The NYPD will double the number of officers on foot posts this summer — 3,800 car-free beat cops across 40 precincts — evidence that NYPD leadership increasingly sees that putting cops on the beat is more effective than having them driving around.
The strategy began last summer with a smaller “violence reduction plan” that put 1,500 officers on the street — and resulted in a 47-percent decrease in shootings as the NYPD upped the number of foot cops to 2,300 (that number since dipped back to 1,800 officers).
Experts have long called for departments to increase their pedestrianized policing, writing that cops on foot “significantly reduce violent crime levels.”…