Reports of violent crime in New York City have been in steady decline—and it looks like 2017 will be setting a few records in due to unprecedented lows. The New York Times reports:
It would have seemed unbelievable in 1990, when there were 2,245 killings in New York City, but as of Wednesday there have been just 286 in the city this year — the lowest since reliable records have been kept.
In fact, crime has fallen in New York City in each of the major felony categories — murder and manslaughter, rape, assault, robbery, burglary, grand larceny, and car thefts — to a total of 94,806 as of Sunday, well below the previous record low of 101,716 set last year.
The news is a nice additional nail in the coffin of the stop-and-frisk program in New York City that allowed police officers to stop, question and search anyone they choose. Unsurprisingly, the tactic ended up being a racist tactic used to disproportionately harass people (more specifically men) of color. Its defenders tried to justify it by saying it made the city safer. However, it’s clearly not the case.
If the trend holds just a few more days, this year’s homicide total will be under the city’s previous low of 333 in 2014, and crime will have declined for 27 straight years, to levels that police officials have said are the lowest since the 1950s. The numbers, when taken together, portray a city of 8.5 million people growing safer even as the police, under Mayor Bill de Blasio, use less deadly force, make fewer arrests and scale back controversial practices like stopping and frisking thousands of people on the streets.
It turns out that crime dropped during stop-and-frisk in spite of it—not because of it. It turns out that smart policing and fostering better relationships between communities and the police is—gasp—helpful!
The continued declines are a boon to Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat elected on promises of police reform — promises that prompted warnings of mayhem to come by his opponents in 2013. But the opposite has happened, putting him on stronger footing as he pivots to a second term with a Police Department transformed to exercise greater restraint as it focuses on building trust in the city’s neighborhoods.
One notable outlier is reports of rape have increased in the latter part of this year. However, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Rape is vastly underreported and an increase of reports could be a reflection of more victims coming forward in the post-#metoo era.