
Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since the 1950s - danso
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/27/nyregion/new-york-city-crime-2017.html
======
dawhizkid
As a former SF resident now living in Manhattan I can definitely say I
generally feel much safer in NYC than I did in SF. I’m guessing it’s a
combination of the fact that most of Manhattan is so gentrified that there are
few pockets of poorer communities where gang-related activity can thrive and
the number/visibility of police is comparably much higher. Taxes and CoL are
comparable, so I definitely feel like I’m getting more for my $$ as far as
security and safety goes.

~~~
zghst
Where in SF did you feel unsafe?

I walk around all parts of the city considered “dangerous” (Bayview, Mission,
Ocean View/Ingleside) and nothing has happened to me. Really the only “bad”
area SF has is the Tenderloin and it’s common sense not to be out there
wandering around even during the day.

~~~
chrisseaton
> it’s common sense not to be out there wandering around even during the day

It seems pretty bad that a major western city has a completely no-go area
right in the middle. Dismissing it as not a problem because it’s common sense
to avoid a large area of the centre of the city doesn’t help the argument!

~~~
jacobolus
I've never felt unsafe walking around in the Tenderloin, e.g. carrying an
infant. The main 'problem' people have is that there are poor people living
there in SROs, and a good number of homeless people loitering all the time.
But they mostly keep to themselves. Some folks certainly have substance abuse
or mental health problems and will be talking to themselves, and if you walk
through you might get shouted at, and sometimes there is a shouting match out
in public, and statistically there is some amount of crime between residents,
but it's generally not a physical threat to people walking through. It is by
no means a 'no-go area'.

~~~
fragsworth
> I've never felt unsafe walking around in the Tenderloin, e.g. carrying an
> infant.

Are you joking? Or just insane?

I'm a 160 lbs male and would not walk through the tenderloin at night. It's
really fucking scary. Almost everyone there is homeless and on drugs. The bad
kind of drugs.

I would go so far as to say that someone carrying an infant through that area
might be endangering the child.

~~~
losteric
Kid or no kid, the Tenderloin is fine as long as you "fit in"... but if it
looks like you can be scared out of some cash, you will get the predatory
stare.

~~~
notyourday
My wife got attacked in San Francisco in Tenderloin around 11am, a few blocks
away from Clift Hotel on the second day of the trip. I guess her carrying a
Starbucks cup made her a target.

The fact that SF tolerates shit like this under the banner of "acceptance",
"it is mental health" or whatever the hell it may be is mind blowing.

~~~
madengr
CCW would help, though that’s not available in CA.

~~~
notyourday
Between hot coffee into his face and her doing a little bit of a small joint
manipulation, she was fine. Just shocked.

------
Izkata
> and crime will have declined for 27 straight years

> But criminologists differ about the cause of the continued declines. Mr.
> Zimring said that while better policing accounted for much of the decline in
> crime since 1990, it was no longer a primary driver. New York is “tiptoeing”
> toward a 90 percent crime decline for reasons that remain “utterly
> mysterious,” he said.

The "27 straight years" caught my eye, and reminded me of something I saw a
good decade ago, so may I suggest something controversial?

It doesn't perfectly match 27 years ago, but this is across the whole US, not
just NYC - (popular) violent video games are highly correlated with the drop
in crime:
[http://oi25.tinypic.com/2r6ns4y.jpg](http://oi25.tinypic.com/2r6ns4y.jpg)

(Correlation <> causation, but I _definitely_ think it merits more
investigation... does anyone else happen to know more?)

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
It's also long enough for kids to grow up entirely after the ban on tetraethyl
lead in gasoline.
[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27067615](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27067615)

~~~
Izkata
Two things bother me about this theory:

* First instinct is that the fall-off should be more gradual if it's based on people's ages, not have that sudden sharp descent. I don't put a lot of weight to this though since the 20-year gap makes it sound like the exposure has to be under a certain age (and so within a relatively small range), which would appear as a relatively sharp drop.

* Second, after noticing the graph doesn't actually look like the one I posted (which jtmarmon posted confirmation to in a google doc), I took a closer look: It claims to be using "violent crimes per 100,000 population", but instead matches this chart from wikipedia [0], which isn't scaled by population - it's using raw numbers from the UCR data tool [1]. If the gasoline line is labeled wrong as well, then there's probably no issue, but if it's labeled correctly then half the correlation for this story isn't actually a correlation. Not sure where to look for that one, though.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent_Crime_in_the_Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent_Crime_in_the_United_States.png)

[1]
[https://www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/State/StatebyState....](https://www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/State/StatebyState.cfm)

~~~
Spooky23
Remember that lead gas disappeared quickly, and that poor people who commit
violent crime get incarcerated and killed.

What happened to poor, mostly black youth in cities was akin to a war — a
generation or more lost.

------
mancerayder
Reported crime.

They also reclassified many crimes. Also, cops aren't always eager to take
reports (I speak from experience).

Yes, there are less homicides than ever, but it's still painful to watch
manipulation of statistics in slow motion.

On the flip side sex crimes are quite up (again, reported).

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _cops aren 't always eager to take reports (I speak from experience)_

Cops have no say in whether to take or not take a report. Call 311, make a
police report, meet the officer dispatched to you and sign. I agree that
getting the NYPD to actually _act_ on a police report is puzzlingly difficult.

~~~
sedachv
> Cops have no say in whether to take or not take a report.

One time I tried to report a theft. I gave up after the third time the cop who
was answering the phones at the local police station hung up on me.

~~~
nerdponx
The other day I tried to report someone who was blatantly trying to sell me a
stolen computer. I was disappointed to find that they don't maintain any kind
of database of serial numbers of lost and stolen electronics.

The implication is that, if you do lose something or have it stolen, there is
no way for the police to help you get it back.

~~~
learc83
That's mostly because the percentage of people who keep track of the SN of
their electronics is close to 0.

------
jriot
I visited NYC a year ago for the first time. It amazed me the amount of police
present everywhere. The sheer number of police out and about was shocking.

~~~
donohoe
Maybe you were in tourist areas (if not, where did you see them)?

I would complain that I don’t see enough cops on the street (live in Brooklyn,
work in Manhattan)

~~~
StanislavPetrov
Manhattan is saturated with police as well as integrated with a web of linked
surveillance cameras. Brooklyn has fewer but still far, far more then other
parts of the country, especially out west. New York City has roughly 50,000
police officers and a police budget of over $4 billion dollars just for the
city alone. On top of that you have state troopers and a variety of other
agencies (like the MTA, the many federal police agencies in the city and the
heavily armed army/national guard troops that are often visible in
uniform/armor at Penn Station and other places around the city) who have their
own police officers. Within 30 miles of the city you have thousands and
thousands more police officers from Nassau, Westchester, Suffolk, and other
surrounding counties (as well as additional police forces from towns within
these counties). You're talking about 70,000+ officers within a 50 mile
radius.

By comparison, Arizona has a total of about 14,000 police - for the whole
state. Colorodo has about 12,000. Most states are comparable to this. You are
just far, far less likely to see police officers in most other places in the
country. As a New Yorker, I'm always astonished by the lack of police presence
in other states (let alone other countries) because policing is so ubiquitous
here.

~~~
yborg
>70,000+ officers within a 50 mile radius

Sounds like a prison.

~~~
ascagnel_
70,000 sounds low; a 50-mile radius would bring you close to Hackettstown, NJ;
at that point, you're almost into PA.

------
shadowtree
They have transferred the poor off the streets to prison cells.

Super harsh sentences for serial small crimes, drug dealing, etc.

You remove any young male who has potential to become a criminal from the
street and all you’re left with is white collar crime.

Unpopular facts.

~~~
ch4s3
That doesn't explain the similar drops in crime in Canada, most of Europe,
Australia, and a ton of other countries. The US is nearly unrivaled in
incarceration, but crime hasn't dropped faster of further than in comparable
developed nations with lower incarceration rates.

~~~
shadowtree
Most of Europe never had the crime and murder rates of NYC during the same
timeframe. 70s and 80s in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, etc very different
than in NYC.

~~~
ch4s3
NYC then should see a larger drop then as it reverts to the mean. Those cities
may no have had peaks as high as New York, but their peaks were during the
same time period. Half of Berlin was in the GDR where heavy handed
surveillance networks tracked most residents, so it isn't really comparable.

------
aryehof
I wonder if people should consider that "freedom" includes being free of fear
and threat. Where I live, even children can go out on the streets at night
without a second thought. Without having to fear violence, hate, gangs or the
authorities. There is something wrong with a society that prioritizes freedom
of speech and the right to carry a gun, over the right to not live in fear and
to human dignity.

~~~
leetcrew
if you can't advocate for yourself or defend yourself, any freedom from fear
or human dignity afforded to you is a happy accident. it may last for a while,
but what will you do if things change?

i concede that the sea may change for guns sometime in the next century; they
can make things very chaotic as population density increases. still, i
maintain that freedom of speech is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition
for a stable and free society.

------
almost_usual
St. Louis had almost as many homicides as NYC this year.

Population of St. Louis: 312,000

Population of NYC: 8,537,673

[http://amp.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article191211704....](http://amp.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article191211704.html)

~~~
DerfNet
St. Louisan here. What's really impressive about our murders is that basically
~95% of them take place within two small neighborhoods inside St. Louis city
limits, which itself is but one small subsection of the metro area, which
actually has a population hovering around 3 million. Those two neighborhoods,
Dutchtown and North City, are _impressively_ dangerous, so dangerous that even
diluting them with the rest of the city still places us at the top of "most
dangerous cities" lists year after year.

------
Animats
Most of the people with heavy lead exposure are now beyond the age for violent
crime.

White collar crime is bigger than ever. Today's organized crime operators have
better things to do than shake down shopkeepers for protection money, run a
numbers racket, or try to resell stolen goods.

------
forapurpose
This is especially good news:

 _As of Dec. 20, police officers intentionally fired their service guns in 23
encounters, a record low, down from 37 in 2016. The Police Department said
officers were relying more on stun guns, which were used 491 times through
November, compared with 474 times during the same period in 2016._

------
olingern
While I agree that NYC is much safer than when I first moved there five years
ago -- threats still pose themselves from time to time (as anywhere will).

For example, I fell asleep for the first time on a 2 train last month, and was
robbed. It was one of those, "Ah, this is definitely on me," moments. Easily
preventable; however, it's still crime, nonetheless. Most importantly, I
didn't report this (as many others in similar situations will not), so the
statistics are probably not as accurate as headlines would like you to think.

------
pfarnsworth
Having visited Manhattan several times in the last couple of years, I have to
say that it does feel like a police state being there. In some senses it's
great, because you don't have to worry so much about crime as much, but it
also speaks to the police state that NYC and the rest of the US is turning
into.

So I'm not surprised that crime has fallen, given the sheer number of police
officers present.

------
jshaqaw
NYC is a wonderful and safe place to visit or live. People raised on too many
cop shows may miss this. It’s not perfect -no place is - but it is quite safe.

------
cletus
So I've lived in NYC for 7 years now so have some personal experience with
this. Note that I live and work in Manhattan so my experience is probably
skewed and is only really anecdotal anyway.

My personal experience with the NYPD has been very good.

\- As others have noted, heavy police presence in heavily frequented areas,
particularly by tourists.

\- During Sandy I was in the area without power. At night a police cruiser
would go down my street every couple of hours (IIRC) with the lights on but no
siren, I guess looking for looters.

\- I had a car alarm go off at 1:30am early Sunday morning right outside my
window. While I was figuring out what to do and calling 311, a police van
turned up (around 1:50am) and broke into the car and disabled the alarm. I
went out to speak to the officers and they said just call my local precinct
and any unattended car alarm is cause for the police to come up (defined as
>10 minutes).

That all being said, there's a pretty dark side to policing and the criminal
justice system in NYC too, most notably in the treatment of minorities. Some
examples:

\- New York's ridiculous gravity knife law [1], which seems to be used by
police selectively to target minorities. The New York legislature has now
twice overwhelmingly passed reforms only to have this (now twice) vetoed by
Governor Cuomo on thin justification [2]. One can only presume he's kowtowing
to the law and order crowd.

\- Alleged racial bias in pedestrian stops, seemingly often under the guise of
seeking a mysterious African-American male suspect in his 20s who is 5' 10"
(which can be pretty much anyone).

\- The appalling case of Three Years in Riker's Island Without a Trial [3], as
win-rate obsessed prosecutors use stalling tactics, the imbalance of power,
the ignorance of suspects and plea deals to deny people due process.

\- The arrest of James Blake [4].

\- Chokehold death of Eric Garner [5] for a relatively minor offense.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/opinion/new-yorks-
outdate...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/opinion/new-yorks-outdated-
knife-law.html)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/nyregion/gravity-knife-
cu...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/nyregion/gravity-knife-cuomo-
veto.html)

[3] [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/before-the-
law](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/before-the-law)

[4] [https://www.boston.com/sports/tennis/2017/09/19/ex-tennis-
st...](https://www.boston.com/sports/tennis/2017/09/19/ex-tennis-star-james-
blake-testifies-about-his-mistaken-arrest)

[5]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner)

------
everdev
It's surprising to hear this within the context of Chicago experiencing such
high levels of homicide. Do they give any context as to why NYC is out
performing other large cities?

~~~
danso
Chicago apparently has greater concentrations of poverty, particularly among
African-Americans:

edit: forgot the URL for this story [https://www.thecut.com/2016/07/why-is-
new-york-so-much-safer...](https://www.thecut.com/2016/07/why-is-new-york-so-
much-safer-than-chicago.html)

> _A 2015 study by Rutgers University public policy researcher Paul A.
> Jargowsky found that more than a third of all poor African-Americans in
> Chicago live in census tracts with poverty rates above 40 percent, compared
> with 26 percent of poor African-Americans in New York._

The headline news about Chicago homicides and shootigns (e.g. _" WAR ZONE: 10
Killed, 28 WOunded in Chicago Over MLK Day Weekend [0])_ don't convey how
concentrated the violence is in specific areas of the city. I visit (middle-
class) friends who live downtown and uptown (along the lake) and it feels as
safe as any of the nice parts of Manhattan when I lived there.

Chicago Tribune does an excellent job tracking shootings [1]. You can easily
see -- after zooming in a little -- on even their overplotted dot map that
areas other than Chicago's west and south sides, shootings are virtually
nonexistent:

[snapshot] [https://imgur.com/gallery/uPfSG](https://imgur.com/gallery/uPfSG)

FWIW, according to the Tribune's tracker: _In Chicago, 3,543 people have been
shot this year. That is 784 fewer than 2016._

[0]
[http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/dsp/search.htm?frompage=...](http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/dsp/search.htm?frompage=1&StartRow=97&maxrows=50&searchFor=Chicago)

[1] [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/data/ct-shooting-
victims-...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/data/ct-shooting-victims-map-
charts-htmlstory.html)

~~~
bluedino
>> Chicago apparently has greater concentrations of poverty, particularly
among African-Americans

So how does that explain Detroit, which has more poverty than Chicago, but
also has a NYC-like downswing in homicides?

 _In metro Detroit, 49% of African Americans who are poor are living in census
tracts where at least 40% of the residents are poor, the highest rate among
the Top 25 metro areas_

~~~
junkscience2017
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Detroit](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Detroit)

"Detroit has the second highest murder rate in the United States"

violent crime is down everywhere in the US, so it is still useful to see the
relative ranking to other cities

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-
violent-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-
crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/)

~~~
Avshalom
"In 2015, Detroit had its lowest number of criminal homicides in 40 years"

is the point.

~~~
junkscience2017
most cities are reporting this trend

~~~
bluedino
Except Chicago isn't, which was the whole point of bringing up Detroit

~~~
danso
And yet that specific metric for Detroit -- "lowest number of criminal
homicides in 40 years" \-- is virtually useless as it doesn't account for
Detroit's massive population decline.

Via the FBI's UCR tool which has data from 1985-2014:
[https://www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/Local/RunCrimeJuris...](https://www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/Local/RunCrimeJurisbyJurisLarge.cfm)

Unfortunately I can't deeplink to pages so here are screenshots:

[https://imgur.com/a/LGgJh](https://imgur.com/a/LGgJh)

\- Detroit having ~300 homicides is very good compared to the ~400 homicides
it had in 2000. However, that doesn't quite match up to its population
decline. The homicide rate in 2000 was ~41.6 per 100K, compared to 43+ in 2014
(and 2015 and 2016 I think).

\- Meanwhile, Chicago's 2014 homicide rate was 15.2. In 2015, it was 17.5. And
in 2016, it jumped to 27.8 [0]

That jump is a huge jump compared to historic trends. But still a relative low
for Chicago when considering 1990-forward. According to the Tribune's homicide
tracker, the number of homicides in 2016 was 792 [1]. In 2017, it's tracking
to be 664 homicides, which would be a rate of ~23/100K. Still not great but
seems too early to say that Chicago is on an unchanging course of increasing
crime. And it doesn't make much sense to argue _but what about Detroit?_ when
comparing Chicago to NYC.

[https://imgur.com/a/LGgJh](https://imgur.com/a/LGgJh)

[0] [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/data/ct-homicide-
spikes-c...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/data/ct-homicide-spikes-
comparison-htmlstory.html)

[1]
[http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/homicides](http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/homicides)

------
RoutinePlayer
This isn't surprising at all for anyone who has read Better Angels of Our
Nature by Steven Pinker. The decline of violence is a ongoing trend in the
species.

------
zero_intp
Seriously, Lead Pb. [0]

[0] - [http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-
exposure...](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-
gasoline-crime-increase)

------
eurticket
Does this cause the NYPD forces to be downsized?

------
readhn
this is in direct correlation with higher living costs/rent/food etc.

street thugs cant afford to live in new york hence lower crime. its not result
of any policies.

------
l33tbro
Manhattan has increasingly become a gated community since the city neared
bankruptcy in the '70s and the banks slowly negotiated more power in running
things (as explained in Adam Curtis' 'Hyper-normalization' video essay). It's
arguable that the NYPD has almost become a private security force for the
city's wealthy residents, given how thin the presence is in places like The
Bronx and East New York.

~~~
Sangermaine
These numbers are for the entire city, not just Manhattan. The bad old days of
the late 70s-early 90s are over, just accept it. It's weird how hard some
people fight good news.

~~~
l33tbro
The figures don't tell the story of all of the burroughs. Can you convince a
cab to take you to the Bronx after 10 pm? I've had quite a few drivers tell me
that they refuse to go there.

Btw, the 'mourning old New York' thing pisses me off as well, as things have
moved on and it's a welcome change that crime is down in Manhattan. I'm
observing, not judging, when I say that the the city is playground for the
rich.

~~~
ultraluminous
I've had no trouble taking cabs and ubers to and from the bronx at least a
dozen of times (and in particular the south bronx) at all hours of the night
and all days of the week. A few times it was an uber pool that had other
riders in it (meaning they managed to find a cab too).

------
dworrad
Surely most crime is done online these days.

------
junkscience2017
The poor have been priced out. Go to big cities that still have a large
segment of objectively poor people and you will see the attendant crime.

~~~
rocky12
That is my hypothesis, as they were gentrified out of NYC they moved to places
like Newark.

~~~
yalph
Sorry but thats not true Bronx is quiet poor and its just one subway ride
away.

~~~
jronsomers
There is also the PATH to consider if you're going to mention 'one subway ride
away'.

------
sschueller
Do crimes committed by the NYPD count?

------
readhn
drug trade is at all time high in new york. massive amounts of drugs go
through the city every day. its a major drug hub.

plus its a new generation of thugs out there that understand that killing
people attracts unwanted attention. hence lower violence.

