VFrom the docks you have a good view of the city, the Manhattan skyline glitters at the other end of the harbor, and hip Brooklyn begins behind your back. So you can start the day in New York today, with this view, in this mood, with the sun on your face and the day ahead of you.
It wasn’t always like this, there were years, even decades, when violence ruled this city – when worries dominated the day: would the child come home? Or the wife? In the 1970s, New York City, which was later to become a great metropolis, began to decline, until the 1990s many people lived here in fear, hundreds of thousands fled the city and entire neighborhoods lost their residents. How could New York sink so low?
The main cause was the fatal interplay between cheap drugs and booming unemployment, the city’s biggest budget crisis in the mid-seventies and the savings made by many police officers. As the number of security guards fell over the years, the number of murders increased. And with them the bitterness of New Yorkers. The deep crisis of the city gave birth to its heroes, bad and good. Their names merged with events of that time: victims and murderers, dead and living.
Individual detectives became heroes in amazement during these years, few men who opposed crime like the marshals of the pioneering days who cracked down hard. It was not squeamish. Today it is clear: many suspects, mostly poor and black, were wrongly convicted – for murders they had never committed.
Starting point – the 60s
In the 1960s, things didn’t look so bleak for the city of New York. In the middle of the decade, unemployment in the US is around four percent, and the trend is falling. In 1963 New York City counts around 550 murders, and in 1964 the world exhibition is proudly organized. But, for the time being unnoticed, corruption is increasingly reigning in the police apparatus and a dysfunctional system is growing. Even then – long before the worst years – there were reports of police officers buying drugs and taking bribes. Then the city overturns. In 1972 it recorded 1691 murders, corruption and the need to save money increased. Soon there will be no more police officers patrolling the subway at night.
The 70s – everything dark
In 1975, under Mayor Abraham Beame, 50,000 municipal employees were dismissed due to ongoing financial shortages, many police officers. In the course of the year, unemployment rises nationwide to more than eight percent. And right now, in the mid-1970s, New York is tumbling into a regime of violence. At the same time, a detective begins his job, which the city will talk about for a long time.
In 1977 the Summer of Sam breaks in the city, named after the murderer David Berkowitz – “Son of Sam”. In 13 cursed months he wanders the streets with his Bulldog revolver killing six people and injuring seven others. The fear is in the city.
And then, as if a demonic director made it up, the lights go out. On July 13, 1977, a Wednesday, the power went out in the five boroughs at around half past nine in the evening. For almost 24 hours.
Millions of people are now sitting there without light, without air conditioning. And some without inhibitions. New York is sinking into chaos: it will be the city of a hundred fires, because seriously – there were hundreds of fires. Newspaper reports report looters in the South Bronx, Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant. The police arrested thousands, the US Congress later estimates the damage at around $ 300 million.
For many neighborhoods, the power failure has the effect of a self-destruct button that nobody has touched before. Suddenly there is no longer any trace of resistance to the crime, in 1977 New York City is powerless. From now on it goes down.
Not all streets are equally affected, and of course astonished tourists also come during this time. But overall, public safety is in dire straits. For a while, warning pamphlets are printed for visitors, “Welcome to Fear City”, with tips on how to leave New York happy (and alive): never on the subway, never on the street after 6pm.
Some find this exaggerated, and there is criticism of overly harsh tourist warnings. The “Village Voice”, for example, prints the satire “I walked through Central Park last night”, the author of which describes how suspicious things turn out to be small animals or couples rustling in the bushes at night.
But fear and paranoia also seek expression, dystopia porn. These are the years when a lot of hard films hit theaters, like “Taxi Driver” and “Marathon Man”.
Then 1979, South Manhattan: In May a child – Etan Patz – disappears on the way to the bus stop. He was six years old. In the same year, over 250 crimes happen every week on urban subway trains alone, New York swallowing New Yorkers. And a lot more flee. At the end of the decade, the city had almost a million fewer residents than the decade before. Those who stay will soon be living in a new hell: With the 80s, crack comes to New York.
The 80s – cheap stuff, gangs
Crack Cocaine is not an ordinary drug: It is cheap and extremely addictive, so it is very profitable, its dealers usually quickly fight over territory and junkies. The latter constantly need fresh cash, and many become robbers. For the city this is a cycle that has shaped a whole decade: the 1980s.
At the same time, the fatal consequences of the city’s financial problems are becoming visible: At the beginning of the decade, there are far too few police officers in New York because of the savings, the NYPD is trying with all means to recruit security forces and to professionalize their work.
The new decade also has its stories to tell. The year 1981 became the basis for the film for A Most Violent Year – the violence of the mob, robbery, the streets of New York were seldom looked worse. The names of the gangs are well known in the city: Dirty Ones and Black Stabbers, all at war against each other. According to reports, the worst thing for many residents is the feeling that anything can happen in this city. The social order seems to collapse at that time. The names of individual streets in Brooklyn are also becoming famous, entire streets: Myrtle Avenue becomes “Murderer Avenue”, the Lexington Avenue Express to Mugger Express, the train of muggers. This decade of violence culminates in the shocking rape of a young woman, Trisha Meili. She goes down in history as the “jogger from Central Park”. She survived and will later write a book about this incident.
1990 – thousands of murders
Then follows the most murderous year in modern New York: 1990. At the end of the year, 2,245 deaths are counted, the most murders that have ever occurred in this city. The Outer Boroughs are now extremely dangerous and this is no longer an overzealous warning to visitors, it is bloody serious.
One of these murders wiped out the life of Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger in February 1990; in Williamsburg, a jewel thief first stole his jewelry and then his life. A certain David Ranta is presented to the New Yorkers as a perpetrator, taken away and locked away for decades. Only much later does it become clear: This man is innocent, the New York police arrested the wrong person.
In September 1990 the city is more desperate than ever: the newspapers regularly report on the security situation, they quote residents who live in their neighborhoods with the fear of wild cross shots and stray bullets from street fighting. Some claim to put their babies in the bathtub to sleep, as a bullet trap.
What is the life of the police like at such a time? Books are on display at the guards in Brooklyn, every line a new murder, and next to it – that’s how the story goes – a whistle for the police: a whistle for every new case. It’s noisy nights. But people get used to a lot. As the number of cases increases, at some point nobody will listen to the whistling. At best, someone pays attention when a name comes up that is personally familiar to them.
The cops of those years don’t go home: drug dealers and prostitutes occupy the streets from Times Square to Park Slope, hundreds of thousands were taking heroin here as early as the mid-1970s, now the crack is coming, and the end of the decade is struggling to see the effects of this cocktail still need to be hidden somehow. In 1993, there was statistically one murder every 63 hours in East New York.
The turning point – a new era
Only at the end of the millennium will the city slowly become safer again. Several factors ensure this: Under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a man named William Bratton becomes police chief, Bratton applies what is known as the Broken Windows Theory. It says that even small crimes should be strictly prosecuted so that potential criminals can see: the police do not give up these streets, even every ridiculous broken window pane is replaced, the perpetrators are wanted.
In addition, the NYPD has been using computer statistics since 1994 to preventively identify the most violent streets in the city and to increase its presence there. In 1998 only around 630 murders are recorded. Nationwide, unemployment will drop to around four percent by the year 2000, the lowest level since the 1960s.
At the same time, the police tried to communicate with the New Yorkers in order to establish a line with the residents of the city – this was made more difficult by the race riots during this time, in 1991 there were serious riots in Brooklyn. From 2002 onwards, the police have been using the stop-and-frisk practice: searches of people who are considered suspicious. This practice is controversial, in 2008 the police searched over 500,000 people.
In 2010, construction of the Barclays Center began in Brooklyn, where basketball games and concerts are held today, and the area was quickly gentrified. In November 2012, the New York Police Department celebrated the first day of their recent past that New York did not have a shooting or murder. A milestone.
Today is New York City: more beautiful, shimmering, richer. The safest metropolis in America, only the tourist numbers are still exploding. The policing culture in the city has changed dramatically since the 1970s. One constant was the violence in this city: It shaped New York and Brooklyn in particular, a constant spiral of rise and fall. Even if it is hardly noticeable today from Bushwick to Williamsburg. For 2017 and 2018, the police were able to announce positive news again: The number of cases remained below 300 murders. The hell years, they seem over.
You can find out more about the current WELT research in the US judiciary in the WELT INSIDER podcast, e.g. B. on Spotify.
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