Some recent media coverage suggested that shootings have increased in New York City because so many police officers are monitoring the Occupy Wall Street protests. Reporting on that claim for The Nation's blog, Ben Adler writes that "the most generous description would be that it’s unproven."

“'This is, of course, one of those questions for which there is basically no answer,'” explains Michael Jacobson president of the Vera Institute of Justice. 'First, you’d have to track shootings on a daily/weekly basis over time. I’m sure when you do that, you’d see some marked variation up or down based on a number of factors (seasonality, gang activity etc.). Then, assuming you saw some significant increase in the last couple of months, you’d have to rule out every other possible explanation to get to the ‘it’s the lack of cops on patrol’ conclusion.' Note that that neither the [New York] Post nor conservatives who repeated the Post’s assertions considered other possible explanations."

"'Could that be an explanation? Possibly,' says Jacobson. 'On the other hand, the NYPD reassigned over 1,000 cops many years ago from patrol to anti-terrorism duties, thus permanently lowering patrol strength, and all crime has declined since then. These are never easy or direct relationships to measure so basically anyone can attribute any common sense (or not) theory to explain ups or downs in crime—especially in the short term. They occasionally might even be correct, but usually not.'"