During the December 11, 2025 Roosevelt Island Public Safety Department (PSD) Community Engagement meeting, PSD Chief Kevin Brown reported that Roosevelt Island has a very low crime rate with 32 arrests to date for the year but of those 32 arrests, 23 were for domestic violence related assault. Chief Brown added:
… I’ve partnered with the NYPD. They have a new domestic violence unit and they’re going to try to interview complaints because we have a number of complaints on this island for domestic violence. For this year, we have about 90 complaints. When people have a domestic violence incident in their apartment, they call PSD and NYPD….
… I have a number of complaints where people are getting really, really seriously hurt [by} their relatives. They’re hurting each other and and we have to do something better or change whatever we’re doing to to try to keep this community safe….
Chief Brown also reported that shoplifting was down significantly at Duane Reade store:
… last year at this time we had 155 thefts from Duane Reade, shoplifting, and at this time we have 60. So we’re down about 40%. I can attribute that to we have an officer who is stationed in that area from 7 a.m. until 11:00 p.m….
… we were not within the threshold for them to assign a security guard to Roosevelt Island. And so what we did, because 155 is a lot, and when I say 155, it’s more than just someone coming into the store and then shoplifting. It’s the disruption with the customers. It’s when they come in and decide to knock all of the things off the shelves. Or get into a back and forth with the Duane Reade employees. So us having an officer there has tremendously reduced the number of these events….
Other topics discussed at the PSD Community Engagement meeting were crowding at the Tram, PSD officer staffing levels and an update on the November 15 fire that killed one resident.
Here’s the full discussion with Chief Brown.
90 complaints of domestic violence but just 23 arrests ? Sure the crime rate stats are low if there is only 1 arrest for every 4 reported assaults.
If there were 32 arrests and 23 were for Domestic violence that means that there was just 9 arrests for all other crimes combined ? Non domestic violence assaults , drugs , vandalism, drunk driving , arson etc. those numbers don’t add up.
What is happening with DV incidents? I hope they are reported to ACS when the children are involved. It will be interesting to know statistics of the reported DVs based on the addresses of the buildings