NYPD Announces Details on Crown Heights Cops Increase

CROWN HEIGHTS—The NYPD has sent dozens of additional police officers to a pocket of  Brooklyn that in recent months has seen an increase in shootings and homicides, a department official said Monday.

Two weeks ago, Mayor Bill de Blasio said during a TV appearance that additional police personnel would be dispatched to the 77th Precinct, in response to the uptick in homicides and shootings in the area, though he did not say at the time how many officers or when that would happen. Brooklyn’s 77th Precinct covers the northern section of Crown Heights and parts of Prospect Heights.

“More officers are going to be put out in the precinct,” said de Blasio on his weekly “Inside City Hall” NY1 segment. “There’s definitely a problem we have to address aggressively.”

Indeed in the 77th Precinct, as of the end of May 2019, there had been 12 shootings—a 71 percent increase—and seven homicides, a 600 percent increase from the first five months of 2018.

On Monday, NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan said that last month 80 additional officers were assigned to the precinct.

“What we did is we’ve taken five cars every day from various commands around Brooklyn and put them on patrol in the 77th Precinct,” he said Monday afternoon at a monthly crime press conference in Sugar Hill. “We’re moving five cars a day at night into that command for additional patrol [officers] within the 77th Precinct.”

“Our citywide anti-crime unit has been working there, along with our uniform sergeants,” he added. “That began in the month of June.”

The NYPD in May dispatched additional officers to four Brooklyn precincts, but the 77th Precinct was not among them.