Our City has witnessed an extraordinary improvement in public safety during the Morgenthau era. New York City is now the safest large city in the country and Manhattan the safest borough - the number of homicides, which is the most reliable indicator of violent crime rates, has dropped from 661 in 1974 to 61 in 2008.
I will work hard to retain these gains and enhance public safety by expanding “community based justice.”
We will partner our prosecutors with police, community groups, schools, housing associations, and other public and not-for-profit agencies to help communities break the cycle of crime.
- Individualized Justice. We will build on the Office’s successful “vertical prosecution” system, in which one prosecutor handles a case from start to finish, promoting accountability and giving crime victims the best service. We will align the Trial Division’s six street crime Bureaus to geographic zones based on police precincts. This system will give prosecutors a greater sense of identification with Manhattan’s many neighborhoods and communities and improve two-way communication and accountability. By aligning Bureaus to precincts, the Office will be able to:
- identify public disorder and serious crime trends better and earlier;
- target resources on recidivist felons who threaten public safety; and
- develop localized and effective responses that draw on the Office’s specialized resources for investigating homicides, gangs, drugs and gun trafficking, sex crimes, identity theft, and other serious crimes.
- Equal Justice. The Office will promote close links with leaders of immigrant communities, communities of people of color, LGBT, and other non-geographical communities. This will enable the Office to act quickly to prevent and prosecute bias crimes and protect Manhattan’s residents and workers from official abuse, violations of industry safety laws that threaten the health and safety of working men and women, and any other form of criminal abuse based on a victim’s protected status or special vulnerability.
- Police Misconduct. Aligning Trial Division Bureaus to police precincts means that prosecutors will work with the same officers continually, enabling the Office to identify more readily incidents and patterns of misconduct. These will be referred to the Official Corruption Unit that investigates allegations of criminal conduct by police officers.
- Protecting Tenants. The Office will continue to work with housing authorities and tenant associations to investigate and prosecute landlords who use criminal schemes to evict tenants from their homes.

