Poverty and Progress in New York III: Crime and Welfare Enrollment One Year Into the de Blasio Administration

Mayor Bill de Blasio assumed office in January 2014, promising to "take dead aim at the Tale of Two Cities … [and] put an end to economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love." With respect to public safety, this promise translated into a determination to continue the low crime rates of recent years through a modified version of the Giuliani and Bloomberg approaches to policing.

On welfare, de Blasio made a sharper break from the past. The overarching goals remain greater economic mobility and less government dependence. But these goals are to be achieved through a less "punitive" approach toward enforcing eligibility requirements and "more effective" employment programs that emphasize education and training over work experience.

This paper is the third installment in a series that has been tracking the effect of de Blasio's policies at the neighborhood level. Focusing on the effect of initiatives on policing and public assistance, it examines how conditions in the poorest neighborhoods in the five boroughs have changed during 2014, the first year of the de Blasio administration. The paper also investigates citywide trends in arrests, data regarding potential racial bias in the police department, and rates of dependence on social assistance programs.

Welfare

• New York City ended 2014 with more people on welfare than it began. Midyear, the Human Resources Administration (HRA) announced major changes to the city's public assistance program; by the end of 2014, enrollment had grown by about 16,000 since the HRA announcement.
• This increase has come during a time of relative prosperity for the local economy, which added more than 90,000 jobs in 2014. Significant growth came in low-wage industries likely to hire welfare recipients. Throughout New York City's history, the general tendency has been for welfare enrollment to decline as job numbers grow.
• Enrollment in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) proved more responsive to improved economic conditions, steadily declining throughout 2014.
• The number of public assistance recepients remains very low, by historical standards.

Policing

• The year 2014 saw annual declines in six out of seven major crime categories. Murders reached historical lows.
• There are exceptions to the general good news on crime: 28 precincts saw at least one more murder in 2014 than in 2013; and total crime was up in 14 precincts. The lowest-income neighborhoods in the five boroughs remain far more dangerous than their high-income counterparts.
• In the ten lowest-income neighborhoods in the five boroughs, eight saw two or three more murders in 2014 than in 2013. Two experienced more total crime in 2014 than in 2013.
• Misdemeanor arrests, though higher than they were ten years ago, are currently on a downward trend. This includes arrests for many, though not all, "Broken Windows," or quality-of-life, offenses such as drug possession.
• Civilian Complaint Review Board complaints and allegations of unnecessary or excessive use of force by police are trending down. The year 2014 saw fewer complaints against the NYPD than all but three of the last 16 years.
• Use of force in making misdemeanor arrests is extremely rare (2.2 percent) and trending down.
• With respect to allegations of racial bias, a comparison between victim-initiated and police-initiated misdemeanor arrests shows that police do not arrest minorities at a higher rate when acting on their own judgment than when responding to specific victim complaints.
• Crime is overwhelmingly more of a problem for poor minority neighborhoods, where the greatest demand for policing, measured by 911 calls, is found.

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