It was almost a tradition, in a dark humor sort of way. You were the victim of a “minor” crime. By “minor,” I mean not minor to you, because you were the victim, but minor to the cops. A hit and run without a dead body? A theft under a grand? Damage to your property? You called the police and were told to come to the precinct and make a report. Sometimes, you needed a police report for insurance purposes. Sometimes you did it because what else were you going to do?
Afterward, you would call up on occasion to ask if they found the perp and they said no. They gently told you that it wasn’t likely they would. What they didn’t tell you is that no one ever looked at your report again. No one ever tried to find the perp. No one ever would. Now they’ve said it out loud.
New Yorkers will now be able to report some low-level crimes and lost property without ever having to walk into a police station.
The NYPD has launched an online portal to submit minor claims — the latest step for the county’s largest law enforcement force to digitalize police procedures.
The new process will allow complaints to be filed through the NYPD’s website for lost property, petit larceny, criminal mischief and graffiti — which accounts for nearly one in four of the total complaints since 2010.
On the bright side, at least you don’t have to go to the precinct, waste half a day of your life, enjoy the ambiance and pleasant chatter with detectives. Hey, it’s the digital age, so why not make NYPD more open, more available, easier to use? What’s the downside?
Deputy Chief of the Office of Management Analysis and Planning John Cappelmann said these lower-level reports “don’t really require a follow-up or further investigation by the detective squad.”
“For example, if you lost your watch, you lost your wallet, etc, these are not crimes,” he said. “So there really isn’t going to be follow up by the detective squad to conduct an investigation to attempt to make an arrest.”
It may be your wallet, your watch, and pretty serious to you, but to the serious people of the NYPD, these are just low-level stuff, too insignificant to be worth their time and effort to “find.” And don’t be misled by the “lost” example, because “these are not crimes.” Stolen is another example, but it doesn’t make good press for the NYPD’s online rollout of crimes that “don’t really require a follow-up or further investigation by the detective squad.”
Did you “lose” your wallet or did somebody steal it? All you know is that it’s gone, and it’s got all your information inside, your drivers license and cash, your credit cards and that condom you put in there when you were a hopeful 14 year old. Do you really think they’re going to put a detective on the case, or they will investigate to see who uses your credit card to buy a flat screen TV, then swoop in and make the bust?
One of the unspoken realities is that actual investigation is hard, time consuming and generally fruitless work. They can’t, and won’t, put the very expensive time of a detective on your case to find your watch. It’s not that it can’t be found, but that they’re neither up to the task nor sufficiently interested or willing to perform it.
Now, the reality is spoken. Report all you want. They’ll make it as easy as they can, and then they will do absolutely nothing about it. At least you didn’t have to wait two hours for the subway to arrive to get to the precinct. Be thankful for small things.
After a complaint is filed, the victim will receive a confirmation email and, within five days, will be told whether the report was approved or denied, according to officials.
An officer will follow up in the days after if further investigation is needed, officials added.
Don’t hold your breathe. But it’s not only good for you, but good for the NYPD too.
“It really helps us streamline the complaint process,” said Deputy Commissioner of Strategic Initiatives Danielle Pemberton.
“It actually helps us free up some officer time that’s associated with the administrative components of processing these complaints.”
There’s another benefit, that the NYPD will have these reports already digitized for their crime stats, demonstrating why the City needs the cops because of all the crime going down. It won’t help their clearance rates any, but nobody expects much from low-level crimes. Nobody ever has.
But it raises one additional issue, which might not have made it onto the NYPD’s radar when it came up with this new “ease of use” approach to reporting. If the crimes are so low-level, so insignificant that they aren’t worth a moment of a cop’s time to investigate and solve, are they not saying to people inclined to commit those crimes “go ahead and do it. It’s not like we care.” Unless some cop stumbles upon you as you’re doing the dirty, you’re home free. No one will ever give your crime a second thought.
On the other hand, there will always be the poor miscreants who get nailed, whether because of a diligent victim, the misfortune of picking the wrong person to take from whose uncle is the Chief of Patrol or the ubiquitous video cameras that land you on the evening news. If there’s one thing cops love, it’s solving crimes that show up on the television screen.
When these poor miscreants end up before the judge for sentence, will the ADA inform the court that the crime at hand is so minor, so trivial, so inconsequential that the NYPD would not have lifted a finger to do anything about it, and so if the cops give it a big shrug, so too should the judge? Or will the hype the outrage, the suffering, the wrongful of the defendant’s offense as they passionately demand the max in jail, even though it’s a crime the NYPD deems to petty as to not be worth more than a digital report on its website?
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