Sheepshead Station House Had The Second Greatest Drop In Crime Out Of All Brooklyn Precincts

Sheepshead Bay’s station house, the 61st Precinct, came up short by a hair in having the greatest reduction in crime out of all Brooklyn precincts and beat out the borough average by a huge margin, according to NYPD crime figures released at the end of last year.

In 2015, the number of major felonies (murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, grand larceny, and auto theft) fell by an eye-popping 13.17 percent compared to the previous year — pummeling the borough’s average of 5.3 percent. The only station house to come up with a better score (13.98 percent) was the 88th Precinct, located in Fort Greene.

The data comes from the last CompStat reports filed by Brooklyn precincts in 2015. The reports show the number of felonies recorded between the beginning ofJanuary 1 and December 27, 2015.

City Councilman Chaim Deutsch, who visited the 61st Precinct on New Year’s Eve to congratulate the officers on their accomplishment, attributed the drop in felonies to aggressive police efforts to address smaller quality of life issues.

“They take quality of life issues seriously. It’s about making sure that these issues are resolved,” said Deutsch. “If you just leave things like this alone and ignore it, then things tend to escalate.”

Deutsch highlighted the precinct’s work cleaning up local shopping districts, ridding parks of drug activity, and scrubbing away much of the graffiti found in the neighborhood. (He said that a recent article about a jump in graffiti complaints was due to the precinct’s own clean-up work.)

“A lot of those complaints were generated by the precinct themselves. They have to file a report because they need to ask permission from the building owner or homeowner to remove the graffiti,” Deutsch said. “That’s why there was a jump.”

However, a drop in crime doesn’t mean the 61st Precinct had the lowest crime numbers. The station house came in 10th out of 23 Brooklyn precincts for having the highest number of felonies (1,457). The precinct also saw a 50 percent increase in homicides — from two to three. And if you add in the double homicide that occurred in the Sheepshead Bay Houses at the end of the year, the 61st Precinct ends up in the middle of the pack when it comes to the number of murders during 2015. However, Sheepshead Bay isn’t the only neighborhood to see a jump in homicides this year — 13 other Brooklyn precincts saw their murder rates rise during 2015.

In every other felony category reported in the 61st Precinct, the numbers fell over the previous year.

The city’s 2015 budget, passed in June, added an additional 1,300 cops to station houses throughout the five boroughs. The 61st Precinct received their recruits — six new officers — at the start of the year. The extra manpower will allow police to continue addressing quality of life issues and focus more resources on troubled areas, Deutsch said.