NYPD To New Yorkers: How Are We Doing?
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- New Yorkers using any one of 50 smartphone apps will soon see short surveys from the NYPD asking a variation of the line the late Mayor Ed Koch made famous, "How are we doing?"
With crime down in nearly every neighborhood, Police Commissioner James O'Neill said the 8-second smartphone surveys will give the NYPD a sense of community satisfaction.
Questions will include: Do you feel safe in your neighborhood? How are you feeling? How are we doing?
The answers stream back to a private firm where they're bundled and sent to front line commanders so they can tweak deployments and strategize to better serve residents.
It's a modern-day extension of CompStat which allowed police in the 90s to drill down on high crime areas, WCBS 880's Marla Diamond reported.
"What CompStat doesn't do is measure citizen satisfaction or fear of crime," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Washington think tank Police Executive Research Forum. "This really gives police administrators new insight and I think it will provide valuable perspectives."
Wexler said lower crime doesn't always equal community satisfaction.
"People would think that a reduction in crime would lead to an increase in citizen satisfaction and trust, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't," Wexler said. "It's going to force police administrators to really kind of ask themselves could we approach some situations differently."
The surveys are anonymous but police reform advocates are expressing privacy concerns in an era of sanctuary cities and mistrust of police in minority communities.
