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The New York Police Department's Street Crime Unit (motto: "We Own The Night") was a 300+ member plain clothes anti-crime unit. The SCU was formed in 1971 as the "City Wide Anti-Crime Unit" and enjoyed decades of success in apprehending armed felons from NYC streets. It employed innovative methods, including possibly the earliest coordinated sting operations to elicit potential muggers:

"The SCU disguised officers as potential mugging victims and put them in areas where they were most likely to be attacked."[1]

The Street Crime Unit was legendary among cops and perps alike, in its ability to go into high-crime neighborhoods and make a hugely disproportionate number of firearms-related arrests vs. regular police departments. In 1973, the SCU won recognition as an Exemplary Project from the U.S. Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. [The LEAA was the U.S.'s leading crime-reduction and crime-prevention funding agency. It was funded by the U.S. Congress in 1969, through the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, and spent $8 billion on crime-prevention and reduction over its 13 year lifespan (1969-1982).]

"In its first year, the SCU made nearly 4,000 arrests and averaged a successful conviction rate of around 80%. Perhaps the most telling statistic was the 'average officer day per arrest.' The SCU invested only 8.2 days in each arrest, whereas the department average for all uniformed officers was 167 days."[2]

The SCU gained notoriety after the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo. The four officers involved in Diallo's killing were all members of the elite unit. The unit was disbanded in 2002 due to negative publicity from the Diallo shooting. The unit was last headed by Inspector Bruce H. Smolka, who was later promoted to Assistant Chief. All of the officers were acquitted of criminal charges in a lengthy trial that took place in Albany after a successful request to change the venue of the trial from the Bronx, where the shooting happened.

Functionally, the Street Crime Unit has been replaced by Patrol Borough-based Anti-Crime Units.

References

1. Schmallager, Frank. Criminal Justice Today, 8th Ed., 2005. Pearson Education, p. 195.
2. National Institute of Justice, The Exemplary Projects Program (Wash, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1982), p. 11.

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