We want to better understand the challenges and discuss what more can be done to address them effectively,” the Bronx Democrat said. “Our goal is to have a hearing like this at the end of every year.”
The police department — both under Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his predecessor Eric Adams — has repeatedly touted record downticks of both shootings and murders, but seldom provides comparisons to pre-pandemic levels, when the city hit record low crime numbers.
In addition, a handful of other councilmembers will interrogate NYPD brass over residents’ claims that they were discouraged from filing criminal complaints by officers, sources said.
One example that’s expected to be raised is a viral social media video posted earlier this week in which a person claimed to be harassed and almost attacked in Washington Square Park. The user claimed that when he reported the incident to cops, they simplysaid, “Welcome to NYC, brotherz.”
“Every day New Yorkers are told crime is down, but that’s not what many of my constituents are seeing and feeling on their streets,” said Councilmember Joann Ariola (R-Queens).
“If the numbers say one thing and New Yorkers are experiencing another, we need to understand why, and that’s what I intend to find out during this oversight hearing.”
Councilmembers are also planning to trot out a few irate New Yorkers who have experienced similar interactions with cops and will ask police brass to answer for some of the specific stories.
Ahead of the hearing, Councilman Phil Wong (D-Queens) called for the NYPD to release details of audits on the report-taking process and find instances when criminal complaints should have been filed but were not.
“When crime truly goes down, our police officers deserve the credit,” Wong said in a statement. “But the numbers only mean something if every crime is reported and reported accurately.”
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