Straight to the point

In the New York of my 1970s boyhood, urban chaos encircled ordinary people. Subway cars were covered in graffiti, inside and out. Pickpocketing, public urination, and assaults were common. I vividly recall the homeless people sprawled out on the sidewalks when I was 10. My father, with his thick Filipino accent, would point at them and say, “See that? That’s a bomb”. Of course, he meant “bum”, which was the accepted term in those days.

Yet as dark as Gotham could be in those gritty days memorialised in film classics like Taxi Driver, there was always a ray of light: namely, a healthy respect for the police. Any disturbance would stop as soon as an officer stepped into the train, for example. Many of these cops were Vietnam veterans, and you could see the command and experience in their eyes. I remember noticing one officer’s medal above his NYPD shield: “sharpshooter”, it read.

It’s the crucial element missing today, as disorder grips the Big Apple once more. Law-breakers don’t respect law enforcement — and for good reason: they know that, thanks to misguided criminal-justice “reform”, they can re-offend over and over with utter impunity.

I didn’t aspire to be a police officer when I joined the force in 1989. My career choice was born of necessity. I had to provide for my young family, so college had to wait. But there was also the calling to serve communities racked by poverty, lack of opportunity, and lousy infrastructure — a state of affairs embodied by abandoned and burnt-down tenement blocks; buildings spray-painted “X” by the Fire Department were unsafe for first responders to enter.

These buildings became havens for drug dealers and shooting galleries for addicts. As rookie police officers, we were tasked with cleaning up areas like that. To combat the visible signs of a decaying city with high crime rates, we were deployed to the busiest precincts, called “shitholes” by the cops. These were the worst of the worst. We were assigned to crack patrols to tackle the emerging epidemic head-on.

Numerous overtime details were created to address crime spikes, one of which was “Operation Takeback,” to which I was assigned. It included tackling minor violations — vandalism, urination, aggressive panhandling, and the like — that could foster an atmosphere of lawlessness. Little did we know then that this was the so-called broken-windows theory of policing in practice.

As a result, New York City experienced a renaissance beginning in the mid-1990s and early aughts. Formerly depressed communities thrived. Times Square, once dotted with peep shows and porn shops, was transfigured into a family-friendly destination. The hipster culture emerged in Williamsburg, marking a significant cultural moment — a “vibe shift,” to use today’s lingo.

These and other changes were driven by a police culture of strict enforcement. These officers were no-nonsense and motivated. They took pride in their jobs and had the support of the mayor, the NYPD brass, the media, and the people they served. Then it all went downhill again.

Although crime rates overall are still low compared to the bad old days, many indicators are flashing red. Since 2019, there has been a 31% increase in major crimes. The murder rate is almost 20% higher than it was five years ago; robbery is up by a quarter; and felony assault by nearly half. As former Queens district attorney Jim Quinn summed it up recently, “there were almost 29,000 more crime victims in 2024 than there were in 2019.”

Behind each of these statistics are real lives permanently scarred or snuffed out altogether by crime. Some of these cases — such as the woman burned to death on a Brooklyn train, or the man shoved onto subway tracks at Manhattan’s 18^th Street — receive national and even international media attention. But many other victims and their families suffer and mourn in silence.

So what happened?

Partly, it’s because the NYPD became a victim of its own success. We failed to adapt proven formulas to changing conditions. Front-line officers were encouraged to conduct “stop-and-frisk” procedures, and higher-ups demanded it during CompStat meetings (at which leaders review neighbourhood crime data). “How many touches do your officers have?” was a frequent question from chiefs who were likely excellent academic test-takers but had limited street experience.

The pressure at times translated into needlessly gruff, insensitive treatment. Several high-profile use-of-force incidents drew sharp criticism from communities of colour. Fast-forward to the rise of Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd “reckoning”, and law enforcers in New York and across the country faced unprecedented pressure. With Covid in the mix, it felt like an all-out war on police and law and order.

In the year 2020, under Mayor de Blasio, these trends reached a terrifying crescendo. That was when the state legislature in Albany launched its disastrous experiment with bail “reform,” eliminating cash bail and removing judges’ discretion in detaining criminal suspects. As if that weren’t enough to hinder law enforcers, the activist chorus to #Defund police grew louder.

De Blasio and his police executives didn’t know how to handle it. Even at the height of the Floyd reckoning, overwhelming majorities of African-Americans indicated they wanted the same or even higher levels of policing in their neighbourhoods. But instead of taking a holistic view of what the public wanted and balancing competing demands, the de Blasio administration folded to the loudest activists. Hizzoner permitted rioting, property destruction, and assaults on police officers. Mass police retirements occurred nationwide and in Gotham. Police morale sank — and remains low: applicants to the NYPD sank to 8,000 this year, down from 18,000 in 2017.

Mayor Eric Adams, the former NYPD captain who took over from De Blasio in 2022, inherited his predecessor’s crises — and failed to overcome them. Adams appeared to appoint friends rather than qualified executives. Four police commissioners have served under him, formerly unheard of. And on the streets, a climate of criminality continued to fester.

The criminal element felt empowered by the revolving door of the criminal-justice system. Nearly 20% of offenders break the law again, according to data released this week by the New York Department of Corrections. Offenders are often released on the same day they are arrested, and many go on to do more harm even as earlier cases against them are still pending. Yet district attorneys like Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg remain committed to so-called restorative justice and diversion programmes that keep criminals on the streets.

All this sends the wrong message to offenders. Criminals have come to believe that crime pays, and there are no consequences; law-abiding New Yorkers live in fear, especially in the confined spaces of the subway system.

Political leaders assert that the public perception of crime, especially in the subway system, is not aligned with actual crime statistics. Things aren’t that bad, they insist, and it’s only sensational media coverage that makes us feel unsafe. It’s true that overall crime rates have decreased — marginally, compared to the worst of the pandemic years. But compared to the renaissance of the 1990s and aughts, things are unquestionably and dramatically worse.

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As NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch recently noted, despite the marginal decline in crime numbers, the department must work to enhance the sense of safety. To tackle crime in the city, especially in the subway system, we need a stronger uniformed presence, particularly at the turnstiles. By preventing ne’er-do-wells from entering the subway in the first place, we can likely win half the battle. And we need officers on the trains. We need undercover cops, both underground and overground. Although tough anti-crime units have recently been controversial, they remain a valuable tool for policing.

Today’s cops act as therapists, social workers, racial reconcilers, and peace officers — all rolled into one — as other institutions of social care have eroded. But police officers aren’t a panacea for all social woes. Tackling the root causes of criminal behaviour requires ensuring that individuals in crisis have access to mental-health and social services. This approach can help reduce recent violent incidents linked to homelessness and mental-health issues. Agencies responsible for assisting this segment of the population should also be held as accountable as the police department is. Otherwise, we might well fall back into the state of affairs when I was a boy.

The bad old days are better kept confined to old movies.

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Source: UnHerd Read the original article here: https://unherd.com/