De Blasio's parks security boost misses the mark

Many New York City residents were shaken and disturbed by the story of an 18-year-old girl raped at gunpoint in Brownsville on Jan. 7. That the crime occurred at a public playground harkened back to an unfortunate time in the city’s history when walking through a park at night was likely to lead to a mugging, assault or worse.

Rather than committing to distributing some of the surplus 1,300 police officers he was awarded in last year’s budget, the immediate reaction to the Brownsville rape from NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton was equal parts tone deaf and borderline sexist – that women in the city should adhere to a “buddy system” if they are going to a bar at night.

Bratton was rightly pilloried for that remark, and now the mayor’s office has rolled out an initiative that, at first blush, is a sensible solution to mitigating park crime that doesn’t involve patriarchal condescension.

The AP reported on Wednesday that Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to increase funding for parks security in his preliminary budget by approximately 30 percent, allowing the city to hire 67 full-time Parks Enforcement Patrol staffers and another 50 seasonal part-timers. The catch? “The new agents will largely be sent to a number of high-traffic parks and attractions, including the Coney Island boardwalk, Battery Park, Prospect Park and some Staten Island parks.”

While de Blasio reportedly had the additional $5.3 million for parks security earmarked in his budget before news of the rape broke, crimes of that nature behoove the mayor and City Council to either reconsider where the additional Parks Patrol officers are distributed, or direct the NYPD to increase its parks presence. City Council member Mark Levine, the chairman of the Parks Committee, noted that none of the additional officers would be located in the Bronx, which has 7,000 acres of parkland.

“We have still far fewer than we need in the city,” Levine said. “This allocation will get us up to 325 or 330 total. We’re at 261 or 260 at the moment. That leaves huge stretches of the city with very limited patrol.”

Parks Patrol officers are empowered to make arrests and issue summons, but they are primarily focused on parks infractions – littering, excessive noise, etc. – rather than more serious crimes. They also do not carry guns, though some carry batons and mace. So even if the Parks Patrol officers were distributed to smaller parks like the one in Brownsville, it’s not clear how effective they would be in deterring more violent crimes.

A solution to increase park safety would likely require greater coordination between the NYPD and Parks Department on where and how to balance its resources among large and small parks. The Council recently passed a bill that requires the city to report on park-by-park data for the 100 largest parks in the five boroughs. While that information is hardly comprehensive, given that the city has 1900 parks total, it can provide guidance on the wisdom of placing additional Parks and NYPD officers in affluent parks like Prospect Park and Battery Park, rather than smaller parks that otherwise would get overlooked.