NEW YORK CITY—A new quality of life division within the New York City Police Department (NYPD) will begin its pilot program on April 14. The division will respond to non-emergency calls and community complaints, as well as focusing on clearing low level crime from New York City streets.
The “Q Team,” as NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch calls the division, will respond to 311 calls and non-emergency issues including noise complaints, illegal mopeds, homeless encampments, outdoor drug use, and other issues.
“We’re turning our attention toward the issues that New Yorkers see and feel every day—the things that don’t always make headlines but deeply impact how people live,” Tisch said at a press conference on April 10.
Officers from existing community roles such as neighborhood coordination officers and traffic officers will be combined with officers specially trained for the non-emergency calls. New York City Mayor Eric Adams said that Q Teams “will be made up of officers who have already forged relationships with their communities.”
Tisch said Q Team officer training will include: “[How to deal] with noise complaints, how you use noise meters with abandoned vehicles, how you work with ... vendors to get the cars removed, what sorts of paperwork you have to fill out.”
Q Teams in different areas will be trained according to that area’s needs, she said. Some precincts have drug abuse problems, while others have abandoned vehicle issues.
There will be no extra cost on taxpayers for the the Quality of Life Division—personnel will be sourced from internal restructuring of the NYPD, Tisch said. She said thousands of officers on desk jobs had been back on patrol to alleviate the police shortage.
During the pilot phase, Q Teams will operate in the 13th, 40th, 60th, 75th, and 101st police precincts, along with Police Service Area 1. The initiative will be refined and tweaked over the next two months, and then expanded to other precincts, Tisch said.
Q Teams will use data provided by a new program called QSTAT, which is modeled after the CompStat program.
The NYPD launched CompStat in 1994 and the system uses real-time crime data to determine deployment of officers. It has since been put into use by other police departments, including in Nashville and Syracuse, New York.
“New York City revolutionized under Bill Bratton, the former commissioner of the role of CompStat more than 30 years ago, holding precinct commanders accountable and using real time data to adjust police deployment,” Adams said at the press conference.
“This tried-and-true method has spread and is being tried all over the globe. And we are going to use the same recipe for success this time to address quality-of-life issues.”
Adams said New York City has recorded a continuous six-month fall in major crimes.
“The first three months of the year [we] saw the lowest number of shootings in recorded history,” Adams said, likely referring to 1994 when the Compstat method of reporting began. Despite this, Adams said that people don’t feel safe. He said he hopes the Q Team is a solution to better streets.
