Links in bold.
At 11:40 a.m, while Daniel Enriquez was being murdered on the subway, I was walking with friends through the parks of Harlem and Northern Manhattan. Beastly hot day, lots of steps, I’m proud I finished.
Around 2:00 p.m., I took the A train from 190th Street back home. I didn’t know about Enriquez at that point; I might have taken buses if I had. It was, as the New York Times called it, an “unprovoked attack.”
The police have identified a suspect. Nineteen prior arrests.
At this point, I am numb. I have no response to these daily outrages other than a mild, “how awful.”
I always knew that the low-crime period we enjoyed post-1992 would be temporary. I just wonder how bad it can get. When I go on the subway, I stay rigidly within a zone and I don’t interact with anyone, since you never know what can be construed as a provocation.
NYC was a war zone for YEARS DECADES.
I remember distinctly the feeling of liberation when the horrible crime wave that lasted decades passed. At first we couldn’t believe it. Gradually the new, wonderful, normal set in. It was OK to go to the park! To walk here, there, and not feel an omnipresent sense of paranoia and gloom.
I’ve heard often that crime went down under Dinkins. In fact, this is an article of faith on the left. So I looked up the statistics and verified that this claim is indeed a lie. Some categories of crime did trend downward, but from prior huge peaks. And stranger murders—the most frightening of all urban crimes—was a particularly gruesome outlier.
Murders fluctuate from year to year. Let’s begin in 1980. From 1980 (1,845) to 1985 (1,384) murder rates trended down. Then they began to tick up relentlessly every year from 1986 to 1990. David Dinkins was mayor of NYC from the beginning of January 1, 1990 to December 31, 1993. The election is in November and whoever is elected takes office in January of the following year.
I used to give Dinkins a pass for what happened in the first year of his calamitous administration, because how could you blame someone who had just taken over, but I no longer do. The murder rate shot thru the roof. Criminals knew that they had one of their own in power.
Let’s look at these numbers (they’re from the above link):
The first year of the Dinkins administration saw the highest recorded number of murders ever in NYC: a mind-boggling 2245.
From 1991-1993, the murder numbers went down. But they were still worse than the awful years of the 1980s.
Cumulatively 8,387 New Yorkers were murdered under that one awful administration. Eyeballing it, Dinkins’ one administration was worse than any of Ed Koch’s three administrations (in no Koch year did murders exceed 2,000).
The real turnaround came in 1994, the first year of the first Giuliani administration, although Koch tried. (Look at that mid-80s dip.)
The numbers now are 1950s level, even though the chart stops in 2020. But the trend is worrying: from 292 murder/manslaughter in 2017 to 488 in 2021.
Anyway:
The best year for murders during the Dinkins administration (1990-1993 inclusive) was worse than the worst year for any other mayor during New York’s entire history. When he left, the downward trend in murders from 1994 to 2000 was steep.
Democrats in general can’t govern. Mainly because of crime. The mayor of Detroit apparently a Democrat is an outlier. He has tacks crime and the failed city of Detroit has a new beginning. Like the rest of us, criminals respond to incentives. Don’t incentivize crime.