And we're seeing an increase in robberies. Using a laser pen, Maple scrawls on an overhead map, tracing robbery patterns the way John Madden diagrams football plays. Crime had been falling gently since 1989, thanks to community policing strategies, a thinning in the ranks of the crackhead army and thousands of new prison beds and new cops. But as Comstat took hold in May 1994, the drop became a giddy double-digit affair, plunging farther and faster than it has done anywhere else in the country, faster than any cultural or demographic trend could explain. For two years, crime has declined in all 76 precincts.
Robberies are off by a third, burglaries by a quarter.
Success isn't pretty, even for his troops. Those who show up unprepared, without coherent strategies to reduce crime, are fried crisp, then stripped of their commands. Half of all precinct bosses have been replaced under Bratton. Those who survive get unprecedented autonomy but have to demonstrate extraordinary results. Crimes in the category plummeted in his precinct.