The Gist Peter Moskos on NYC’s Historic Crime Drop and the Lessons for Today
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Aug 8, 2025 Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore cop and professor at John Jay College, delves into the fascinating crime reduction in NYC, linking it to trends from the 1990s. He discusses the impact of data-driven policing like CompStat, and the necessity of balancing aggressive methods with community trust. Moskos shares insights from his book 'Back from the Brink' about how policing evolved, emphasizing the lessons learned from past successes and failures. The conversation highlights the delicate relationship between enforcement strategies and community safety.
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Multiple Factors Explain Recent Crime Drop
- Mike Pesca summarizes pandemic disruptions, police practice changes, and reinvestment likely explain the recent homicide decline.
- He warns disaggregating causes will take years but urges learning from past crime drops.
Police Shot Hundreds In The Early 1970s
- Peter Moskos and Mike Pesca recount that in the early 1970s police shot hundreds of people, with one year recording at least 314 shot and 93 killed.
- They contrast that era with modern tracking and policies that sharply reduced police shootings.
Counting Crime Changed Policing
- Peter Moskos describes Jack Maple's push to count shootings and build timely crime data as the start of modern CompStat.
- That counting let leaders redeploy officers and target when and where violent crime actually occurred.
