The NYPD Will Tell You Which Crimes to Worry Your Pretty Little Heads About

The New York Police
Department keeps on giving the middle finger to the community it
allegedly serves. It’s latest war against oversight is a doozy.
It’s
cutting off open access to local station crime reports. Via
DNAinfo New York:

The NYPD has ordered the city’s 77 police precincts to stop
giving out any information to the media about crimes taking place
in their neighborhoods, cutting off a long-standing source of
information for New Yorkers.

According to a terse NYPD edict transmitted citywide, precinct
commanders were instructed: “Any requests by media to view
complaint reports be referred to the office of the Deputy
Commissioner For Public Information.”

The NYPD’s public information office, known as DCPI, typically
disemminates only select major crimes such as murders, sexual
assaults and grand larcenies, but often does not include lower
level neighborhood crimes. Those complaints could traditionally be
found at the precinct, a reliable source for information of
interest for residents.

According to sources, the latest media restriction was sent last
week to the precinct supervisors from their borough commanders, who
received the transmission from the NYPD’s Chief of Patrol James
Hall.

So to get access to info about a crime in New York City –
any crime in New York City (population 8.3 million) – a
person has to call their public affairs office. And beyond that, it
means media folks might not even know a crime happened unless the
police tell them or a witness or victim contacts the media.

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