Yet Another Reason To Shut Down Dog Runs

Surveys show that animal owners live in a dreamland where their pets provide better companionship than humans:

New Yorkers said Monday that they can see why one in four Americans prefers spending Valentine’s Day with a pet rather than a partner, as a recent survey found.

. . .

“It’s different with a dog, more of an unconditional love,” [a 29-year-old dog owner] added after leaving a pet store with Valentine’s Day gifts — doggy treats and a toy — for her four-legged loved one.

“There is no love on this Earth like a dog’s love,” said [a 47-year-old dog owner] at the Union Square dog run.

Imagine Just How Much Worse This Could Have Been If The Mayor Had Had His Way About Traffic

The bad news is that the accelerating Toyota scare has apparently reached the five boroughs. The good news is that you can’t really get that far in New York City:

A Queens World War II veteran said he and his wife became the latest victims of Toyota accelerator woes when his 2009 Camry’s gas pedal jammed — sending the car careening into a synagogue.

More Of That Legendary Bloomberg Business Acumen

In 2000, .8 percent of the city’s workforce made more than $100,000, a figure that by last year rose to 8.4 percent:

The number of city workers pulling down $100,000 or more jumped more than tenfold in the last decade, largely because of hefty raises won by schoolteachers and principals.

We Are All Bond Up Together

The Daily News’ Adam Lisberg shows what raising bonds for what could be the most expensive subway stop of all time means for this year’s city budget:

So next year’s budget includes $83.3 million to pay for the 7 train extension, even though it’s highly unlikely all of it will be spent.

At the same time, the budget closes four FDNY companies to save $5.6 million. It closes a center for the homeless to save $2.4 million. It closes four swimming pools and shuts the rest down two weeks early to save $1.4 million.

It also lays off 834 city workers.

The city can’t afford to pay their salaries anymore, but it can still afford to set aside money in reserve to impress the bond markets. It’s cold comfort to those workers, but the bankers will be happy.

New York Is Not Safer, Just Cheaper On eBay

The Observer quipped that New York was like The Wire the other day when they linked to the Times’ story about how the City intends to tear down some mid-rise housing project buildings in Brooklyn. But it even goes beyond that:

More than a hundred retired New York Police Department captains and higher-ranking officers said in a survey that the intense pressure to produce annual crime reductions led some supervisors and precinct commanders to manipulate crime statistics, according to two criminologists studying the department.

. . .

In interviews with the criminologists, other retired senior officers cited examples of what the researchers believe was a periodic practice among some precinct commanders and supervisors: checking eBay, other Web sites, catalogs or other sources to find prices for items that had been reported stolen that were lower than the value provided by the crime victim. They would then use the lower values to reduce reported grand larcenies — felony thefts valued at more than $1,000, which are recorded as index crimes under CompStat — to misdemeanors, which are not, the researchers said.

Meanwhile, the Daily News publishes a firsthand account of another way to fudge the numbers on New Year’s Eve:

People who came into the stationhouse couldn’t believe the precinct captain was there to greet them and take their crime report. The supervisors and cops looked at me like I was nuts, or more accurately, just pathetic. But there was no way I was going to be the only captain in Brooklyn South who couldn’t beat last year’s figures.

. . .

So what did I do that night? Did I fudge crime stats? Did I send crime victims on their way with no satisfaction? Absolutely not! I just . . . delayed.

I might have taken the complaints, but nothing was getting logged in the computer — and therefore would not “officially” count in Compstat — until after midnight. Until 1998.

The complainants were happy. They got personal service from the captain. The 124 room civilian personnel were happy. They got to relax that night because nothing was going into that computer until I said so. More importantly, the borough commander and, ultimately, the police commissioner, were happy because Bensonhurst came in one so-called “index” crime below the year before. CRIME WAS DOWN IN ALL OF BROOKLYN SOUTH!

Well, not really, because seven index crimes measured in Compstat were reported by victims from 2 p.m. to midnight, but since I prepared and reviewed the hand-written “scratch” copies, only five crimes could possibly be entered into the computer program by midnight. The other two were typed in sometime in the early hours of 1998 – a new year!

Did that make me corrupt or unethical? Maybe. Who cares now? All I know is I didn’t get any nasty calls or threats from “downtown” on Jan. 2.