New York
N.Y.P.D. to Deploy Teams to Fight Minor Crimes, Touching Off Skepticism
The New York Police Department will deploy a Quality of Life division next week to crack down on low-level crimes, a move that critics say could disproportionately target low-income residents.
The department will start the program on Monday with six commands across the five boroughs, including one covering several housing developments, police officials said at a news conference Thursday. The program will deploy officers to respond to 311 complaints, which have been steadily rising even as major violent crimes have declined, according to the police.
Since the city has struggled back from the pandemic, some New Yorkers have complained that a sense of chaos is pervasive, with mentally ill people wandering the streets and subways and a spate of high-profile attacks. They have demanded action.
But the new units, called Q Teams, have drawn sharp criticism from some New Yorkers before they even hit the streets. Advocates of police reform say they fear the teams are reinventions of street crime units embraced by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani in the 1990s, which harassed Black and Latino men.
On Thursday, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch insisted that the new division was not a dragnet or part of a “zero tolerance” policing philosophy, but rather a response to complaints from elected officials and New Yorkers that the city feels unsafe.
Mayor Eric Adams said the initiative would take public safety “to the next level.”
“We will not tolerate an atmosphere where anything and everything goes,” he said during Thursday’s news conference. “We will not rest until we address the issues that have affected the lives of everyday New Yorkers.”
The new division, which Commissioner Tisch foreshadowed during her “State of the N.Y.P.D.” address in January, is an overhaul of the department’s approach to illegal street vending, homeless encampments, public urination and other low-level crimes.
Under the plan, the Police Department will appoint a chief to run the new division, who will report to the chief of department. Beginning on Monday, officers will be reassigned to the new teams and will respond to 311 reports and other low-level complaints in their precincts in conjunction with other city agencies. The officers have received specialized training to respond to the issues in their specific precincts, Commissioner Tisch said. The teams will each be supervised by a sergeant and guided by the precinct’s commanding officers.
After its pilot phase, the program will eventually expand to cover the entire city. That will require a reorganization of nearly 2,000 members of the Police Department, Commissioner Tisch said. The new division will oversee existing units, including teams that respond to homeless encampments.
It will also include “QStat,” a system to track quality-of-life complaints the same way that CompStat, the Police Department’s crime database, tracks criminal complaints.
“Today — and this may sound strange coming from the police commissioner — is not about crime,” Commissioner Tisch said during the news conference. “Today is about improving the quality of life for everyday New Yorkers in their neighborhoods, on their blocks and at their front doors.”
She added, “New Yorkers are frustrated and they’re pleading for help.”
In Inwood, at the northern tip of Upper Manhattan, residents who have long complained about issues like double parking and noisy nightlife greeted the news of the teams warily.
Raldy Montano, 43, said the police could be doing more to corral illegal mopeds. After his car was struck by an unregistered moped last year, he said, the police were unable to track down the driver. He said an increase in moped accidents had driven up the cost of owning a car.
“I pay $2,000 more for insurance,” he said. “It’s just crazy.”
John Higgins, 80, a lifelong resident, has watched Inwood’s quality of life ebb and flow over the decades.
Residents of Dyckman Street can’t sleep, Mr. Higgins said. “There’s too much noise coming from boomboxes.”
Since the pandemic, Mr. Higgins said he has observed more outdoor drug use and illegal dumping in the vegetated areas of Inwood’s parks, where homeless New Yorkers sometimes camp. But he believes homelessness is a nuanced issue.
“People are afraid,” Mr. Higgins said about some neighbors’ reactions to panhandlers. “But you’ve got to be desperate to do that,” he added, noting that older homeless people are less likely to pose a physical threat.
Commissioner’s Tisch’s announcement came a week after the Police Department announced that nearly every major felony crime declined in the first three months of 2025. But even as the rate of violent crime improves, the police say that 311 complaints about quality-of-life issues have nearly doubled over the past six years.
The new plan will augment the Community Response Team, a unit established in 2022 to respond to residents’ concerns about quality-of-life issues related to more serious crimes. That unit, which has expanded significantly, has been criticized for a lack of transparency. In November, the city’s Department of Investigation released a report that found that the unit lacked a clear mission statement or written policies for selecting and training members.
Commissioner Tisch has insisted that the new division will act with discretion, but the plan has been strongly criticized by New Yorkers who worry that it is a return to the “broken windows” theory of policing, which holds that the best way to lower major crimes is to crack down on minor ones. That approach, embraced by Mayor Giuliani, resulted in the disproportionate targeting of Black and Latino men.
“There’s never been a study that proves that broken windows policing or quality-of-life policing is effective in reducing crime,” said Robert Gangi, the founder of the Police Reform Organizing Project, an watchdog organization. “The quality-of-life policing, one way or another, ends up targeting low-income people of color.”
Mr. Gangi added that there were less aggressive ways to address residents’ dissatisfaction over homeless encampments, illegal street vendors and other low-level offenses than by “using threats.”
On Thursday, Commissioner Tisch addressed the criticism head-on, calling the comparison to zero-tolerance policing “a complete mischaracterization.” She called the plan “a different policy for a different purpose,” and said that the new units would not have quotas to meet and that officers would be free to decide how best to respond to complaints.
“In 2025, quality-of-life enforcement is not about reducing more serious crimes,” she said, adding, “It’s about being responsive to actual community complaints.”
Tyron Pope, an adjunct associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said he thought the new teams could reduce crime, particularly as the city has been shaken by several shocking attacks in the subway and on the street, but only if they are deployed thoughtfully.
“Quality-of-life enforcement can be a force for good, but only if it’s done with care, humility and a deep commitment to justice itself,” said Mr. Pope, a former police sergeant who was part of an early community policing team in the 1990s.
He said the program should be paired with support from social workers and community services.
“It’s not about abandoning it; it’s about reimagining it,” Mr. Pope said.
Eryn Davis contributed reporting.
Welcome to Day 2 of the Metropolitan Diary challenge, part of our celebration of the column’s 50th anniversary. On Day 1, we gave you tips for identifying your New York City story. Today, we’ll help you write it. (Missed Day 1? It’s not too late to start.)
What makes for a good Diary? It’s simply a good story that happens to be set in, and capture, the essential New York-ness of the city. While this isn’t a full writing course, we do have guidance on the kinds of elements that the submissions we publish include. They typically have: a beginning, middle and end; sharp details; catchy dialogue; a bit of surprise; some humor, warmth or emotion. But there is no formula, so flouting these loose rules can be worthwhile.
Don’t worry if you don’t think of yourself as a “writer.” Focus on being a “storyteller.” Pretend you are telling your story to the person who’d most appreciate it, using whatever conversational language or pacing that would hold their attention. Do it out loud if you want, maybe give that person a call and tell them your story (or tell it to them again). Then write it down.
That’s the big picture. For more tips, read on.
Here is an example of a published Diary that we (and readers) really liked, and a few thoughts on why that may help crystallize yours.
Unacceptable
Dear Diary:
I went to a new bagel store in Brooklyn Heights1 with my son.
When it was my turn to order, I asked for a cinnamon raisin bagel with whitefish salad and a slice of red onion.2
The man behind the counter looked up at me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t do that.”3
— Richie Powers
One of this item’s best qualities is that it is short and snappy. Only 53 words! Although we will use stories of up to 300 words, many don’t need to be that long and the column doesn’t work if we don’t have a mix of long, medium and short, so we are always looking for stuff like this. Here’s another one!
At Attention
Dear Diary:
It was December 1967. I had just finished basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey and was traveling to Boston in uniform. For reasons I no longer recall, I stopped in New York City on the way.1
Walking on the Upper East Side2 in a snowstorm, I spied another man in a uniform. He was older, and his cap bore the familiar gold band that identified him as an officer.
I rendered a snappy salute. It was not returned. 3The uniform was unfamiliar, so I guessed he was a foreign officer. Military courtesy still required me to salute.
A little farther down the street, I encountered another officer and offered another salute that went unacknowledged.4 His uniform was strange to me as well.
The third time it happened, the man I saluted ignored me while holding the door for a couple 5on their way into a large apartment building.
I realized I had been saluting doormen.6
— Stephen Salisbury
To get your storytelling muscles going, think through or jot down the answers to some of these questions.
Let’s start with setting the scene.
- When and where in the city did this happen? Is this place well-known?
- Was there anything particular about that point in your life that’s relevant?
- What did you see, hear, smell? Was there something notable about the weather?
Now, let’s move to the middle, the meat of the story.
- Did you have an exchange with someone?
- What details are important to how events unfolded, especially in setting up the ending?
And now, the end.
- What’s the resolution? Is there a punchline?
- Does the story end with a sense of shared humanity or some other warm feeling that lingers? You don’t need to name it. A good description will often allow readers to feel it too.
- Why has this experience stayed with you?
- Lines like “and that’s why I love New York” are almost always unnecessary.
That’s it. Keep your story simple and use the kind of plain language you use in conversation. You are sketching a moment in time. The details are important. Let them move the story along. Have fun and good luck.
Once you’re done, read through what you’ve got. What details are less important and can be left out? (Remember, there is a strict 300-word limit.)
Write your Metropolitan Diary however you like, on paper, on your phone or wherever! When you’re happy with what you’ve written, put your diary entry into the box below, fill out your information and submit it. You might just hear from me about including it in a future column.
This is the official submission form, so make sure to double-check your work before hitting submit.
That’s it! Submit your Metropolitan Diary.
By transmitting your submission, you grant The New York Times Company a perpetual, royalty-free license to use the submission in any medium. They may be edited, and may be republished and adapted in all media. You may reprint your story elsewhere after it appears in The Times.
65.
In or about and between December 2023 and April 2024, both dates being approximate and inclusive, within the Eastern District of New York and elsewhere, the defendants MALIK BEASLEY, also known as “Beas,” “Bease,” “MB” and “5,” WILLIAM BROWN, also known as “Willo,” EDWARD DAVIS, also known as “Ed,” “ED” and “E Davis,” ROBERT GORODETSKY, also known as “Rob,” ERNESTO PLASCENCIA, also known as “Ernie,” “Erny,” “Ernie P” and “Erny P,” and PAOLO ZAMORANO, also known as “PZ,”
together with others, did knowingly and intentionally conspire:
(a)
to conduct one or more financial transactions in and affecting
interstate commerce, which transactions in fact involved the proceeds of specified unlawful activity, to wit: (i) wire fraud, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1343 and (ii) sports bribery, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 224, knowing that the property involved in the transactions represented the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, and with the intent to promote the carrying on of the specified unlawful activity, contrary to Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956(a)(1)(A)(i);
(b)
to conduct one or more financial transactions in and affecting interstate commerce, which transactions in fact involved the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, to wit: (i) wire fraud, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1343 and (ii) sports bribery, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 224, knowing that the property involved in the transactions represented the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, and knowing that the transactions were designed in whole and in part to conceal and disguise the
19
How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
Weixun Hu enjoys what might sound like the ultimate professional perk. New Yorkers pay some of the country’s highest taxes on their income, more than $12,000 on average per person between state and local governments. But Mr. Hu’s income tax this year? $0.
That’s because Mr. Hu, 32, who was born in Guangzhou, China, conducts social development research at an international organization, where most employees are exempt from national income taxes or reimbursed for the cost. His gross and net income are one in the same; he earns roughly $110,000 after his insurance and pension contributions.
Mr. Hu became one of New York City’s 3.1 million foreign-born residents nearly three years ago, after reassignment from a post in Bangkok in the summer of 2023. But he quickly ran into a hurdle: finding an apartment with no credit history, no tax returns and no one to co-sign a lease.
“It sounds very cool that you don’t pay taxes,” Mr. Hu said. “It also creates a lot of problems.”
He discovered that many of his co-workers landed in a handful of pricey residential developments including Stuyvesant Town. Yet renting there felt worlds apart from Thailand’s capital city, where a luxury studio in a high-rise condo with a rooftop infinity pool and premium gym might run $600 per month.
So he found a studio in Long Island City, Queens, where he has in-unit laundry and falls asleep to the sound of waves hitting the shore near Hunters Point South. His employer subsidizes $700 of his $3,900 rent, and utilities and internet cost about $150 monthly.
“It’s much better value compared to renting in Manhattan,” he said.
Saving for Tomorrow
A good deal of young adults in New York City don’t know how to drive, and expect to remain renters for most of their lives. Not Mr. Hu.
He puts away $2,000 or so a month into a high-yield savings account, aspiring to buy a car. His sights are set on a Mazda CX-5. But he expects he’ll need to pay upfront in cash, another consequence of lacking a credit or tax history — and it’ll take about three more years to build up enough.
Eventually, he wants to own a home. “I know most people in New York City don’t care,” he said. “But for me, it’s very important.”
Mr. Hu also supports his parents in their retirement, sending about $3,000 every three months. As their only child, he feels both a sense of guilt for living about 8,000 miles from home — and an obligation to pay them back for their sacrifices.
“People will say, ‘Oh, you’re single. You don’t have a wife. You don’t have kids,’” he said. “‘So all your money is yours.’”
“And I’m like, ‘Excuse me, my parents are still alive.’”
In other ways, though, Mr. Hu fits the profile of an everyday bachelor: He rarely cooks meals at home. “My oven is basically storage space.”
Rather, he searches for affordable deals on Too Good To Go, a popular app where restaurants sell excess food at a discounted price. His No. 1 spot is Chinese Musician in Greenpoint, which offers a three-course meal for $9.
Sometimes, Mr. Hu does the $16 tonkotsu ramen at Nishida Sho-ten on 49th Street for lunch, an $8 lamb over rice meal for dinner from the halal truck in front of Bellevue Hospital or a hot dog for $3.25 from Gray’s Papaya. He’ll swing by the Dollar General in Astoria to stock up on his favorite drink, Coca-Cola Orange Cream.
And he saves up for an upscale dining experience every couple of months. He recently feasted at the Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud’s steakhouse, La Tête d’Or, where he spent roughly $300 and ordered what he called the standout filet mignon.
The Lions Over the Knicks
For any sports buff, it’s an incredible time to live in New York City.
But for Mr. Hu, ticket prices to see the Knicks play at Madison Square Garden felt “a little bit off-putting” — and that was even before their championship run. So he started religiously following basketball at Columbia, going to games that often run $10 to $12 on the Morningside Heights campus.
Yankees games, where a 400-level seat might run $45, are a no; he opts to watch the Columbia Lions up close at Robertson Field in Inwood without charge.
He is willing to spend up to about $300 on some singular sports showdowns. He can still recall how Kylian Mbappé flew down the field at MetLife Stadium during a Real Madrid match against Borussia Dortmund last summer.
Typically, though, he elects for low- or no-cost events like this spring’s edition of the Madison Avenue Gallery Walk.
And he regularly joins free lectures at the Asia Society, where he has a complimentary membership through his employer, and at local universities like N.Y.U., where he’s met the minds behind two of his favorite video games, The Elder Scrolls and Monument Valley.
A Sense of Wanderlust
Ever since Mr. Hu can recall, he’s felt a magnetic pull to experience the world. And few things embody such a yearning as aviation.
He sometimes goes to Canarsie to watch planes land at Kennedy International Airport, studying the way pilots pull up the nose of their aircrafts and slow the descent before touching down. He’s even found others who share his passion on walks in the neighborhood.
And traveling draws him even closer to his hobby.
He spent $4,400 on a trip to Guangzhou last June to fly for the first time in an Airbus A380, the only full-length double-deck aircraft in the world. Qatar Airways is one of the few airlines that still has an active fleet — so Mr. Hu arranged his trip by way of Doha.
“Some people treat it as bragging,” he said. “But no, it’s just to admire such an incredible machine that’s very rare to be seen these days.”
“It’s a weird, niche hobby, but I’m happy spending my money on it.”
As a young man living in his seventh country — after Belgium, China, Italy, Poland, Thailand and the United Kingdom — he appreciates that as “a foreigner in this city, you don’t have to worry about whether you stand out.”
He’s relished exploring from Crown Heights to Jackson Heights, taking the train to a random stop and popping into bodegas to chat up the owners. He considers Staten Island — and its Chinese Scholar’s Garden in Snug Harbor where adult admission costs $5 — to be a hidden gem.
And when he boarded the U.S.S. Bataan during a past Fleet Week, he felt obliged to tell a Marine that he was Chinese. “He said: ‘Oh, no worries at all. Everybody can be an American’.”
“To be honest, I still don’t think it’s a value option for the money,” Mr. Hu said of New York City. “But there’s something so unique, and I think it’s that inclusiveness.”
“You don’t need to go to the world,” he said. “The world comes to you.”
We are talking to New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save.
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