By WILLIAM MATHIS

Crime within the 52^nd Precinct continues to rise, though the police ensured community members at a recent meeting it intends to stem the rise. The meeting rehashed incident involving the death of a 17-year-old who plunged to his death from a rooftop while evading police in early April.

CompStat figures show felony assaults, grand larcenies and robberies have increased compared to the same 28-day period in 2014. The worst increase is among robberies, which have increased 33 percent, a number described by one police official as “skyrocketing.” The uptick in robberies has pushed crime towards positive territory within the 52^nd Precinct, even as crime numbers in most Bronx precincts has lowered when compared to the same time last year.

Captain Linda Rock-Wright, standing in for commanding officer Inspector Nilda Hofmann at the 52^nd Precinct Community Council meeting, blamed part of this increase to shoppers’ carelessness. She described a distracted shopper neglecting their bag, giving a thief the chance to take it. If a credit card or more than $1,000 is in the bag, for instance, it is an automatic grand larceny, she said.

However, she did not specify how much of the recent increase of grand larcenies can be credited to such instances of carelessness. Nor did she offer why robberies and felony assaults have shot up, though she expressed confidence officers are “going to take back the robberies. We’re going to take back the grand larcenies.”

The precinct has several programs to reverse the trend, Captain Rock-Wright noted. Those include the How Not to Be A Victim program, the Crime Prevention Office and also the potential for the precinct to reallocate resources in response to crime.

Carlos Ortiz, a local resident, expressed his frustration about a number of late-night muggings of people coming off the 4 train station near 208th Street and Mosholu Parkway. Captain Rock-Wright could not provide him information on whether any arrests have been made in those cases.

“We know mugging is considered a robbery and we have increased robbery arrests,” Captain Rock-Wright responded. She also opened the possibility of increasing police foot traffic around transit stations where residents have been victimized.

“It is up to the community to try and make things work,” said Brenda Caldwell, President of the Community Council. “We all come together for the concerns of the community that surrounds the Five-Two.”

The meeting veered towards the confrontational with a series of heated questions coming from one community member regarding the death of 17-year-old Hakeem Kuta on April 2 in Fordham. Kuta fell to his death while running from police officers after getting caught smoking marijuana in a lobby inside a building on Valentine Avenue. Officers chased Kuta to the roof of the building. He fell to his death after underestimating the distance from one part of the building to another.

Captain Rock-Wright supported the officers involved in the incident, who she said were responding to a complaint by residents of the building. The building fell under the now suspended Operation Clean Halls program, where officers are given permission to patrol buildings under permission from a landlord. This came following a judge’s ruling the practice was unconstitutional.

“This was not the result of police tossing someone or forcing someone,” she said.

Kuta, she said, ran from police because he was terrified of his father finding out that he was smoking marijuana. She said he was unfamiliar with the building and jumped thinking there was a ledge beneath the roof, as there is on the other side.