A heavier police presence on the streets would be a strong first step toward reducing this statistic, but that requires leadership willing to make public safety a priority. Unfortunately, Mayor Q-Ball has spent years doing the opposite. His pro-crime agenda, from effectively defunding the police to leading a riot on the Plaza, to sending one cop to prison for putting a gun toting, stalkerish wife beater down, has driven officers away and left us with too few beat cops to cover the city.
But the failure doesn’t stop with patrol strength. The backbone of any functioning public-safety system is the 911 dispatcher who answers the phone when someone’s life is on the line. Right now, those dispatchers are overworked, underpaid, and understaffed. If we’re serious about improving response times, and we should be, because they are just too damn slow, then doubling dispatcher pay and aggressively hiring more staff must become a top priority.
Restoring public safety starts with reversing the damage: rebuild the police force, invest in the people who take the calls, and stop pretending that wishful thinking is a substitute for real leadership.