IT'S WOKE TO PASS HUG-A-CRIMINAL LAWS

Crime keeps rising, yet New York’s politicians keep making things worse

 

Post Editorial Board 

October 19, 2021

 

 

Cops patrol Times Square in Manhattan after a shooting near 45th Street and 7th Avenue. As crime spikes in the city, our elected officials seem to want to make life easier for criminals

 

Murders are back up to last year’s recent-record level, the NYPD’s progress this summer lost to a later surge. Subway crime is soaring, led by a 50 percent jump in grand larcenies and an 18 percent spike in robberies. But Mayor Bill de Blasio remains . . . blasé, insisting he’s already fixed the subway by sending more cops underground. “We surged NYPD officers into the subways over the last year, highest levels we had seen in decades, had a huge impact,” he said Tuesday.

His only concession to the rising-crime numbers: “We’ll make the deployments as needed to address any trend,” saying that’s “precision policing.”

Will they? You can only pull so many police from elsewhere without producing more hot spots above ground. It’s not like New York is jailing any but the hardest-core criminals these days, thanks to crime-friendly lawmakers and progressive prosecutors.

Indeed, it’s all too likely that the pandemic suppressed an even greater rise in crime in the wake of the state’s insane no-bail law and other anti-enforcement “reforms.” As Nicole Gelinas notes, during 2020, the city’s murder totals shot up “47 percent, to 468, from 319 the year before. That was the biggest one-year increase the city has ever seen, by far.”

And it’s not getting better this year: So far in 2021, the city’s seen 382 homicides, one shy of the total for the same period last year. And the total for the last four weeks is actually 23 percent above the same month in 2020.

Some City Council members are starting to wake up, calling on the Legislature to fix its overbroad reforms. And the next mayor will certainly add to the pressure.

But right now the Legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul are only making things worse, with foolish shifts like decriminalizing the possession of drug paraphernalia, such as kits for shooting up.

When crime started shooting up in the late ’60s, it took decades before New York got serious about turning things around. The silver lining: The city now knows from experience in the 1990s that it can be done —  with enough political will.

If the politicians don’t show that willpower on their own, the voters will have to do it for them.