This week, Mayor Eric Adams and I were proud to report that overall major crime declined in New York City in 2024, with 3,662 fewer crimes this year compared to last.
Murders in our city are at a five-year low.
Shooting incidents and shooting victims were down for the third straight year — including the lowest number of shooting incidents in Brooklyn since the early 1990s.
Major crime is down in public housing, and it’s also down in our transit system for the second straight year. In fact, discounting the pandemic years, 2024 was the safest our subways have been from major crime in 14 years.
Make no mistake: These crime reductions were achieved thanks to the hard work and grit of New York’s Finest — but we know that many New Yorkers don’t feel safe.
Their perception of public safety has become their reality, and we know why: surging recidivism.
Compared to 2018, 2024 witnessed an unacceptable increase in the number of individuals arrested three or more times for the same crime in the same year.
The increase was 61.3% for burglary, 71.2% for grand larceny, 64.2% for shoplifting and 118.6% for auto theft.
And when we look at felony assault, the increase was a staggering 146.5%.
The deck has been completely stacked against our cops by a shocking lack of accountability for crime.
Without a course correction, we cannot achieve the low crime levels New York City enjoyed before January 2020, when changes to criminal justice laws made it more difficult to keep recidivists behind bars.
The subways will always be a bellwether for the perception of public safety in our city.
And I’ll say this to New Yorkers: subway crime is not in your head.
While it’s true that major crime in transit is down, random acts of violence are up. And in many instances, these terrifying crimes are committed by recidivists who absolutely should not be on our streets or in our subways given their violent propensities.
Case in point: Jamar Banks.
With 40 prior convictions, Banks has a violent criminal history stretching back at least 36 years.
He was arrested for stabbing a man on a subway train in 2022, and arrested with a knife while shoplifting in 2023.
This New Year’s Day, he stabbed a man in the back after an argument on a Manhattan train; less than 24 hours later, he stabbed an off-duty MTA employee on a train in the Bronx.
Banks was arrested on January 5; when will our criminal justice system put him back on our subways again?
And we’re seeing this scenario play out above ground, too.
Last month, career criminal Gary Worthy robbed a Queens deli at gunpoint before shooting and injuring a responding NYPD officer, and an innocent bystander.
Worthy had 17 prior arrests, seven of which happened while he was out on lifetime parole — including arrests for robbery, burglary, and menacing within the past year.
This is a dangerous criminal who should not have been on the streets, but it’s a story we see repeated again and again — and New Yorkers have had enough.
The problem is further compounded when you look at misdemeanors.
Compared to 2018, misdemeanor crimes in New York City were up in 2024.
At the same time, and for these very same crimes, the rates of decline to prosecute were up 31%, while 54% more pre-trial defendants were released on their own recognizance.
Imagine how disheartening it is for our cops to arrest the same people, for the same crimes, in the same neighborhoods, over and over.
And how scary it is for New Yorkers to see the same person who victimized them one day, walking the streets the next.
The time for band-aids and half measures is over, because the revolving door of the criminal justice system fails to put the rights and needs of victims first.
New Yorkers demand, and they certainly deserve, better.
Jessica Tisch is the police commissioner of New York City.
