They've forgotten the "serve" part of protect and serve.
The NYPD is one of the city's least-successful agencies when it comes to addressing non-emergency service requests placed through 311, according to a new analysis of surveys conducted by the city to assess agency response.
Only 23 percent of residents were satisfied with the NYPD response last year, according to the new data, which has been sorted and visualized by data whiz Jehiah Czebotar.
Over the last three months, the satisfaction drops to 20 percent, the data show.
Czebotar said his own experiences with the NYPD was the mother of invention (or, more accurately, his data dashboard).
"I started exploring satisfaction reports because I was unhappy with how the city handled many of my illegal parking reports," he said. "As they say, one data point does not make a trend. This helps give more detailed light to how city agencies respond, and gives a way to fairly compare, for example NYPD's response to DEP's responses."
Streetsblog has long reported on the NYPD's failure to respond to complaints related to illegal parking or blocked bike lanes — and this data confirms those reports. For example:
- On illegal parking, about which there were more than 150,000 service requests, dissatisfaction with the NYPD response is 86 percent.
- On blocked sidewalk complaints, dissatisfaction is at 97 percent.
- On the NYPD's response to chronic speeding by drivers, only 13 percent were satisfied with the response (and none "strongly").
- And 90 percent were dissatisfied by the NYPD's response to complaints about chronic red-light running.
- And only 8 percent of people who complained about a blocked bike lane were satisfied with the NYPD response last year.
Interestingly, the NYPD's customer satisfaction soars — to a still-underwater 42 percent, but still... — when cops are asked to respond to an illegally parked car blocking another car, evidence that police are more responsive to the demands of car owners than cyclists.
Advocates, who are long accustomed to sifting through more evidence of the NYPD's failure to respond to important street-safety matters, weren't surprise by the latest numbers:
"The 311 system was a great civic innovation when the city adopted it early this century, but NYPD has single-handedly destroyed its credibility under Adams and de Blasio by falsifying responses and unilaterally deciding to ignore so many requests," said Jon Orcutt, a former Bloomberg administration official who now advocates for Bike New York.
Ben Furnas, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, added, "New Yorkers deserve a police department that swiftly addresses hazardous conditions on the street to keep New Yorkers safe. This includes illegal parking and blocked sidewalks, as well as cars and trucks driving recklessly."
Of course, not getting a proper response from the NYPD is bad enough, but 311 complainants have also reported being harassed by cops for making the complaints in the first place, as Streetsblog reported and the Department of Investigation confirmed.
Meanwhile, the Department of Transportation — which oversees the design of city streets, but not the enforcement thereon — gets a C grade overall, with 47 percent of people satisfied.
Breaking that down:
- Seven in 10 customers were satisfied with the DOT response to a report of an improperly parked or abandoned e-scooter, with 60 percent expressing "strong" satisfaction.
- On dangling street signs, the agency has an 89-percent satisfaction rating.
- And 71 percent of people say they were satisfied with the agency's response to a complaint about faded street markings.
That said, the agency does a poor job with fixing its own bent or broken bike racks, with just 25 percent of complainants saying they were satisfied.
But the dashboard isn't all red ink; some agencies keep the customers satisfied.
For instance, in 2024, the Taxi and Limousine Commission, the Office of Technology and Information and the Department of Sanitation got gentlemen's Cs. And on the rare occasions when the NYPD issues summonses to address a complaint, 81 percent of respondents said they were satisfied.
"When NYPD does issue a summons as a result of an illegal parking report civilians are extremely satisfied with the response," Czebotar said.
But it's alarming that civilians are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the response from so many city agencies."
The NYPD declined to comment.
