A teenage fast food cashier shot to death in Manhattan. A woman pushed to death in front of a subway train in Times Square. An 11-month-old girl injured by a stray bullet in the Bronx. Two cops dead in Harlem.
A series of acts of violence in New York that have made headlines in the media have frayed nerves and become a recurring trauma for the fledgling administration of Mayor Eric Adams.
But while January has brought tragedy to the city, statistics suggest it remains as safe or safer than it was a decade ago, when former Mayor Michael Bloomberg touted it as “America’s Safest Big City.”
New York City saw 28 murders in January, one fewer than the average for that month in the previous 10 years.
Last year, when violence spiked across the country, the total was 488, up from an all-time low of 292 in 2017, but a far cry from the early 1990s, when the city averaged more than 2,000 murders a year. In 2011, the city had 515.
“In New York, it’s kind of a dual situation,” said crime analyst Jeff Asher. “It’s important to know that this is not the worst thing that has happened, while also understanding that it has gotten significantly worse in recent years.”
The number of gun injuries has skyrocketed in New York during the pandemic and remains stubbornly high.
But its murder rate — 5.5 murders per 100,000 people last year — has remained lower than that of the next six most populous cities, according to FBI and police crime data, and lower than the from many smaller cities such as Jacksonville, Florida, Fort Worth, Texas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Adams, a former police captain who campaigned on a tough-on-crime message, says he’s not only fighting real crime, but also fear and the perception that crime is getting out of control.
Research shows that people tend not to understand crime trends and often assume the worst, Asher said.
Adams says he wants to blanket the city with police officers to reassure New Yorkers and visitors. In his first month on the job, he has also given extraordinary attention to his former department, emphasizing roll call, accompanying officers in the aftermath of recent violence and taking the lead in directing new crime-fighting strategies.
“Being safe is also feeling safe. No one wants to hear statistics when they don’t feel safe,” Adams told NY1 last week.
In New York, the year 2022 began with a series of arbitrary crimes of the kind that people are most concerned about.
Kristal Bayron-Nieves, the 19-year-old cashier killed in an overnight robbery at a Burger King in East Harlem on January 9, moved with her family to New York in search of a better life after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. in 2017.
Michelle Go, the 40-year-old woman pushed onto the tracks on January 15 at the Times Square subway station, worked for global consultancy Deloitte and volunteered with the Junior League to help at-risk and homeless families.
The 11-month-old girl was hospitalized in critical condition after being hit in the cheek by a stray bullet while sitting in a parked car with her mother on January 19, just days before her first birthday.
The slain officers, Jason Rivera, 22, and Wilbert Mora, 27, had joined the NYPD hoping to bridge long-standing differences between police and immigrant communities, like the ones they grew up in. .
President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit New York on Thursday to discuss ways to curb gun violence, though it’s not the only place fighting the problem.
Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest city, recorded 397 murders in 2021, the highest number since 2007. Chicago had 797 last year, the most since 1996. Philadelphia set a record with 562 murders.
Fort Worth, Texas, a city a tenth the size of New York, went from 69 murders in 2019 to 118 last year. Oklahoma City had 91 murders last year, its highest total since 2012. Jacksonville, Florida, bucked the trend, going from 140 murders in 2020 to 108 last year, but its murder rate of 11.4 per 100,000 residents was still twice that of New York.
Still, recent violence has pushed the Big Apple to a crossroads, with elected officials rushing to show they’re tough on crime less than two years after leaders veered in the other direction following the killing of George Floyd. by the Minneapolis police, prompting a national reckoning on criminal justice.
Elected as a progressive reformer, the new Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has come under fire for instructing his staff not to prosecute some petty crimes, including prostitution and some resisting arrest cases. Following a dispute with Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, Bragg apologized, stressing that her office did not shy away from serious cases, such as gun violence and assaults on police.
The state bail reform, enacted two years ago to limit preventive detention, has become the ‘bad guy’ of police unions and politicians.
Adams took on bail reform in a crime-fighting plan, proposing that judges be able to consider a defendant’s criminal record and potential dangerousness when setting bail.
Congressman Tom Suozzi, who is challenging Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul for governor, has asked her to repeal bail reforms, as have six other Republicans in the state’s congressional delegation. US Rep. Lee Zeldin, a Republican also running for governor, even linked the bail law to the burning of an artificial Christmas tree outside Fox News headquarters in Manhattan.
The reforms included the elimination of bail for nonviolent crimes, appearance tickets instead of arrests for low-level crimes.
Hochul says she’s willing to talk about changing the law if the data shows the reform is linked to rising crime.
State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Democrat who spearheaded the bail reform bill, said he was frustrated politicians were “blaming bail reform when the sun came up.”
“I just think it’s unfortunate to tie the rise in gun violence solely to bail,” Heastie said. “If that’s the case, why do we have gun problems across the country?”
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