Congratulations, Edward Caban, on being tapped by Mayor Eric Adams as the NYPD’s next commissioner.
Here’s your first order of business: Restore broken-windows policing and focus like a laser on the quality-of-life offenses.
Gotham has seen murders start to drop — though they’re still far above pre-pandemic levels.
Yet New Yorkers continue to put up with smaller-level but still serious crimes that are wildly out of control, from car thefts to shoplifting to illegal-drug dealing, you name it.
As The Post reported in just the past few days, dealers are illegally hawking psilocybin mushrooms right in front of cops in Washington Square Park.
One threatened to attack a photographer who asked about snapping a pic.
On Canal Street and elsewhere in lower Manhattan, counterfeiters are back pushing fake luxury goods — cheating customers, clogging sidewalks and stealing business from legitimate sellers.
And, of course, hordes of occasionally violent mentally ill, drug addicts and assorted homeless plague the streets and subways, terrorizing the public.
The disorder not only reinforces real fears (which the mayor claims is just media hype); it promotes more serious crime.
Adams emphasizes the importance of elevating minorities and women at the department; Caban is the first Hispanic commish, and he follows Keechant Sewell, the first black woman to lead the force.
Fine. Yet far more important than the top cop’s skin color or gender is whether he or she can lead the force effectively, ensure public safety — and restore order on the streets.
Having risen through the department over a 30-plus-year career, Caban certainly seems capable. Â
Yet he’ll have an uphill battle resurrecting broken-windows policing, a key to bringing down the outrageous levels of crime in the ’80s over the following two decades.
That approach was largely abandoned over the past decade, with the city decriminalizing and legalizing many offenses, district attorneys refusing to prosecute crimes and Albany making it ever easier for lawbreakers to escape punishment.
Yet ignoring smaller crimes — littering, retail theft, fare-beating — sends a dangerous message that anything goes, that crime pays, that no one cares if you break the law.
That message only emboldens criminals, and scares the daylights out of law-abiding New Yorkers as they go about their daily business.
Sewell stepped down because Adams failed to let her truly run the department, leaving it to cronies like Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks.
Hizzoner and Banks need to cut Caban some slack if he’s going to do his job.
And it’s clear what that job must be: Focus on the small stuff, along with the big — and make the city a better place to live.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
