So I've lived in NYC for 7 years now so have some personal experience with this. Note that I live and work in Manhattan so my experience is probably skewed and

So I've lived in NYC for 7 years now so have some personal experience with this. Note that I live and work in Manhattan so my experience is probably skewed and is only really anecdotal anyway. My personal experience with the NYPD has been very good. - As others have noted, heavy police presence in heavily frequented areas, particularly by tourists. - During Sandy I was in the area without power. At night a police cruiser would go down my street every couple of hours (IIRC) with the lights on but no siren, I guess looking for looters. - I had a car alarm go off at 1:30am early Sunday morning right outside my window. While I was figuring out what to do and calling 311, a police van turned up (around 1:50am) and broke into the car and disabled the alarm. I went out to speak to the officers and they said just call my local precinct and any unattended car alarm is cause for the police to come up (defined as >10 minutes). That all being said, there's a pretty dark side to policing and the criminal justice system in NYC too, most notably in the treatment of minorities. Some examples: - New York's ridiculous gravity knife law [1], which seems to be used by police selectively to target minorities. The New York legislature has now twice overwhelmingly passed reforms only to have this (now twice) vetoed by Governor Cuomo on thin justification [2]. One can only presume he's kowtowing to the law and order crowd. - Alleged racial bias in pedestrian stops, seemingly often under the guise of seeking a mysterious African-American male suspect in his 20s who is 5' 10" (which can be pretty much anyone). - The appalling case of Three Years in Riker's Island Without a Trial [3], as win-rate obsessed prosecutors use stalling tactics, the imbalance of power, the ignorance of suspects and plea deals to deny people due process. - The arrest of James Blake [4]. - Chokehold death of Eric Garner [5] for a relatively minor offense. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/opinion/new-yorks-outdated-knife-law.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/opinion/new-yorks-outdate... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/nyregion/gravity-knife-cuomo-veto.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/nyregion/gravity-knife-cu... [3] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/before-the-law https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/before-the-law [4] https://www.boston.com/sports/tennis/2017/09/19/ex-tennis-star-james-blake-testifies-about-his-mistaken-arrest https://www.boston.com/sports/tennis/2017/09/19/ex-tennis-st... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner