BY MATTHEW MUSOLINO
New York Police Department Inspector William Haut told the City Council that 2026 was the city’s “safest summer in NYC’s recorded history,” with shooting incidents down 9.6% and shooting deaths 11.9% lower than in 2025. In testimony before the council’s Committee on Public Safety on Wednesday, Haut credited the NYPD precision policing model, which targets geographically specific crime hot spots throughout New York City and connects citizens with the police through an initiative known as neighborhood coordination.
NYPD Inspector William Haut of the Crime Control Strategies Unit and Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters Michael Gerber testified. Committee chair Oswald Feliz ran the event and was accompanied by the rest of the committee members.
“This is the safest summer for gun violence in NYC’s record history,” Haut told the committee, speaking of data covering June 1 through August 31.
Major crime across the city has decreased 6.2% compared to last year, according to NYPD. This includes a 12.8% decrease in robbery, 13.9% decrease in burglary and 5% decrease in grand larceny. However, there were two categories of crime that have increased: felony assault and rape.
Felony assaults increased by more than 50% over 2025, and approximately 40% of those assaults were acts of domestic violence. NYPD arrested 263 individuals three or more times for relony assaults, an increase of 205%. NYPD says it approaches domestic violence cases through specific training, prioritizing investigations and working closely with advocacy groups on behalf of survivors.
Reports of rape have increased 3.2 percent in 2026. There’s a long history of rape being underreported, and Haut said “the department’s working hard to get survivors to speak with us and provide them with support when they do so.” He added, “We must close the gap between sexual violence as occurring, sexual violence as reported. We are working towards that goal every day.”
Councilmember Joann Ariola brought up reports of officers persuading people to not file complaints, referencing incidents that happened in Washington Square and Times Square over the summer.
“That is totally unacceptable,” Gerber said, adding that NYPD’s Internal Affairs unit is investigating. He described an internal auditing process that cross-checks 911 calls against reports actually filed. “Most officers do this the right way” and only “a small number don’t,” Gerber said.
Ariola also questioned whether or not the NYPD keeps records of crimes being reported by the public compared with the amount of reports that are actually being taken by the officers. Gerber replied that the department has an auditing process that reviews whether the call was taken and taken properly.
Ariola also questioned Mayor Mamdani decision to scrap a proposed plan to hire over 500 additional police officers with the intention of assigning many to high-crime areas. Ariola asked how it would have affected those areas, using the Bronx as an example. Feliz said that the Bronx alone accounts for roughly 40% of the city’s murders and shootings in 2026.
Gerber did not answer directly but credited the current police force for this summer’s progress.