The Post reported this past Friday that top NYPD officials convened for "an emergency summit" to address "a surprise spike in robberies citywide."
Robberies jumped 29 percent between Oct. 11 and Oct. 17 compared to the same week last year, and overall are up 4.7 percent this year, according to police statistics.
At the meeting today, Chief of Department Joseph Esposito, the highest ranking uniformed officer, and Chief of Operations Patrick Timlin are expected to grill the heads of the NYPD's eight borough commands, detective borough chiefs and housing and transit borough chiefs, the sources said.
A police spokesperson told the Post that "the spike's attributable mainly to young robbers, teens and preteens, taking cellphones and other personal electronic devices."
According to the crime stats from the 9th Precinct, there were seven robberies reported the week of Oct. 11-Oct. 17, up four from the same time period last year. The number of reported felonious assaults increased from three to six. For the year, however, the number of robberies has decreased by 3.2 percent over last year while the number of felonious assaults have increased by 3.3 percent. (Compared to 1990, the number of robberies in the East Village is down 80 percent.)
This past Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, a command post for members of the Manhattan South Task Force, who are assigned to the East Village, was parked on Avenue A along Tompkins Square Park. We've heard about several cases of wilding in the Park the last few weeks. Privately, we've heard that the NYPD is quite concerned about the recent wilding attacks in the East Village — enough so for a Command Center to be established. On background, one NYPD rep said there have been nine reported wilding cases in the East Village in the last month.
[Photo by Bob Arihood]
