I think the public has seen the dramatic increase in violent crime and other major crimes since the pandemic and want NYPD to fix it and they don't really care how they do that. Adams ran on a platform of exactly this and now the public expects results.
Tbh, in my circles there’s already deep resentment for Adam’s not actually addressing this. Instead we have cops lining up to ticket bike riders for no bells or turning on a red, while bike lanes themselves are notoriously unprotected from cars parking in/driving through them and pedestrians are getting killed in hit and runs that go ignored. The general sentiment is that police presence will always make a situation worse and don’t have incentives aligned with actually improving the lives of people.
The perception that crime has skyrocketed since the pandemic is propaganda, fueled by a police department afraid of being defunded, media outlets desperate for clicks, and a cop running for mayor.
Reality doesn't back it up. The murder rate in NYC is roughly where it was in 2009, and still five times less than it was in the 90s.
Your stats don't back up your claim. Crime _has_ skyrocketed since the pandemic as both of your links show. Your first links subtitle states: "Violent incidents are up since the pandemic began" and the second link shows a graph with a quite large spike starting around 2020.
That there existed a time in history when the murder rate was a higher than it is now is completely irrelevant.
That is not skyrocketing. It's just an "increase". Crime is back to where it was 10 years ago, when NYC was still considered one of the safest cities in the country.
Did you read the part of my first source that compares the rate of crime to the rate of crime reporting, or did you just read first half of the subtitle (conveniently omitting "But widespread anxiety obscures the fact that crime is still at decades-long lows.")
Do you think there was this much fear around crime in 2009 when the crime rate was exactly the same?
> That is not skyrocketing, by any definition of skyrocketing
Again, this doesn't somehow negate the fact that they did rise substantially.
> Did you read the part of my first source that compares the rate of crime to the rate of crime reporting
This is not surprising or damning. Crime rates have been dropping for 30+ years and this was the first major reversal of that trend. We lost 10 years of progress in one year. Such a highly abnormal event deserves outsized news coverage. There's no reason why news coverage must rise and fall in perfect proportion to the absolute value of the events being reported on.
If median household income fell in one year from current highs to 2009 levels, I'd expect a lot of news coverage– more news coverage than it would have received in 2009. Likewise, I'm positive there's a lot more stories about interest rates now than the last time they were at the same levels. The background context is important to the newsworthiness of any particular statistic.
> Again, this doesn't somehow negate the fact that they did rise substantially.
You said the data don't back up my claim. My claim was that they did not "skyrocket". Now the goalposts have been moved to "rise substantially," which can mean anything. Even the increase in 2006 from 539 to 596 murders (more than 10%) could be considered "substantial," it's a meaningless term.
If you don't think the media and the public outcry about this has been extremely overinflated (including comparing crime rates to the 90s), then I don't think we have much to discuss here. The graphs in the sources I link make it pretty clear that the bump in crime is insignificant compared to the historical crime rates in NYC. And based on your comment history, you're clearly pretty partisan to one side of the issue, so I don't think there's much to be gained for either of us by continuing this. I find it particularly ironic that you complain about mainstream media coverage of Trump, but find it impossible to believe the media could be exaggerating crime rates.
Don't think either of us are interested in a debate on the definition of the word "skyrocketing."
I'd be interested in a survey of New Yorkers on how much they think the murder rate rose from 2019-2020. I suspect they'd be pretty close to the right answer (48%), you think it'd be much higher (if I read you correctly) but without that data we will just have to agree to disagree.
> I find it particularly ironic that you complain about mainstream media coverage of Trump, but find it impossible to believe the media could be exaggerating crime rates.
This is a good example of the type of statement that passes as meaningful in partisan debates but is actually incoherent. I'm allowed to believe the media fairly reported one thing but not some other unrelated thing. There's no logical connection between the two that demands a consistent treatment. I haven't been caught in some epic contradiction.
...but if you have caught me in a contradiction, and you believe the exact opposite, then aren't we both in the same boat? If x and y cannot both be true then neither can ~x and ~y.
This is why police reform is so hard to achieve. When crime spikes, people are far less committed to police reform.
Even when crime isn't spiking, police can just sit on their hands whenever reforms are pushed and instantly change the narrative. This happened in SF with the AG recall and has happened in numerous municipalities. Local politicians can't afford to anger the police union because all the police has to do is stop enforcing the law aggressively and a local politician is done for.
So New Yorkers may want police reforms but the NYPD union has a lot of leverage to resist it. And voters generally dont' have the stomach to oppose police union backlash.
Except the police aren’t fixing it and are also still walking around like they are untouchable gods. It’s one thing to be a thug that runs the trains on time and another to be a thug that doesn’t.
