Crime will sore to levels not seen since New York’s bad old days if the City Council decriminalizes quality-of-life offenses such as fare-beating, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton warned Monday.
“We are certainly open to additional alternatives to give our officers discretion in lieu of arrest, but if you lose those powers to arrest, that’s where Pandora’s Box is opened and the 1970s, the 1980s have the potential to come roaring back again,” Bratton said.
The city’s top cop also said that “if you remove the ability to have a penalty for [an] offense, then you lose the ability to be in control of the streets.”
Bratton’s dire prediction was his harshest assessment of a plan by Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverto to turn a host of anti-social behavior into civil offenses instead of crimes.
He made the comments outside a Citizens Crime Commission breakfast in Manhattan, where the state’s chief judge said “common sense” dictated that ignoring quality-of-life offenses could lead to more serious crimes.
But Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman also said the nearly 400,000 summonses issued in the city last year were overwhelming the court system.
Lippman said riding a bike on the sidewalk, staying in a park after hours or “drinking a can of beer on a stoop” were “more benign” than peeing in public or turnstile-jumping — “and perhaps need not be classified as criminal offenses.”
At the MTA’s monthly board meeting in Manhattan, officials blasted Mark-Viverito’s proposal to decriminalize fare-beating, which would require a change in state law.
NYPD Transit Chief Joseph Fox said cops have seized 10 illegal guns in the subways this year — with six found on people busted for turnstile jumping.
MTA board member Chuck Moerdler also said decriminalizing fare-beating would amount to a free pass for anyone.
“You shouldn’t encourage that kind of behavior, you should do everything to discourage it,” he said.
“Otherwise, the alternative is to have all free subways — or you can take a trip to Utopia.”
Mayor de Blasio last week said he sided with Bratton over the Mark-Viverito plan, and a spokesman said Hizzoner’s position remained unchanged.
During a morning appearance on the HuffPost Live Web site, Mark-Viverito called fare-beating “a nonviolent offense” for which there are “many young people that are being held in jail, that are being handcuffed.”
She also said the administration of former Mayor Mike Bloomberg was “very much deaf ears in terms of hearing the concerns from the community.”
Additional reporting by Yoav Gonen and Shawn Cohen