Rejoice: The NYPD is scoring major success against violent crime.
Yes, New Yorkers still have good reason to feel less safe than they did just a few years ago — but let’s consider the good news first.
Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced Tuesday that the city saw modern-history record lows in murders and shootings in the first five months of this year.
Above all, credit the work of New York’s Finest and Tisch’s simple but highly effective approach to public safety: Enforce the law. Every law, all of the time.
The NYPD is back to quality-of-life policing, not letting “minor” infractions, like traffic violations and aggressive panhandling, slide — because major crime follows when cops stop sweating the small stuff.
The department is also putting more cops in areas with high gun violence and nabbing more illegal firearms: Officers have yanked 2,200 guns off the streets so far this year.
Lauding her officers’ good work, Tisch said: “Results like this never happen by accident, and certainly not at a time when the state’s criminal-justice laws have made a revolving door out of our criminal-justice system.”
Amen: The historic dip in shootings and homicides is a hard-won accomplishment. Full stop.
But you’re not alone in not feeling safer.
For example, polling last month for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s reelection campaign found that 56% of likely Democratic primary voters described crime as out-of-control or a major problem.
It’s no small irony that Bragg is the messenger, but “why” is plenty obvious: We are still less safe in important ways that are largely beyond cops’ control.
For one: Overall transit crime has slightly dipped, but the state’s no-bail law and New York’s failings on handling mentally illness are still wreaking havoc: Felony assaults on the subway are up 19%, with cops and MTA workers making up 36% of victims.
And Tisch herself on Tuesday flagged another grim stat: Violent crime among kids has exploded since the state’s Raise the Age law made it near-impossible to try under-18s in Criminal Court. From 2018 to 2024, the number of underage shooters spiked 192%, and the count of kids getting shot jumped 81%, while underage gun busts soared 136%.
Other state “reforms” brought a plague of retail theft that’s closed countless stores and forced others to stick everyday necessities like toothpaste and deodorant behind locked plexiglass, while marijuana legalization has gifted New Yorkers with the ever-present reek of pot on the streets.
Add the impact of tens of thousands of “asylum seekers” coming to town, with their shelters serving as crime magnets and areas like the “Market of Sweethearts” along Roosevelt Avenue in Queens plagued by open-air drug and prostitution markets.
Tisch is a dedicated, no-nonsense, whip-smart leader — but she took over the NYPD after years of disastrous lefty policies wore law and order in New York down to the bone.
She can’t fix the city’s out-of-control crime problem on her own.
Her push for better enforcement is at odds with every far-left progressive in Albany and on the City Council, not to mention DAs and judges, who strive to protect perps from facing consequences for crime — which means victims suffer plenty.
The NYPD alone can’t fully restore your sense of safety: That requires fixing the laws that got New York into this mess and voting out the loons who oppose needed change.
