Of all index crimes, motor vehicle thefts have plunged most. Over the past three calendar years, they’re down 35 percent, again according to the department’s own statistics. (They fell 23 percent last year alone.) Over that same three-year period, burglaries fell 33 percent; aggravated batteries, 20 percent; robberies, 16 percent.
Current and former officers and several criminologists say they can’t understand how a cash-strapped and undermanned department—one that by its own admission has been focusing most of its attention and resources on combating shootings and murders and protecting schoolchildren in a few very violent neighborhoods—could achieve such astounding results. “God Almighty! It’s just not possible,” opines a retired high-ranking officer who reviewed the department’s statistics.
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