Crime spike baffles experts

'Hell of a blip' in Yonkers numbers, reported by FBI, scrutinized

Crime: YONKERS Violent crimes in the state's fourth-largest city soared last year to levels not seen since the mid1990s, driven by a huge reported spike in assaults that law enforcement and criminal-justice experts are now struggling to explain. Total reported murders, forcible rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults the four categories counted by the FBI in an annual report leapt from 895 to 1,090 in Yonkers last year, according to a Journal News analysis of the FBI's preliminary 2011 Uniform Crime Report released last week. That's the most violent crime in Yonkers since 1996, when there were 1,105 such incidents reported to law enforcement, according to the FBI data. Assaults in Yonkers rose a striking 43 percent to 574 in 2011, the most recorded in a single year since 1985, the latest year for which FBI data was available. Robberies last year increased just 4 percent to 473, and rapes increased from 29 to 36, while murder dropped from nine to seven. "Obviously, any time we see a spike, we're concerned," said Yonkers Police Commissioner Charles Gardner, who was sworn in Jan. 1. "We will use all the resources available to us to address it." Nationally, crime peaked in the early 1990s at the height of a cocaine boom, but has fallen steadily since then. Yonkers has mostly followed that trend, with violent crimes reaching a peak of 1,318 in 1991 before falling to 879 in 2003 and then fluctuating within that lower territory from year to year.

Michael Walker, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former Paterson, N.J., police director, said he was "baffled" by how abrupt the rise in violent crime Yonkers appears in the 2011 FBI data. He suggested the high assaults figure may be a one-year anomaly or even a statistical error. "That's a hell of a blip," Walker said. "I would make sure these crimes were classified properly. One would hope it was a bad count rather than that many assaults." The reported increase in Yonkers violent crimes, at nearly 22 percent, was the biggest spike of any large city in the tri-state area including New York City, where it rose 5.6 percent to 51,209 last year, the newspaper's analysis found. Violent crimes fell 4 percent nationwide and less than 1 percent in the Northeast. The FBI report looked at crimes in municipalities across the country with populations of 100,000 or more; Yonkers is the only such city in the Lower Hudson Valley. One bright spot: While crime was up, Yonkers still had the lowest violent-crime rate of the state's five big cities, averaging 5.5 incidents per 1,000 residents. New York City averaged 6.2, Syracuse, 8.9, Rochester, 9.6, and Buffalo, 12.4, the FBI data show. The city also had the second-lowest violent crime rate of 15 big cities in the tri-state area, behind only Waterbury and Stamford, Conn., both with 3.2 incidents per 1,000 people. FBI spokesman Steve Fischer said his agency's statistics were preliminary and that law enforcement agencies would have a chance to submit adjusted figures for a final 2011 "Crime in the United States" report due out in the fall. He said discrepancies in crime data may sometimes arise from computer glitches, or when local law enforcement officials submit their statistics to the FBI in a way that doesn't conform to agency guidelines. Gardner said his department was still updating its 2011 data. He pointed to a state report released earlier this year showing that violent crime in Yonkers rose by less 11 percent in 2011, with assaults spiking 21 percent. That's still a "substantial" increase that needs to be taken seriously, said Walker, who also serves on an FBI advisory board as an expert on Uniform Crime Reporting. He suggested Yonkers take measures such as increasing its police presence around schools during dismissal, or heightening surveillance in troublesome areas. Still, Walker said even with more police on the street, assaults can be harder to curb than crimes like robbery because they often occur in private, between acquaintances.

Gardner suggested another factor might be at play in the assaults data: a new state law that elevates certain types of nonfatal strangulation to a felony. With that law enacted in late 2010, offenses previously classified as simple assaults may now be treated as more-serious "Part 1" crimes the kind the FBI collects data on. (Part 1 crimes also includes property crimes of burglary, theft and motor vehicle theft.) Gardner's theory is similar to one posed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in explaining the New York Police Department's report of a slight increase in major crimes last year. Aggravated assaults rose 9 percent to 29,830 in New York City last year, but were essentially flat in Syracuse and fell in both Rochester and Buffalo, the FBI data show. The new strangulation law applies to municipalities statewide. Gardner was unable to provide a breakdown last week of the number of assaults involving strangulation versus other forms of violence in 2011 compared with previous years. Gardner also said his department switched in October from recording assaults on an incident-byincident basis to a new system based on the number of victims, driving the numbers higher. Assaults and robberies continued to climb in the first five months of this year, while rape, murder and other violent incidents such as shootings and stabbings were down. Gardner also noted a drop in burglary and cited a number of recent police initiatives to tackle that crime. Detective Keith Olson, president of the Yonkers Police Benevolent Association, sees a need to reverse cuts to the department that city leaders have used to help close municipal budget gaps in recent years. Yonkers has lost 31 police officers to attrition over the past two fiscal years, lowering the department's overall ranks, including supervisors, from 644 to 613. Olson also said the department has been without a minimum staffing requirement for foot patrols since 2009, making it especially difficult to combat street crime in some of the city's roughest areas. "We have had less boots on the ground," Olson said. "It's made for a less-safe Yonkers." Bob Stauf, president of Yonkers' 3rd Precinct Police Community Council, said fewer officers, a bad economy and dim job prospects for young people is a recipe for trouble. "The signal to the bad guy is that we are not going to have proper law enforcement," Stauf said. "The inevitability of an increase in crime is there." Jim Bostic, executive director of the Nepperhan Community Center in Yonkers, said increased police presence is not the "magic bullet" for street crime, and that more after-school, mentoring and job-training programs were needed for at-risk youth.

"People who are honest in law enforcement will tell you they cannot police their way out of the problem," Bostic said. "I am suggesting we find programs that offer positive alternatives to this target population that's out there living this lifestyle, as opposed to incarcerating but not rehabilitating them," he said. Staff writer Tim Henderson contributed to this report. Violent crimes change from 2010 to 2011 Yonkers +21.8% NYC +5.6% Syracuse +1% Rochester -9% Buffalo -9.7%