NYPD Commissioner of Intelligence Re-imagines Stop-and-Frisk as “Microscopic Precision Policing”

By Yehudit Garmaise

Crime spiked 38% in January, compared to January 2021, the NYPD reported Thursday, however, John Miller, NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism, explained how Mayor Eric Adams’ new administration is responding to increase public safety.

While murders in New York City, thankfully dropped by 15% last month, robberies, , are up 33%, and grand larceny is up 58%. Shoplifting is also on the rise, and in the felony/assault category, which includes shootings, NYC saw a 12% increase last month, compared to last January.

“What are we doing about it?” asked Miller said at City Hall after President Joe Biden spent the day in the city to observe and discuss Mayor Adams’ crime-fighting plans in action.

“The president of the United States came today to see the innovative processes we are using to focus on violent crime: particularly on shooters,” Miller said. 

Among those innovative processes is a weekly meeting that aims to predict violence by examining gang and crew-related shootings.

“We break them down and map them, and determine: which crew is shooting at which crew,” said Miller who explain then law enforcement officials can determine

the most likely time and place of the most likely retaliation.

Then, Miller said, those officers speak to the mayor’s office: Crisis Management Office (CMS) to provide what he called a “Weather Report of Violence, to report what we are seeing.

“We report where we think there may be more violence: where, when, how, and by whom,” Miller said. “Then, CMS looks into their maps and ask, ‘Where do we have those violence interrupters?’”

The violence interrupters, who are trained to “cool things down,” Miller said, are stationed in place to move into work with people who are at high-risk of violent behavior before they retaliate.

While the process of “cooling things down” in a city with surging crime may sound daunting, Miller pointed out that the NYPD has determined that very few people are responsible for most of the violence in the city.

The Intelligence Bureau, he said, focuses on shooting-by-shooting, gun suspect-by- gun suspect to determine: Who are responsible as the trigger-pullers?

Perhaps reinventing what Miller called, "the stop-and-frisk mode of, ‘Let’s go out and stop people.” which has been a controversial policing practice in the past, Miller said that essentially what the NYPD is doing doing something similar with Precision Policing, in which police say, ‘Let’s zero-in on targeting the 600 trigger-pullers: the key drivers of violence, who account for 17% of all shootings in NYC, but make up .01% of the populace.' 

“So it is not just Precision Policing. It is the microscopic version of Precision Policing that is wrapped in a lot of processes that involve search warrants, subpoenas, investigations, and the courts.”