Bratton declares 2015 to be safest New York City summer in decades

New York City’s top cop went on cable news Tuesday and declared reports about the city’s spiking crime rates are overstated.

“This was the safest summer we’ve had in 25 years in terms of shootings and murders,” NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show.

Bratton said he would provide more numbers on Wednesday, but previewed combined numbers for June, July and August that show the lowest drop in shootings and murders since 1990 — the year Bratton became NYPD’s transit police chief.

Bratton also defended Mayor Bill de Blasio from insinuations made by long-shot GOP presidential candidate and former New York Gov. George Pataki that the officers were being held back from enforcing quality-of-life laws by the administration.

Specifically on quality-of-life issues and homelessness, Bratton said NYPD recently broke up 50 encampments, also acknowledging that the problem has been growing gradually.

“It’s been a steadily increasing problem that reached a point where it tipped,” Bratton said, “where people all of a sudden looked around and said, ‘Geez, where did they all come from?'”

A few hours later, his boss Mayor de Blasio took to WNYC radio where he backed up Bratton’s assessment and emphatically pushed back against the narrative that the city is worse off than before he took office.

Last week, an NYPD official tweeted thatcrime was down more than 4 percent year to date.

“The bad old days are gone. I think we have to be blunt about this,” de Blasio said on WNYC’s “Brian Lehrer Show. “We’re in a new place in New York City. We’re never going back to the bad old days.”