It's the type of crime and video that gets the
NYPD Commissioner angry.
The brutality of a 68 year old Queens woman tossed
from the top steps of her church just to be
robbed.
The woman now in stable condition,
and this video going viral.
Another example of violent incidents in New York City at
a time when the NYPD says overall crime is trending
down.
Yes, we are heading in the right direction for crime.
But to someone's reality, someone who's been a victim of
a crime,
it tells a different story.
And that's some of the things we're struggling with right
now.
Perception versus reality. New York's top cop,
Commissioner Edward Caban, is less than a year into the
job
taking charge as the city faced a crime wave,
migrants overwhelming shelters and a transit system where riders didn't
feel safe.
New York City went from clean and safe
to dirty and dangerous. What happened in New York City,
January 2022, New York City was up in crime,
over 48% up in violence.
And we looked at just making more felony arrests.
And slowly by slowly, the violence began to come down.
I think a lot of the country was stunned when
the governor sent 1000 National Guard troops into your subway
system.
What was that moment like?
Well, you know, when you talk to people riding on
subway systems,
they just want to feel safe.
And we want to thank the governor
for bringing resources into New York City Police Department.
We'll take that. You think it was necessary.
We'll take the help any day of the week.
The latest data shows crimes like shootings,
murders and burglaries all down in the first quarter.
But rapes and felony assaults on the rise.
Caban says bail reform laws have made every officer's job
tougher.
If you could change one law right now in the
state of New York,
what would you change? So besides changing laws,
there's a lot of technicals to the public safety ecosystem.
When we all do our part,
the police officers, the district attorneys,
the judges, the elected officials,
the lawmakers, the process works.
And when people don't do their part,
we get incense, like our officer being shot and murdered,
a system that has come into sharper focus after the
killing of Detective Jonathan Diller,
allegedly by two career criminals with long records.
How many more police officers and how many more families
need to make the ultimate sacrifice before we start protecting
them?
Is she right? Absolutely. You know,
that's the one thing that no police commissioner wants to
do during their tenure is bury one of their own.
Whether it's a family of blood or a family of
blue,
It hurts to the core.
A lot of people have said they're men responsible
who have been accused of killing.
Detective Diller should never have been on the street.
Does that bother you that they were out?
Yeah, of course. If both you look back and think
could have been prevented. I think one of them had
over 21 arrests,
should have even been on the streets.
And that's something that we battle every single day.
What needs to change, you know,
we talk about whatever you want to call it,
catch and release. We lock someone up.
District Attorney puts bail on them.
The judges let don't go to walk our streets again.
It's a broken system. We're seeing that we're locking up
the same people over and over again and it has
an effect on our law enforcement officers.
It has an effect on our law abiding citizens and
has a negative effect on the actual or perceived image
of public safety.
And one that has grown more complicated with the recent
arrival of nearly
200,000 migrants. You know, I think the NYPD understands that
people come to New York City to build a better
life for themselves and their families.
And New York City supports that.
If you look at our rank and file,
we have officers that were never born in the United
States.
They themselves are the American dream.
But having said that, if you commit a crime in
New York City,
if you break the law,
we will hold you accountable.
When there was that high profile crime in Times Square,
when the officer was beat by the the migrants,
you called them ghost criminals.
What did you mean by that?
Right now? Most of them had no IDs.
There's no way we could tell where they live,
where they come from, pretty much ghost.
I got to think that makes your job tougher to
try to
combat crime and you're trying to look for people you
don't even know what their names are.
Yeah, absolutely, it does. What have you heard from,
from minority communities since you've become commissioner in New York
City?
There's there's been a very sort of
tenuous relationship between communities of color and the
NYPDI could tell you. I've been to many different communities,
many different boroughs, and everywhere I go they'll tell you
that they want more police officers,
but they want the right police officers.
People are going to come into their neighborhoods,
their communities, respect them, treat them like they would expect,
how they would treat their own families.
And that's exactly what I look for in my police
officers.