68th Precinct head says crime is at “an all-time low”

Crime is down in Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights and Fort Hamilton, according to Capt. Andrew Tolson, commander of the 68th Precinct.

During the precinct’s monthly community council meeting March 24, Tolson said crime has decreased from year to date in every major category, including grand larceny auto (50 percent), burglary (37.9 percent) and grand larceny (23 percent). He said overall crime is down 27.6 percent in the last 30 days.

Despite a slight increase last month, robberies decreased 13.3 percent for the year.

“We’ve had a couple of [robbery] patterns going on,” Tolson said. “Since then, I’ve changed my deployment in the area of the precinct they were happening in. We made some arrests and apprehensions of the people responsible.”

Tolson said an increase in package thefts is driving crime in the precinct. 

“It’s mostly a daytime crime,” he said. “People responsible for it are usually waiting for you to go to work. They know you’re not home or doing errands around the house. That’s when they strike.”

Tolson said some packages are left in apartment building mailrooms, where crooks take whatever they can get their hands on. 

“It’s an extremely hard crime to combat for the police department,” Tolson said. “People responsible for this will follow Amazon trucks as [they’re] making deliveries.”

He encouraged residents to call 911 if they see the crime in progress.

Despite the rise in package thefts, Tolson is pleased with the overall downward trend.

“This is tremendous work that’s being done in the 68th precinct,” he said. “Crime is at an all-time low here. We haven’t seen numbers like this in years. That’s to all the hard work of the police officers that are out there working, but it’s not just us. We can’t do it alone. We need the community’s involvement, and they are very involved and we work together.”