Summary
- National trends don’t tell the full story about crime.
- New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to talk “affordability,” but violence in public places is worsening.
- High-profile killings highlight the problem of urban chaos.
America has seen a significant turnaround on crime. But some statistics hide the continued, and often growing problems many cities face. Urban chaos in deep-blue cities is still a major, unresolved issue that’s rightly driving the perception that crime is unacceptably high, and mostly the product of bad policies.
National crime trends are generally positive. A newly released survey by the Justice Department showed a drop in violent crime victimization by 25% and a decline in property crime victimization by 19% since 2024.
This is, of course, good news and worth celebrating.
I’d argue that two big factors are driving these declines. One is a general retreat from the insane “defund the police” era and the waning of the so-called Minneapolis effect. The other is President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportations that have removed illegal alien criminals and gang members from our society en masse.
But as good as these trends are, in many cities—like New York—crime is still well above where it was in 2019, before the pandemic and the George Floyd riots.
And in some specific cases, crime continues to rage and even escalate.
National, state, and even city-wide trends are only part of the crime story. New York City provides an important case study in how statistics don’t tell the full story and why plenty of Americans are still justifiably worried about crime and its enablers.
While Mayor Zohran Mamdani has shrewdly avoided removing NYPD policing in some of the most dangerous parts of the city, he’s done a poor job of addressing the chaos that’s mounting, especially on public transportation.
Even as crime around the city has generally fallen, violent crime on the subway has been getting worse, not better. There’ve been double the number of murders on the system since last year.
Recently, a 26-year-old man was shot and killed at a Midtown subway stop in broad daylight.
The NYPD’s statement called it the result of a “dispute” and initial reporting made it seem as if the incident was “not a random act,” but it turns out it was.
According to later reports, the victim, 26-year-old Darrel Rodriguez, allegedly told the accused shooter to stop smoking marijuana, which led to the 17-year-old to reportedly pull a gun and fire into the victim’s chest.
An NYPD spokesperson blamed guns for the incident. I blame criminal, anti-social behavior. This is the kind of random threat that exists now in the subway and parts of New York, even in heavily trafficked tourist areas like Midtown.
It’s not just the subway that’s seen an increase in violence.
A woman was sexually assaulted at knifepoint in Central Park at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday night. As shocking as the incident may seem, many locals aren’t surprised as many are now warier about traveling through the park at night.
Mamdani has been asked repeatedly whether he’s at least willing to surge additional police into the subway to help deal with the crime problem and each time he dodges, then pivots back to his broken record calls for affordability.
The young, socialist mayor is a shrewd politician. Democrats in the city and the state don’t want to deal with an angry public demanding answers about crime. They would much rather pivot to talking about rent freezes or banning horse carriages in Central Park than acknowledge that Central Park might not be as safe as it was just a few years ago.
But as Manhattan Institute senior fellow Nicole Gelinas wrote for City Journal, Mamdani and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul can’t dodge the issue forever.
Gelinas noted that while the “overstretched police department” has “focused rightly on gang crime in hotspot neighborhoods” the unwillingness to expand the overstretched officer pool means places like the subway are increasingly unsafe. And this matters because “the broader criminal-justice system still regularly releases hard-core recidivists.”
Yep. Nearly every killing and major incident on the subway this year was committed by someone with a long criminal record or who should have been committed to an institution long ago. As usual, it’s those repeat offenders who drive most of the crime. But good luck getting the leftists who call the shots to do anything about that.
They think the way to reduce crime is to make fewer things criminal and the way to deal with overcrowded prisons is to set the prisoners free. You can bet that this is part of Mamdani’s long-term, Democratic Socialists of America-styled agenda, even if he’d rather keep the crime kettle from boiling for now.
So, what we have is a growing, festering problem of disintegrating public order that won’t be nipped in the bud. Instead, it will continue to get worse as Mamdani grins through occasional news conferences with brief messages about “gun violence” and long-winded expositions about how he’ll shake down the billionaires and make all your dreams come true.
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[ H/T The Daily Signal ]
