NEW YORK - A five-year-old program that sends rookie police officers to crime hot spots in New York City has helped the city achieve the lowest homicide rate in 45 years and will be doubled in size in 2008, police officials say.
New York police said there were 494 homicides last year, down from 596 in 2006 and the lowest since 548 in 1963 when the city began keeping records of the total number of murders.
When asked last week if there was a single reason for the decline in crime, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly cited Operation Impact, which sends rookie police officers to narrowly defined areas that have suffered from high crime, some no larger than a housing project or a shopping corridor.
This month, all 914 members of the most recent police academy class will join the program, bringing the size of Operation Impact to more than 1,800 officers.
"You might have a high crime precinct, but the crime might be confined to a relatively small part of the precinct," said police spokesman Paul Browne. "It's important to put the boots on the ground and to increase police visibility dramatically."
But the decision to dispatch the least experienced officers on the most difficult assignments has given ammunition to watchdog groups that have accused the department of harassing blacks and Hispanics in low-income neighborhoods.
"There are concerns that when rookies are sent to high-crime areas with instructions to stomp out crime, it's an invitation to engage in overly aggressive bullying tactics, including stop and frisk procedures that target people of color," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
But Browne said using rookies has been key to the success of the program, which was launched in 2003.
"They're the most recently well-trained officers we have. These people are getting the best instruction in the country and when they get out, they know their stuff," Browne said.
But critics say there is no evidence Operation Impact deserves the credit for the city's drop in crime.
"Every year that crime drops, the police take credit for the drop," said Andrew Karmen, a sociology professor at New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice and author of a book on the city's declining homicide rate. "Nobody knows for sure why crime has come down."
Karmen points to the end of the crack cocaine epidemic in the early 1990s, increased enrollment in city colleges, and a stronger economy as plausible explanations beyond police innovations.
