The city’s crime reductions last year were fueled by cops locking up thousands more misdemeanor offenders.
The total number of arrests surged from 303,414 in 2006 to 334,082 last year – a 10 percent increase – according to statistics obtained by The Post.
The figure marked the highest arrest total since 2000, when the Giuliani administration popularized the “broken windows” theory – the belief that cops could prevent major felonies by aggressively going after low-level vandals, turnstile jumpers and other “quality of life” criminals.
Police brass said last year’s record-low 496 homicides and reduced rapes and robberies directly correlated with a rise in misdemeanor arrests. There were 231,120 such arrests last year, up 12 percent from 2006, according to state Division of Criminal Justice Services statistics reviewed by The Post.
“As sustained enforcement of lesser offenses increase, we have experienced decreases in violent crime,” said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.
He pointed to enforcement of fare beaters, saying, “It’s fair to speculate that their arrests at the turnstiles have prevented assaults and robberies or worse, and even [led to] their own arrests on the subsequent, more serious charges.”
Reginald Allard, a former police supervisor who now works as a consultant on police practices, cautioned that increases in misdemeanor arrests historically leads to a parallel hike in civilian complaints.