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“After witnessing an unnerving rash of violence during his first three weeks in office, New York Mayor Eric Adams announced the city would step up efforts to seize illegal guns and institute a multi-pronged plan to tackle crime.” AP News
“In 2020, murders in the United States spiked more than 27 percent — the largest percentage increase in at least six decades. Last year, murders went up again. Those murders resulted in the deaths of thousands more Americans, and returned the U.S. to homicide rates not seen since the mid-1990s.” New York Times
The right blames progressive policies for the spike in crime, and supports Adams’s proposed reforms.
“Prosecutors are too ready to assign victimhood to perpetrators instead of to the rest of us, who are disgusted and intimidated by the lawlessness. You’d think that Jean Lugo-Romero, caught after robbing five San Francisco Walgreens stores last May and June, would be in jail now. Absolutely not. The city public defender’s office states that ‘as an indigent individual suffering from housing instability,’ Lugo-Romero ‘needed services, and he’s now getting them.’…
“Manhattan’s previous district attorney, Cyrus Vance, announced in 2017 he would stop prosecuting farebeaters. Now a steady stream of them walks right by cops while the rest of us patsies pay to ride. Vance’s successor, Alvin Bragg, is ceding even more to the criminals, refusing to jail armed shoplifters…
“Wielding a pocket knife, 43-year-old William Rolon was arrested two weeks ago for stealing $2,000 worth of cold medicine from a Duane Reade in Manhattan, his 39th arrest overall and the second time he hit that store. But he was charged only with misdemeanor shoplifting, not first-degree robbery, the charge he would have faced before Bragg’s changes… To restore civility, voters need to elect serious crime-fighters.”
Betsy McCaughey, New York Post
Dated But Relevant: “We are reminded almost weekly of the tragic failure of bail reform and other soft-on-crime initiatives that have frustrated the efforts of police, prosecutors and judges to keep suspects with long criminal records off the streets. The man charged with driving his SUV through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wis., last month, killing six, had been released five days earlier on $1,000 bail in another violent felony case… The suspect in the stabbing death of a Columbia University graduate student last week is a convicted felon and gang member who has been arrested 11 times since 2012…
“Chicago and California have effectively decriminalized retail theft by raising the threshold for felony shoplifting. The result has been a rise in smash-and-grab robberies and store closures. There were 11 such incidents in and around Los Angeles between Nov. 18 and 28 alone, resulting in nearly $340,000 worth of stolen goods…
“By pretending that the police are a bigger threat to society than the criminals, progressive policies are making the country demonstrably less safe than it’s been in decades. Hopefully, more liberals will pay a political price for what they’ve unleashed. Until then, we’ll all be paying.”
Jason L. Riley, Wall Street Journal
“New York was awash in illegal guns in the ’80s and ’90s — and then all of a sudden it seemed that it wasn’t. And that was because vigorous anti-gun law enforcement and stiff penalties suddenly made it too dangerous for criminals to carry — and so they largely stopped doing so. When the de Blasio administration abandoned those policies, the heat came off, the guns came back, violence flared and suddenly some New York neighborhoods were war zones…
“[Adams] promised that the NYPD’s hugely successful anti-crime patrols — dissolved by Bill de Blasio — will be reinstated. And that they’ll be deployed to 30 violence-wracked police precincts within three weeks. Strong words and a promise of swift action, just 24 days into a new administration. This is a hopeful combination.
Bob McManus, New York Post
The left argues that we need a new approach to public safety, and is skeptical of Adams’s proposed reforms.
The left argues that we need a new approach to public safety, and is skeptical of Adams’s proposed reforms.
“A closer look at arrests in the city today paints an interesting picture. The misdeeds that dominated our collective psyche when I was a kid—robbery, burglary, grand larceny? Those are all down or flat compared with their ultra-low levels five years ago. The major area of growth? Assaults. According to the Daily News, last year saw the highest level of assaults on the subway in nearly 25 years… [These data] suggest that we’re not so much a cutthroat city out to get ‘more’ but a city suffering from a kind of sickness, one that results in a tendency to lash out…
“New York needs a modern police force that is trained to de-escalate encounters with the mentally unwell, the intoxicated, and those in the grip of addiction. New York needs housing for the homeless… In 2021, no city in the world had a higher number of ultra-wealthy homeowners (people with incomes of $30 million or more) than New York City, all living side by side with the largest homeless population since the Great Depression. If we’re wondering why the city is seeing more random acts of violence, I can’t help but feel this might be at least a part of our answer.”
Xochitl Gonzalez, The Atlantic
“New York remains among the safest large cities in America. There were 488 homicides last year — a far cry from the early 1990s, when the city saw more than 2,000 murders in a year. Still, the atmosphere of unease and despair in many parts of the city today is real… The challenge will be how to make the city safer without reverting to [overpolicing]… Mr. Adams promised better oversight of the new anti-gun units, and in the coming days, New Yorkers deserve to know more about what that oversight will be and how it will work…
“Mr. Adams also said he would campaign to roll back provisions in the state’s 2019 bail reforms and push for a change that would allow judges to consider ‘dangerousness’ when setting bail. If these changes will make New Yorkers safer, lawmakers should consider them. But the burden of proof lies with those who want to undo these important reforms…
“The causes of crime are complex, and New York’s rise in shootings mirrors a national trend. Homicides during the pandemic, for instance, have been on the rise in cities run by Republicans and Democrats, cities that liberalized their anti-crime policies and those that did not. So far, opponents of New York’s criminal justice reforms have not yet made the case that reforms directly fueled a rise in crime.”
Editorial Board, New York Times
“Data shows very little connection between bail reform and crime, while incarceration itself presents a clear and constant public safety hazard… New York state’s own data shows that 98% of people who are free pre-trial are not arrested for any violent felony charge, which include charges that do not have any requirement of actual harm to another person… And jail remains as deadly as ever: 15 people died at Rikers in 2021…
“It’s likely that Adams was spurred to act in part by the media who have decided that this is an apocalpytic moment—the New York Times said January ‘leaves some New Yorkers fearful for the city’s future’—even though there have been 20 murders year to date in the city, a decline of nearly 26 percent from 2021. Yet none of [the recent] tragic deaths implicate any of the criminal legal reforms attacked by Adams in his blueprint.”
M.K. Kaishian, Slate
