In this issue, we profile the energetic new commander of the 52nd Precinct, John D’Adamo.

Deputy Inspector D’Adamo is getting off to a good start fighting crime and opening lines of communication with local residents (he has attended several meetings at Community Board 7). If he can take a big bite out of chronic criminal activity like the prostitution on Jerome Avenue and other major problems that have plagued the precinct for years, then he will be a local hero.

D’Adamo tracks crime by placing colored pushpins on a map in his office. This method indicates what kinds of crimes cluster where. He then deploys the appropriate teams to those areas. 

It’s a critical tool. If the Police Department released this information to the public, it would be even more useful. The CompStat reports provided to the public only indicate the level of crime precinct-wide. It does not, like the map in D’Adamo’s office, tell you whether a spike in car thefts stems from a problem on your block or a mile away.

We have received stats for particular sectors in the 52nd Precinct, but only after filing repeated Freedom of Information Law requests with NYPD headquarters.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

Every New Yorker has the right to know how prevalent a particular crime is on their block, especially since the NYPD is already collecting this data. Arming residents with this info is like adding a no-cost crime-fighting tool on every block in the precinct.

A lot of crime is preventable, like making sure you have a Club on your steering wheel, or not walking alone in areas where there have been muggings.

We are going to continue to urge the Police Department to release the sector stats and even make them available on their Web site.  

Since the corruption scandals of the 1970s, precinct commanders are required to rotate out of their commands every two and a half years or so. That’s not a lot of time to get to know a community and to act upon all you’ve learned.

That said, D’Adamo appears to have to hit the ground running, applying the knowledge he has gained throughout his career. We hope when he gets to the finish line in the 52nd Precinct (probably in 2012), he will have left a legacy of success in areas where his predecessors