Murder rate down but crime rate is up in NYC due to iPhone and iPad thefts

[spookyturtle 9,465]

The crime rate is up in NYC for 2012 and Mayor Bloomberg blamed iPhone and iPad thieves. The city is also on track to have the lowest number of homicides since the city started tracking comparable homicide figures in 1963.

Updated, 11:50 a.m. | Hold onto your iPhones!

Major crime in New York City inched up this year, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Friday fingered the culprit: too many iPhones and iPads were being swiped.

A rise in thefts of shiny Apple products accounted for the slight increase in the city’s annual crime index, a statistic that covers a number of felonies, including murder, grand larceny and robbery, Mr. Bloomberg said on Friday morning during his weekly radio show.

As of Monday, the Police Department recorded 3,484 more major crimes in 2012 than for the same period last year. The increase in Apple product thefts: 3,890.

In a more serious vein, Mr. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly also announced that as of Friday morning, New York City had recorded 414 homicides, putting it on pace to record the lowest annual number since the city started tracking comparable homicide figures in 1963. The current low, 471 homicides, was set in 2009.

Still, city officials said the overall crime figure was skewed by the Apple figure.

“If you just took away the jump in Apple, we’d be down for the year,” said Marc La Vorgna, the mayor’s press secretary.

On the radio, Mr. Bloomberg said that Apple products appeared to be the preference for many thieves, noting that he was not including thefts of competing devices, like the Samsung Galaxy, in his count.

And he offered some practical advice for listeners, urging them to keep their devices in an interior, hard-to-reach pocket.

“Put it in a pocket in sort of a more body-fitting, tighter clothes, that you can feel if it was — if somebody put their hand in your pocket, not just an outside coat pocket,” the mayor said.

IPhones have long proved irresistible to city thieves, particularly on the subway, where crime rates shot up in 2011 after police investigators discovered that robbers were targeting the expensive, high-tech gadgets. The Police Department has used dozens of decoy officers and unusual methods to try to stanch the thefts, which usually occurred as trains entered and left stations, allowing for a quick getaway.

“The proliferation of people carrying expensive devices around is so great,” Mr. La Vorgna said. “It’s something that’s never had to be dealt with before.”

Through Monday, the city had recorded 108,432 major crimes for the year, up from 104,948 over the same period in 2011, a rise of 3.3 percent.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/crime-is-up-and-bloomberg-blames-iphone-thieves/

Edited December 28, 2012 by spookyturtle