By the end of the month, the New York Police Department, the largest police force in the nation, will begin using drones to combat a surge in robberies and assaults in Central Park, ABC News reports. Since violent crime skyrocketed there this summer, NYPD officers began flooding the 800 acre park, with hundreds of officers patrolling on foot, bike and horseback. The drones will " allow us to cover a big territory very quickly and also allow us to get images and video in places where we don’t have cameras," Tarik Sheppard, the NYPD deputy commissioner for public information, said during a recent news conference in Central Park.
According to the crime statistics through Aug. 18, there have been 33 robberies in Central Park so far in 2024, a 154% increase from this time last year. There have also been 11 felony assaults in the park this year, a 57% increase from 2023. The jump in Central Park crime comes even as overall violent crime in the city of roughly 8.8 million people is down 2.49% from last year, according to NYPD citywide crime statistics. Robberies were usually occurring between the hours of 7 p.m. and 1 a.m., with many of the robberies are being committed by juveniles, who on several occasions have swarmed victims in mobs sometimes as large as a dozen perpetrators, said NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell. Chell said police have made several arrests in the crime spree, including one alleged perpetrator just 11 years old, who was caught on video using credit cards stolen from robberies in Central Park.
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