[woodruffw]

> I’m not sure what it is that’s stopping the city from actually doing anything about it, like the truck issue it seems it would be trivial to enforce.

Law enforcement in NYC has a revanchist attitude towards the actual citizens of the city. Most of the city's police live outside of the city[1][2] and drive into work, which puts them directly at odds with the average resident.

This attitude extends into every facet of NYC's law enforcement, which is why most of the city's actual petty crimes (illegal parking, dangerous driving, obscured plates) go unreported: everybody knows that the police simply don't care.

Edit: So that I'm not just kvetching, here are some things that I think would improve the situation:

* Allow citizens to report 53' trailers and other illegal vehicles (e.g. obscured plates) in exchange for a cut of the fines, similarly to how the city uses citizens to report idling violations[3].

* Require all uniformed NYPD to attain a post-secondary decree (rather than a partial degree at a rock-bottom GPA, as currently required). Similarly, require them to pass a fitness test similar to the NYFD's.

* Require all uniformed NYPD to live in the city, and restructure their patrols to emphasize the neighborhoods they live in. Minimize in-car patrol time in favor of foot patrols and Japanese style police booths.

[1]: https://gothamist.com/news/majority-nypd-officers-dont-live-...

[2]: Notably, civilian employees of the NYPD (and most NYC civil servants) are actually required to maintain residency in the city. This is purely a carveout for the police.

[3]: https://www.nbcnewyork.com/investigations/nyc-anti-idling-la...

[jdeibele]

A local firefighter and I were volunteers for our kids' soccer club. He said that he specifically worked on the other side of town because he didn't want to respond to fires or health emergencies that involved his neighbors.

There are definitely some tradeoffs with having police officers or firefighters live and work in the same neighborhood. Does being familiar with the local troublemaker help or hurt the police response? Does going to the grocery store and seeing the family of someone you couldn't save make you feel like staying home? Or maybe you do see the people you did help.

[woodruffw]

> A local firefighter and I were volunteers for our kids' soccer club. He said that he specifically worked on the other side of town because he didn't want to respond to fires or health emergencies that involved his neighbors.

This is a good point. I think it demonstrates a pretty drastic difference in scope between (ordinary) police and firefighter job requirements: a cop might go their entire career without firing their weapon, while a firefighter's job is almost entirely defined by situations where multiple people might die.

Put another way: I think it's perfectly reasonable for fightfighters to not want to work in the neighborhood they live in, given the severity of the average incident they respond to. I don't think this applies to beat cops, any more than it does to mailmen.

(The other point is also great: there's an argument that cops are more likely to feel territorial or even more violent if they live in the same area as someone they've branded a "troublemaker." I don't have a good answer to this.)

[lowkey_]

As someone who has lived in NYC, there's a ton of crime there [1]. It's not at all similar to being a police officer in a town. It's also part of why police don't seem to care about petty crime in the city.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/05/us/new-york-city-crime-wave-2...

[yowzadave]

> there's a ton of crime there. It's not at all similar to being a police officer in a town.

I assume people get this idea from the media, but it's not true--crime rates in NYC are significantly less than that of most other US cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

A pandemic-related uptick (that has affected the country as a whole) doesn't change the fact that the cops from St. Louis are dealing with a murder rate about 20x what we have in NYC.

[woodruffw]

I’ve lived in this city my whole life. News cycles notwithstanding (there’s a “crime wave” article every single year, using whatever cherry-picked month-to-month statistic proves the point), it’s only gotten safer with each decade.

[DiggyJohnson]

My brother was standing next to a cop in Manhattan when he saw a person get mugged and have their bag stolen about 100 yards down the road (next block over, specifically). He alerted the cop to what he was seeing as the perpetrator ran off around the corner. The victim had a badly bruised face, and was standing but clearly in distress.

The cop shrugged, asked “what am I supposed to do about it?” and walked the other way.

I’m sorry if this seems anecdotal, but this story has had a lasting impact on my opinion of the NYC police. I vouch that there is no hyperbole on this story, neither my brother nor myself want this to be true, and we couldn’t think of any justification for the officer’s apathy. I consider this single incident to be a stain upon the NYPD, and an embarrassment to any American - I don’t usually get worked up about systemic injustice or what it’s worth.

[woodruffw]

Anecdotes are fine. Here's the thing: NYC is a massive city, and we do have crime. You're describing a crime that you have indirect knowledge of; I could similarly relate any number of stores about acquaintances, friends, and family members suffering from crimes (and the NYPD doing very little about it).

It's also true that the city is safer. The city was already "safe" relative to the 1970s and 1980s by 2000, and it's only gotten safer since[1]. You can see that some crimes ebb and flow and that assaults, in particular, haven't changed that much over the last 20 years.

To conclude with my own anecdote: on the year I was born, the city's murder rate was over 3 times higher than the current rate (our supposed "crime wave of 2022"). The neighborhood I grew up in was considered a bad one; it's now one of the most expensive in the city. The neighborhood I live in now was considered "too dangerous to enter" by the city's "respectable" population; it's now gentrified and "hip." Crime hasn't disappeared! But it is much, much less common.

[1]: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_...

[dTal]

Safer it might be, but that's probably due to sociological effects rather than improved policing.

[logifail]

> He said that he specifically worked on the other side of town because he didn't want to respond to fires or health emergencies that involved his neighbors.

It's totally normal for smaller towns and villages across Germany (and Austria and (?) Switzerland) to have mostly volunteer fire services.

"the predominant number of Germany's 1,383,730 firefighters are members of voluntary fire brigades" [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_fire_services

[Smithalicious]

How is getting a degree going to help them enforce a ban on big vehicles? It seems to me that requiring a higher education level is only going to shrink the pool of potential cops and/or increase the amount they have to be paid while doing nothing for the issue under discussion.

[lowkey_]

> Require all uniformed NYPD to live in the city, and restructure their patrols to emphasize the neighborhoods they live in.

In addition to the concern of other commenters of how this could affect their interactions with the community for the worse, I'd be really worried about how our law & order could be affected by intimidation of off-duty police.

There's 100,000+ arrests per year in New York City [1], thousands of them for extremely violent or dangerous crimes. I can only imagine the retaliation that gangs could have on officers who make arrests, or refuse to turn a blind eye.

[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_...

[notch656a]

>Allow citizens to report 53' trailers

AKA standard trailers. Enjoy having a logistics framework where you are incompatible with the primary mode of semi freight in the rest of America.

The lack of enforcement on this element is a testament to pragmatism.

[woodruffw]

> AKA standard trailers. Enjoy having a logistics framework where you are incompatible with the primary mode of semi freight in the rest of America.

Every major city in the US places length restrictions on vans and trailers; most are even stricter than NYC's. Here are Newark's, for example[1]. Most cities actually enforce these laws to no perceptible detriment.

If you actually lived in NYC, you would know that the current absence of enforcement is the exact opposite of pragmatism: these trucks simply cannot safely navigate most NYC streets (even the modern ones that go in straight lines). Even if you ignore unnecessary accidents and injuries, they're just plain inefficient due to their size and unwieldiness on the city's streets.

[1]: https://ecode360.com/36673291

[notch656a]

Standard trailers deliver into the outer boroughs where it is pragmatic and then smaller vehicles go into places like Manhattan. Of course nowhere can you make a trailer completely 'safe' in your own words. But not every borough is Manhattan where navigating a standard trailer is nigh impossible.

If the trailers weren't at all useful then you'd see about as many of them as you see horses. The market would simply flush them out.

Also the code you cited in Newark doesn't mention length that I can find, can you quote where you're referring to? Not saying it isn't there, but I see weight requirements but not length.

>If you actually lived in NYC

Do you live in every borough? If one is not able to speak about somewhere where they do not live, (which is a fallacy I reject) then you recognize you can't speak for the other boroughs and therefore cannot make a sweeping statement that covers all boroughs of NYC.

[woodruffw]

> Standard trailers deliver into the outer boroughs where it is pragmatic and then smaller vehicles go into places like Manhattan. Of course nowhere can you make a trailer completely 'safe' in your own words. But not every borough is Manhattan where navigating a standard trailer is nigh impossible.

You have this exactly backwards. Manhattan's streets are, on average, much safer for trucks to navigate: they're wider, on a standard grid, and have uniform lights and speed zones. The outer boroughs don't have uniform grid plans (take a look at central Brooklyn or Queens on a satellite map: it's all carriage roads) and have much less consistent traffic light coverage. There are exceptions to this (FiDi in Manhattan, for example), but it's the overall pattern.

The irony is that Manhattan is the best case for trucks in the city, but is also the borough with any enforcement whatsoever. For example: trucks are almost completely banned on West End Avenue, and I never saw one (beyond movers) in the 20 years that I lived there.

And to be clear: I'm not saying that trailers aren't useful. They clearly are. I'm saying that they're not efficient in the sense that the city would be better served by fleets of smaller trucks, and that they're a social harm in the sense of the externalities they bring with them.

> I see weight requirements but not length.

You're right, sorry: Newark's are weight, not length (although I would be remiss to note that an empty 53' trailer truck ways significantly more than 4 tons).

> Do you live in every borough?

I have lived the city my entire life, permanently in two boroughs, and have spent many years commuting in and through the other three. You can treat it as overconfidence if you like, but I feel qualified to make these claims based on about two decades of cycling and car travel.

[notch656a]

>You have this exactly backwards.

Hilariously I haven been told the exact opposite by another resident who lives in Manhattan. It's safe to say your viewpoint is hotly contested by some residents of Manhattan themselves.