Fixing the numbers

Posted March 4, 2013 By Gregory Barber & Maura R. O'Connor

The Mayor’s Office has released its semiannual snapshot of the city’s operations — revised and refined to reach a level of revelation sometimes lacking in the ocean of data known as the Mayor’s Management Report.

Some are details it’s hard to believe we didn’t know before, like your chances of surviving cardiac arrest in the hands of New York City first-responders. The Fire Department reports it’s about 30 percent.

On the other end of the life-or-death spectrum is the city Department of Transportation, which is the first city agency to flaunt its social media muscle in the report. The transportation agency boasts nearly 5,000 “friends” on Facebook and 20,000 on Twitter.

We knew in years past that the Department of Sanitation deemed about 95 percent of streets “acceptably clean,” but were left to speculate on the horrors of the remaining 5 percent. Turns out just .01 percent of streets are “filthy,” according to newly added street and sidewalk cleanliness data. (The condition of the remaining 4.99 percent is left to our imaginations.)

Three in four New Yorkers live within a quarter mile of a park, according to a new datum in the Mayor’s Management Report. Photo: Steven Severinghouse/Flickr

The percentage of New Yorkers living within a quarter mile of a park, now reported by the Department of Parks and Recreation, has been inching upward, hitting 75 percent last year.

The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene traded in some old statistics — among others, on HIV, cancer screenings, alcohol-related deaths, and tuberculosis — for new ones tracking adult obesity and immunizations.

The city’s public library systems school us in the cold hard truth with their new “active library cards” measure: it turns out that though the number of cardholders has increased, the number of New Yorkers who actually use them is falling.

The report also features some important improvements on existing stats. Among other measures, the Department of Correction now for the first time discloses not just the rate of injuries in incidents where officers used force, but also the actual number of total incidents and allegations — 1,1213 in July through October of 2012, up from 819 in the same period the prior year.

Yet even as the number of incidents rose, the rate at which such incidents resulted in injuries to officers or inmates declined: According to the Department of Correction, the rate of uses of force resulting in no injury increased by more than 60 percent, and the uses of force resulting in serious injury fell 21.3 percent.

But one area that’s not improving is in violence between inmates — figures that Corrections has now decided to adjust upward for the previous two years following an internal investigation. Even with the adjustment, the rate of violence between inmates is up 18 percent for July to October over the same period a year earlier, primarily because of an increase in inmate fights.

The department reported it was attempting to stem serious injuries resulting from these fights by stopping them sooner, but still saw 28 percent increase in serious injury to inmates from other inmates.

Also finding improved ways to present difficult news is the city’s Law Department, which defends the city against lawsuits. For the first time, the Law Department separately details how many suits are filed in state court versus federal — which reveals that cases filed in state court have been solely responsible for an 8 percent increase in the volume of lawsuits filed against the city since 2010.

In the face of skyrocketing claims and payouts, the Law Department has made limiting the city’s liability its top goal and launched a campaign to curb payouts by pushing for dismissals in court or winning cases at trial rather than settling with plaintiffs. To measure whether the strategy is working, the Law Department created two new indicators: “Affirmative motions to dismiss or for summary judgment” and “Win rate on affirmative motions.”

The Law Department had 564 affirmative motions for dismissal and a 71 percent win rate on affirmative motions between July and November last year. But with no previous data for comparison, it is unclear how good those numbers really are.

The report’s other indicators paint a dismal picture for the Law Department, in keeping with previous years’ trends: The city paid out nearly $128 million in the first four months of fiscal year 2013 — 30 percent more than for the same period in FY 12.

The New York World is published under Creative Commons' BY-ND 3.0 license. Unless otherwise noted, you are welcome to reprint The New York World's reporting. Except by prior arrangement, the following guidelines apply:

Credit The New York World, preferably by appending “The New York World” to the bylines already on the stories. Bylines must remain in the stories.
Do not edit stories, except to reflect relative changes in time or location (eg. “Yesterday, following months of uncertainty, Governor Cuomo...” may be changed to begin “In January,” or “Early this year”)
You may edit stories to accommodate style variations or to expand acronyms (eg. “TWU Local 100” may be written “Transport Workers Union Local 100”)

Stories reprinted online must:

include a link to the original story on http://www.thenewyorkworld.com
retain all links included in our original reporting
Retain in republished HTML a simple tracking code, provided in the body of each story as published on The New York World website.
include a syndication source tag directing search engines to the original story in The New York World
Do not republish The New York World wholesale or automatically
Contact our editor with any questions about this policy or to make arrangements to reprint The New York World stories under other terms.
This reprint policy is subject to change.

<h1>Fixing the numbers</h1>The Mayor’s Office has <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.nyc.gov/html/ops/html/data/mmr.shtml');" href="http://www.nyc.gov/html/ops/html/data/mmr.shtml">released</a> its semiannual snapshot of the city’s operations — revised and refined to reach a level of revelation sometimes lacking in the ocean of data known as the Mayor’s Management Report.
Some are details it’s hard to believe we didn’t know before, like your chances of surviving cardiac arrest in the hands of New York City first-responders. The Fire Department reports it’s about 30 percent.
On the other end of the life-or-death spectrum is the city Department of Transportation, which is the first city agency to flaunt its social media muscle in the report. The transportation agency boasts nearly 5,000 “friends” on Facebook and 20,000 on Twitter.
We knew in years past that the Department of Sanitation deemed about 95 percent of streets “acceptably clean,” but were left to speculate on the horrors of the remaining 5 percent. Turns out just .01 percent of streets are “filthy,” according to newly added street and sidewalk cleanliness data. (The condition of the remaining 4.99 percent is left to our imaginations.)
<div id="attachment_9998" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.flickr.com/photos/horsepunchkid/8165272091/sizes/l/in/photostream/');" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/horsepunchkid/8165272091/sizes/l/in/photostream/"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9998" class="size-medium wp-image-9998 " title="8165272091_5df15fbacd_b" src="http://www.thenewyorkworld.com/wp-content/uploads/8165272091_5df15fbacd_b-300x184.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="184" srcset="thenewyorkworld.org/wp-content/uploads/8165272091_5df15fbacd_b-300x184.jpg 300w, thenewyorkworld.org/wp-content/uploads/8165272091_5df15fbacd_b-486x300.jpg 486w, thenewyorkworld.org/wp-content/uploads/8165272091_5df15fbacd_b.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a>Three in four New Yorkers live within a quarter mile of a park, according to a new datum in the Mayor’s Management Report. Photo: Steven Severinghouse/Flickr</div>
The percentage of New Yorkers living within a quarter mile of a park, now reported by the Department of Parks and Recreation, has been inching upward, hitting 75 percent last year.
The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene traded in some old statistics — among others, on HIV, cancer screenings, alcohol-related deaths, and tuberculosis — for new ones tracking adult obesity and immunizations.
The city’s public library systems school us in the cold hard truth with their new “active library cards” measure: it turns out that though the number of cardholders has increased, the number of New Yorkers who actually use them is falling.
The report also features some important improvements on existing stats. Among other measures, the Department of Correction now for the first time discloses not just the rate of injuries in incidents where officers used force, but also the actual number of total incidents and allegations — 1,1213 in July through October of 2012, up from 819 in the same period the prior year.
Yet even as the number of incidents rose, the rate at which such incidents resulted in injuries to officers or inmates declined: According to the Department of Correction, the rate of uses of force resulting in no injury increased by more than 60 percent, and the uses of force resulting in serious injury fell 21.3 percent.
But one area that’s not improving is in violence between inmates — figures that Corrections has now decided to adjust upward for the previous two years following an internal investigation. Even with the adjustment, the rate of violence between inmates is up 18 percent for July to October over the same period a year earlier, primarily because of an increase in inmate fights.
The department reported it was attempting to stem serious injuries resulting from these fights by stopping them sooner, but still saw 28 percent increase in serious injury to inmates from other inmates.
Also finding improved ways to present difficult news is the city’s Law Department, which defends the city against lawsuits. For the first time, the Law Department separately details how many suits are filed in state court versus federal — which reveals that cases filed in state court have been solely responsible for an 8 percent increase in the volume of lawsuits filed against the city since 2010.
In the face of skyrocketing claims and payouts, the Law Department has made <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/nyregion/new-york-to-stem-civil-rights-suits-is-now-reluctant-to-settle.html');" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/nyregion/new-york-to-stem-civil-rights-suits-is-now-reluctant-to-settle.html">limiting the city’s liability</a> its top goal and launched a campaign to curb payouts by pushing for dismissals in court or winning cases at trial rather than settling with plaintiffs. To measure whether the strategy is working, the Law Department created two new indicators: “Affirmative motions to dismiss or for summary judgment” and “Win rate on affirmative motions.”
The Law Department had 564 affirmative motions for dismissal and a 71 percent win rate on affirmative motions between July and November last year. But with no previous data for comparison, it is unclear how good those numbers really are.
The report’s other indicators paint a dismal picture for the Law Department, in keeping with previous years’ trends: The city paid out nearly $128 million in the first four months of fiscal year 2013 — 30 percent more than for the same period in FY 12.

Increasing number of New York school children skipping vaccinations

More than 22,000 medical and religious exemptions were granted to students for the 2013-14 school year, up 27 percent from 2010-11, according to the state Health Department. Public and private enrollment over the same period remained largely flat.

New data provides first detailed look at military gear held by New York law enforcement agencies

Over the past several years, more than 120 law enforcement agencies across the state, from the NYPD to Tuckahoe, have obtained military-grade equipment through the Pentagon’s 1033 program, which transfers excess military equipment to state and local police across the country.