By Thomas Tracy
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — NYPD Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell vowed to reduce crime with community help in a video posted on her first day in office.
“Today we are beginning the next chapter of policing in New York City and we are calling on every New Yorker to join us in our efforts to drive crime out of every one of our communities,” Sewell said in the tweeted video. “As your police department, we can only do our job effectively and efficiently when we do it with you.”
Sewell, 49, has a bit of an uphill climb to make good on her promise: the NYPD ended 2021 with a 3% jump in homicides and a nearly 2% jump in shootings over 2020, when violence had ramped up to levels not seen since 2006, NYPD officials said.
Sewell, who lived at the Queensbridge Houses for a few years as a child, is the city’s first woman police commissioner and third Black commissioner in the department’s 176-year history. She was plucked from the Nassau County Police Department, where she was chief of detectives.
In her remarks, she said NYPD cops were “as passionate as they are committed to public safety.”
“It is my pledge that we will work with you every step of the way on our path for a safer New York City,” she said. “It’s a way forward we must walk together and we start today.”
https://twitter.com/NYPDPC/status/1477255788364120067
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