Although crime is dropping in New York City, problems remain due to the number of repeat offenders, NYPD Chief of Department John Chell said Wednesday on Newsmax.
"What's old is new," Chell said on "Wake Up America." "Policing never changes. You put cops on the dots, cops where they are supposed to be, you analyze zones where they're supposed to be."
Last month, Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced that for the first three months in 2025, New York City recorded the lowest number of shootings of any first quarter since crime statistics started being recorded in 1994, reported The New York Times.
"It's a simple formula," Chell said. "You take 20,000 plus guns off the streets, you have cops in the right locations, you have a detective bureau solving cases, a DA [District Attorney] helping them get on the finish line, that's how you would [stop] shootings."
The NYPD remains understaffed, Chell pointed out, but Mayor Eric Adams "allows us to do our job and supports us and gives us the tools."
Still, Chell said more needs to be done, including picking out areas where there are high crime numbers and focusing on them, such as in the transit system.
Nearly 30% of those people who the police end up ticketing are people who are already wanted for crimes in New York City.
"You're going to write a summons and you run into people who are convicted felons, wanted for crimes," Chell said. "We don't have a crime problem; we have a recidivist problem."
This year, he added, 350 people out of the city's full population of millions "represent about 30% of retail theft crime, and they have 14,000 arrests attached to those people. That is insanity."
If the problems with repeat offenders could be solved, New York's crime ratings will continue to drop, he added.
Chell also discussed the move by the Adams administration, which said Tuesday the city will start allowing federal agents to open an office on Rikers Island so that the investigations of international terrorist groups involved in violent crimes can start, reported ABC News.
Chell said the NYPD has worked with federal agencies for years to keep criminals off the streets.
"We'll work with the federal government," said Chell. "We do it every day. We have federal task forces, like the DEA, hooked up with our detectives. We're doing this every day with our federal government."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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