In 1983, then Gov. Mario Cuomo signed into law the Neighborhood Preservation Crime Prevention Act.
It was intended to partner law enforcement agencies with community stakeholders to rescue neighborhoods sliding into blight and crime. As a special assistant to Cuomo's director of criminal justice, I was regularly asked to update the governor's list of "accomplishments." NPCPA was always on that list. In fact, Cuomo never funded or implemented the program. It is still on the books.
Moreover, early in his first term, Cuomo abruptly terminated a vibrant community crime prevention program administered by the Division of Criminal Justice Services.
New York has been out of the community crime prevention business ever since.
Rather than push programs that respond to the public safety needs and concerns of New Yorkers who live in crime-ridden neighborhoods, former Gov. George Pataki debuted the state's iteration of New York City Mayor Giuliani's statistics-driven CompStat program under the title Operation IMPACT.
Both programs essentially set cops to chasing dots on computerized crime maps.
I know I'm joined by many of my neighbors in calling upon the state to invest as much in community policing and neighborhood preservation as it does on Operation IMPACT. The fact is that the same three neighborhoods in Albany are designated "IMPACT Zones" under the latest round of IMPACT funding as were under Pataki's first round more than a decade ago. We have yet to see any community taken off the IMPACT sick list.
Terry O'Neill
Albany