The Bronx was officially split into two distinct NYPD patrol commands on Wednesday, a restructuring designed to help reduce the borough’s high crime volume, the mayor and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced.
The Bronx accounts for more than a third of the city’s murders this year, but, except for Staten Island, every other borough in the city is split into two patrol commands.
“Today is long overdue, and a historic moment for the residents of the Bronx, for the officers doing this work, and for a borough that has carried one of the heaviest public safety burdens anywhere in the city,” Tisch said.
Mamdani said the second patrol command will provide the Bronx “with the same standards that Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan already have.”
“It’s about bringing a real commitment to lowering crime in this borough,” Mayor Mamdani told reporters on the steps of the new Bronx borough command headquarters at the former 40th precinct station house in Mott Haven.
Mamdani said the NYPD has “already made tremendous progress” in bringing crime down in the borough, noting that there was an 11% decline in major crime this year through Sunday.
The borough has hosted 32 of the city’s 89 homicides, 36% of its shooting victims and 36% of its shooting incidents through Sunday, despite being the city’s fourth largest borough by population, NYPD stats show.
NYPD 40th Precinct. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
An additional 200 officers will be assigned to the Bronx as it is divided into separate North and South borough commands, the mayor said.
Patrol boroughs are commands that oversee local police precinct operations. The department will also be adding specialized units into the borough this spring including homicide squad detectives, evidence collection teams, narcotics teams, neighborhood safety teams and auto crime units.
Last year, more than a third of the city’s shootings were in the Bronx, three times as many as in Queens and Manhattan, Tisch said.
Nearly 1 million emergency calls came from the Bronx last year — more than in Queens and equal to Manhattan’s total.
“This is about equity, and the residents of the Bronx receiving the same quality police service that every New Yorker deserves under this new model,” Tisch said.