Rape and sex crimes continue to rise in Queens

Photo by Joy Ito.

By Jonathan Sperling

Reported rapes and sex crimes continue to rise in Queens, despite an NYPD announcement that overall year-to-date crime reports dropped 6.7 percent citywide.

The NYPD said that April 2019 had a record-low number of reported murders, robberies and burglaries for the month of April.

Year-to-date rape reports in Queens South have increased more than 16 percent over the same time period in 2018, rising from 54 reports last year to 63 reports so far this year. Rape is also up slightly in the same time period in Queens North, from 59 reports in 2018 to 62 reports in 2019.

The NYPD also noted that hate crime reports were on the rise citywide, from 87 reports year-to-date in 2018 to 145 reports in 2019, an increase of nearly 67 percent. Anti-Semitic hate crimes make up nearly 57 percent of such reports.

In Queens, one of the most dramatic crime report increases is in the misdemeanor sex crimes category. Queens North had a 67.6 percent increase in that category between 2018 and 2019, from 102 to 171. Reports of shooting incidents and shooting victims have also increased. There have been 21 victims of a shooting in Queens North so far this year, up from only nine over the same period in 2018, marking a more than a 133 percent increase.

Reports in Queens South tell a similar story. Misdeameanor sex crimes are up from 79 in 2018 to 104 in 2019. Shooting victim reports have stayed comparably stagnant at 30 reports, while shooting incidents went up from 24 to 25.

While index crimes have reportedly decreased overall in Queens, the borough still accounts for the most pretrial misdemeanor defendants to Rikers Island than any other borough and more defendants on bail less than $1,000, according to a report from the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice.

In the final two quarters of 2018, Queens sent 1,085 pre-trial defendants with misdemeanor charges to city jails. Manhattan sent 1,037 such defendants and Brooklyn sent 885.

“Queens is officially the misdemeanor incarceration capital of New York City,” Councilmember Rory Lancman, a candidate for Queens District attorney, said in a statement.

“While other District Attorney jurisdictions in New York City are taking a variety of measures to end mass incarceration, Queens remains an outlier in continuing to send New Yorkers to jail for low-level offenses for no demonstrable public safety benefit and at an extraordinary cost to taxpayers,” Lancman continued. “The end result is a criminal justice system in Queens that both over incarcerates and undermines citywide reform efforts.”