More than 50 residents and business owners were treated to a real-life law and order presentation on Monday night at a joint meeting of Citizens for a Better Ridgewood and the 104th Precinct Community Council.
Capt. Michael Cody of the 104th Precinct and Supervising Assistant DA Frederica Jeffries from the office of Queens District Attorney Richard Brown made presentations and took questions.
Citing stats compiled the day before, Cody said some crimes, such as robberies were up from 2011. While not fixing blame, he said the difference between this year’s mild winter and last year’s sometimes Arctic conditions may be playing a role.
“There are more people out there,” Cody said.
The captain fielded several questions about quality of life issues, including residents complaining about noise from businesses and business owners complaining about unwarranted noise complaints.
Cody said the precinct has devoted much time and manpower to address problems such as prostitution, graffiti and abandoned vehicles.
He also said the same social media he uses to keep abreast of happenings with local community groups also are being used to combat crime in the 104th and the NYPD as a whole.
“We used social networks to track a lot of things when I was commanding the Gang Unit,” he said.
Jeffries said she is hopeful that the state will vote to expand the number and categories of offenders from whom authorities are allowed to take DNA samples upon conviction for storage in a data bank.
She said the last expansion in 2006 added 35 new types of offenses, and that the results have been astounding for tying suspects to crimes.
“From samples taken from those new categories we have obtained 2,963 hits,” Jeffries said. “With petit larceny we’ve had more than 900 hits, and in 2011 we had hits from petit larceny cases that led to arrests in 48 homicides, 110 robberies, 220 sexual assaults and 391 burglaries.
“Those numbers can go on and on,” she said.
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