THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Thursday, December 3, 2020 |A10A
of the year, which began in
July. Third-quarter clearance
figures weren’t yet available.
“Clearance rates fell in the
second quarter due to the ef-
fects of the pandemic, includ-
ing an increase in police offi-
cers going out sick and other
officers being temporarily re-
allocated to address lootings
and large scale protests,” Sgt.
McRorie said.
NYPD figures for the second
quarter show that Brooklyn
had the lowest clearance rate
of any borough, with 24.9% of
serious crimes there solved.
Staten Island had the highest
clearance rate of any borough,
with 32.8% of crimes solved.
The department’s second-
quarter figures showed a
50.9% clearance rate for mur-
ders. Aggravated assault had a
clearance rate of 57%, the
highest clearance of any seri-
ous crime.
Larceny theft had the low-
est clearance rate, at 11.6%.
NYPD Commissioner Der-
mot Shea has said that he is
more concerned about keepingmurders during the same pe-
riod last year. The number of
shooting victims in the city
has more than doubled.
Meanwhile, the number of
NYPD arrests for serious
crimes has dropped by 12.9%,
falling from 38,786, for Jan. 1
to Nov. 29, 2019, to 33,768 for
the same period in 2020.
Incoming Queens Borough
President and outgoing City
Councilman Donovan Richards,
who chairs the council’s Com-
mittee on Public Safety, said
neighborhoods such as Far
Rockaway, which he repre-
sents, have seen a particularly
stark increase in violent
crimes, as arrests and closed
cases have become less com-
monplace.
NYPD statistics for the
Queens South Patrol Bureau,
which includes Far Rockaway,
show that shootings and
shooting victims have more
than doubled this year, while
murders have risen by 4.8%.
“The point I make is, this
stuff hits close to home,” Mr.
Richards said.More crimes are going un-
solved in New York City amid
the coronavirus pandemic, ac-
cording toNew York Police
Departmentdata.
NYPD records show that de-
tectives and officers solved
26.3% of all serious crimes in
the second quarter of this
year, including murders, rapes,
robberies, assaults, burglaries
and thefts.
The portion of such crimes
solved by the NYPD fell by
26.5% compared with the same
period in 2019, when officers
and detectives solved 35.8% of
those cases, according to
NYPD data.
The second quarter of the
year began April 1, just over
two weeks after Mayor Bill de
Blasio declared a state of
emergency for New York City
in response to the pandemic.
The portion of crimes
solved in the second quarter
also decreased compared with
the previous quarter, before
the virus struck, when 31.7% of
such crimes were solved by
the department.
The NYPD refers to crimes
it solves as clearances and cal-
culates its percentage-based
clearance rate using the Fed-
eral Bureau of Investigation’s
Uniform Crime Reporting sys-
tem, where the metric is based
on the number of crimes com-
mitted and the number of
cases solved or closed through
exceptions.
NYPD officials have cited a
number of factors that have
complicated investigations
amid the pandemic, including
large numbers of officers
missing work due to sickness.
They also listed staffing
changes necessitated by offi-
cers’ response to large-scale
demonstrations following the
May 25 killing of George Floyd
by Minneapolis police as an
impediment to police work.
NYPD spokeswoman Sgt.
Jessica McRorie said the de-
partment is monitoring its
clearance rates and seeing im-
provement in the third quarterBYBENCHAPMANNYPD Is Solving Fewer Crimes
Police investigators dusted for fingerprints at the scene of a fatal shooting in Brooklyn last week.SETH WENIG/ASSOCIATED PRESSoccurrences of crimes low than
with clearing criminal cases.
Joseph Pollini, a former
NYPD lieutenant commander
and adjunct lecturer at John
Jay College of Criminal Jus-
tice, said fewer solved cases
and arrests can negatively af-
fect efforts to deter crime.“There’s a probability that
the person is going to go out
and commit more crimes,” Mr.
Pollini said.
Violent crime in New York
City has increased in the
months since the pandemic
struck, as the number of ar-
rests has fallen.
From Jan. 1 through Nov.
29, the NYPD recorded 420
murders, compared with 304‘Clearance rates fell
in the second quarter
due to the effects of
the pandemic.’New York expects to receive
enough doses of a Covid-
vaccine on Dec. 15 to begin im-
munizing 170,000 people, Gov.
Andrew Cuomo said Wednes-
day.
During a news conference,
the governor said that the ini-
tial batch of vaccines—manu-
factured byPfizerInc. in part-
nership withBioNTech SE—
will be distributed to residentsBYBENCHAPMAN
ANDJIMMYVIELKINDGREATER NEW YORK
of nursing homes and staff in
those facilities. The companies
will send the necessary second
doses of the shots roughly
three weeks later to fully inoc-
ulate those recipients.
A second tranche of vac-
cines developed byModerna
Inc. is expected later in De-
cember, state officials said.
Both Pfizer and Moderna have
asked the Food and Drug Ad-
ministration to authorize use
of their vaccines, and the dis-
tribution is contingent upon
that approval.
The initial number of doses
won’t be sufficient to fully in-
oculate the 85,000 nursing-
home residents and 130,
facility staff in the state, offi-
cials said. However, the gover-nor said he expects some indi-
viduals will decline to take the
vaccine.
Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat,
said he was following the ad-
vice of a federal advisory
panel that on Tuesday recom-
mended that health-care work-
ers and residents of long-term
care facilities be the first to
receive vaccine doses.
The governor said hospital-
based health-care workers in
the state would be vaccinated
after people who live and
work in nursing homes.
New York nursing homes
were hit hard by the coronavi-
rus pandemic in the spring.
After thousands of deaths in
nursing homes and mounting
criticism, the state in May re-versed an earlier mandate that
said the facilities couldn’t re-
fuse to accept patients from
hospitals who had been diag-
nosed with Covid-19.
Stephen Hanse, president of
New York State Health Facili-
ties Association and New York
State Center for Assisted Liv-
ing, said Wednesday that Mr.
Cuomo’s vaccination plan
would safeguard nursing-home
residents and staff throughout
the state.
Under the plan Mr. Cuomo
outlined, the majority of the
state’s more than 19 million
residents won’t receive a vac-
cine for months.
Between 75% and 85% of
residents must be vaccinated
for normal economic activityto resume in the state, Mr.
Cuomo said.
The state faces serious
challenges in distributing vac-
cines and building public buy-
in for vaccination programs,
the governor said. Given those
challenges, and the limited
supply of vaccines, he said he
expects a critical mass of New
Yorkers to be inoculated by as
early as June or as late as
September.
The governor said the ar-
rival of vaccines in New York
offers both hope and chal-
lenges as the state has seen a
sharp rise in the number of
Covid-19 cases and hospital-
izations in recent weeks.
“That’s the bad news; we
have another mountain toclimb,” Mr. Cuomo said. “The
good news is, the goal line is
in sight and the goal line is a
vaccine.”
The share of Covid-19 tests
in the state that were positive
reached 4.1% over a seven-day
average as of Tuesday, state
officials said. It was 1.6% on
Nov. 1.
New York City on Wednes-
day reported a 4.8% positivity
rate on a seven-day rolling av-
erage through Monday, ac-
cording to the most recently
released data.
The recent surge in cases is
being fueled by residential
gatherings—many related to
the holiday season—and may
begintoslowandreverseby
mid-January, Mr. Cuomo said.Vaccines for 170,000 in First N.Y. Delivery
The inoculations, set to
arrive Dec. 15, will be
given to nursing-home
staff and residentsThere were 3,287 people
hospitalized in New Jersey due
to coronavirus or suspected of
having the disease, more than
double the figure from Nov. 1.
More than 6,000 people were
hospitalized in the state at the
end of April. When taking into
account Covid-19 patients and
all other patients, about two-
thirds of all the state’s hospi-
tal beds are occupied, accord-
ing to the New Jersey Hospital
Association.
The governor said it is too
early to say whether the
Thanksgiving holiday would
lead to an increase in cases,
but the state will have a better
sense over the next five to
seven days. If Thanksgiving
travel results in a surge, he
said, “that will be a significant
concern, and we will have to
revisit where we are.”
Mr. Murphy’s new travel ad-
visory follows an executive or-
der he signed Tuesday tighten-
ing restrictions on outdoor
gatherings and shutting down
indoor sports to help curb the
spread of the coronavirus. The
new order reduced the maxi-
mum number of people allowed
at outdoor gatherings from 150
people to 25 people, excluding
outdoor wedding ceremonies,
funerals, memorial services and
religious and political activities.
The order suspends orga-
nized indoor sporting activi-
ties for youths and adults be-
ginning Saturday.
The governor said a Covid-
vaccine could be widely avail-
able to the public in New Jer-
sey as early as April and May.
“We have a long way to go.
There is enormous complexity,”
he said. When the vaccine is
broadly available, the state will
be in “a far different place—
probably not ‘normal-normal,’
but probably a ‘new normal’
that we can more easily live
with and get our arms around.”New Jersey Gov. Phil Mur-
phy strongly discouraged resi-
dents from traveling out of
state for nonessential reasons
as Covid-19 cases continued to
mount in the region.
Visitors and residents re-
turning to New Jersey should
quarantine for 14 days, under
the state’s newest version of
its travel advisory, Mr. Murphy
said at a news conference on
Wednesday. New Jersey resi-
dents who travel to Pennsylva-
nia, New York or Connecticut
for work are exempt, he said.
“No one should be traveling
out of state for anything beyond
that which is essential for your
daily life—commuting to work
or seeking medical treatment,
for example,” Mr. Murphy said.
During the summer, New
Jersey, New York and Connect-
icut began issuing joint-travel
advisories asking people to
self-quarantine for 14 days if
they were traveling from states
considered to be Covid-19 hot
spots. New Jersey, along with
New York, abandoned those ef-
forts after nearly every state in
the U.S. began qualifying for
the advisory list amid a na-
tionwide surge.
Now, New Jersey is asking
all out-of-state visitors to
quarantine, although front-line
health-care workers, law-en-
forcement and military per-
sonnel will be exempt.
The state reported 4,
new Covid-19 cases on
Wednesday with a 13.7% posi-
tivity rate. The state’s seven-
day average of cases reached
4,050, more than double the
figure from Nov. 1. New Jersey
is now regularly reporting
daily case counts that exceed
the daily figures from the
spring, although the state has
a much larger testing capacity
compared with April and May.BYJOSEPHDEAVILAN.J. Governor Asks
People to Stay Put
Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Is Lighted—With No Crowds
SILENT NIGHT: The more than 50,000 LED lights on the 88th Rockfeller Center tree, a 75-foot Norway spruce, were turned on
Wednesday in a ceremony that was televised with prerecorded performances but closed to the public due to Covid-19 precautions.JASON SZENES/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
NY