It’s a sweltering spring day in New York City, but Dana Aber stands on the Times Square-42 Street subway platform in a heavy leather jacket. Her hands are gloved and tucked into her pockets to hide her jewelry. Though she tries to appear relaxed, her senses are on high alert.
“I thought maybe it was a little better protection than a thin coat in case I got shot,” said Aber, a theater actress and writer from Manhattan.
Choosing an outfit based on how likely you are to be shot sounds like a dystopian nightmare, but it’s the reality for many New Yorkers who feel powerless and fearful amid a growing crime wave. A mass shooting at a Brooklyn subway station in April underscored his fears.
To date, the city has seen a 42.7% increase in serious crime compared to the same period in 2021, according to the NYPD. This includes a 46.7% increase in robberies, a 54% increase in theft incidents and a 14.9% jump in rape reports. Homicide rates are down 13.1% from last year but still up 9.2% over the past two years.
For New Yorkers like Aber, the fear of ending up with yet another crime statistic has cast a shadow over their city.
“It’s becoming more and more of a mental issue for us, constantly worrying about being safe,” said Pilar Weston, a 53-year-old resident of Harlem. “What will happen to me if I take the train? Or if I walk down the wrong street? Or when I ride my bike?”
“It’s a horrible way to live,” she said.
Harlem has been home to Weston for decades, but it’s starting to feel a lot less safe, she says. She avoids taking the train when she can. Weston chooses his path home carefully. She avoids certain streets at different times and is “always, always” ready to run.
“New Yorkers deserve better”
After three decades of historic lows, crime rates in New York City began to rise in 2020.
Officials attribute the increase to a combination of factors, including changes to the justice system – such as New York’s new bail reform legislation – and a flood of illegally smuggled guns, which gun advocacy groups and criminologists say has been fueled by the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic.
The economic and social hardship caused by the pandemic has played a role in the rise in crime, with the number of homeless people since the beginning of the pandemic increasing “substantially”, according to Mayor Eric Adams.
In January, Adams announced a comprehensive plan to tackle the crime wave. Measures include an increase in police officers on patrol, additional resources for the city’s existing weapons seizure unit, new technology to stem the flow of weapons, and job creation for at-risk residents. He also revived a controversial undercover unit in the police force renamed the “Neighborhood Security Teams”.
Police Commissioner Keechant L. Sewell attested to the plan, saying NYPD is committed to tackling crime head-on.
“The men and women of the New York City Police Department are proactively addressing the root causes of criminal behavior,” Sewell said in a statement at the time. “The NYPD (New York Police Department) will never give in, and the department has made too much progress over the decades – and invested too much in the communities it serves – to back down by any measure. New Yorkers deserve better.”
The plan couldn’t come anytime soon, according to Margaux Paras. Like many Asian Americans in the city, she lives with the added worry of hate crimes.
“I live in constant fear and anxiety that I will be someone’s next target,” said Paras, 35. “I’m always on the verge of a panic attack when I’m on trains or even walking during the day. It’s not safe for us.”
Hate crimes in New York City are up 76% so far this year compared to the same period last year, according to data from the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force.
Asian Americans were especially targeted, often due to misguided blame for the pandemic.
Paras lives in New Jersey, but travels to New York to study. She has no choice but to continue her usual routine, but the stress is overwhelming, she says. Sitting on a bench in Bryant Park, Paras shared horror stories she’d heard from family and friends, including one she said was randomly punched in the chest while walking through a park.
Patrick Curley, 70, is a longtime New Yorker who lives on the Lower East Side. He also welcomes the mayor’s plan and says he is confident the NYPD will restore public safety.
“I trust our officers to keep us safe,” Curley said.
Curley, who lived through the height of crime in the city in the 1980s, pointed to the walls of the Times Square-42 Street subway station, noting how they were once covered in graffiti and the platform destroyed.
“This is nothing like the 70s or 80s,” he said. “Crime levels here fall and rise again, but there is still no comparison. For someone new to New York, it seems like things are going downhill, but New York always comes back.”
The city saw 1,814 murders in 1980, a year that the New York Times called “the worst year of crime in the city’s history.” That assessment was eclipsed at the height of the crack epidemic in 1990, when the Times reported that New York City had recorded 2,245 homicides.
“More policing is not the answer”
Other New Yorkers, like Rasheed Blain, are concerned about rising crime but cast doubt on the mayor’s plan. He says the focus on increased policing is misguided and could backfire.
As a violence switch for the city’s crime prevention program, 23-year-old Blain walks through Harlem talking to at-risk youth to defuse conflict and inspire them to find other avenues beyond crime.
He says his experience has shown him that there are more effective ways to fight crime than policing.
“More policing is not the answer,” said Blain, who lives in the Bronx. “Police in our communities don’t communicate well with people and vice versa. There’s a trust issue going on and we feel like we’re not safe around them.”
He fears that more policing could alienate and even have an adverse effect on communities of color.
“Violence behaves like an epidemic of a contagious disease,” Blain said. “If we want to correct the increase in violence, we have to start with poverty, the root of all violence, and correct the lack of resources for youth as well as mental health.”
Carmen Perez-Jordan, CEO of the nonprofit The Gathering for Justice, agrees. The organization’s mission is to “eliminate racial inequalities that permeate the justice system,” according to its website.
Having lived in the city for 12 years, Perez-Jordan, 45, says she is familiar with what excessive policing of black and Latino neighborhoods can do. She is particularly concerned about the reintroduction of plainclothes officers, who in the past have been accused of violating minority rights with controversial tactics such as quick searches.
These searches, in which police stopped and searched people they considered suspects, disproportionately targeted black and Latino men.
“When violent crime increases, it’s usually our low-income black and brown communities that suffer the most, and I would expect what’s happening now to follow that trend,” Perez-Jordan said.
She believes the mayor’s plan does little to address the underlying factors that have contributed to the rise in crime.
“What I see is not just crime, it’s a giant red flag that something deeper is happening in these communities and in these people’s lives,” she said.
“We really need to ask ourselves, what drives someone to rob stores, do drugs in public places, or pick up a gun and hurt someone? What does a person have to go through to think these things are okay?”, asked the organization’s CEO.
Standing on the edge of a sunny boulevard near Central Park, Perez-Jordan admits the problem is closer to home than most might realize. In the past year, she has lost loved ones due to an increase in violent crime, as well as drug overdoses and Covid-19.
“A gallon of milk costs $4.62. Rents continue to rise unsustainably,” Perez-Jordan said. “Mental health diagnoses have soared, homelessness has skyrocketed, and fentanyl overdoses and deaths have devastated poor communities. All this while nearly a million Americans have died from a virus that has killed more than six million worldwide during the past two years of a global lockdown.”
“I think it’s safe to say that we should have seen this happen. People are hurting, people are desperate, and those who have experienced it their whole lives are fed up,” she said.
What New York needs most, according to Perez-Jordan, are interventions that “really produce community safety,” such as mental health services, substance abuse counseling, housing programs and more social workers.
“I should feel safe at home”
Ty Sumter looks back on the “old days” fondly. He smiles, excitedly recounting everything he used to do in New York when he felt safe walking alone and taking the train home at night.
Peaceful routines have become a memory of the past, he says, and a day that passes without incident is a blessing he doesn’t take for granted.
“For late night and early morning travellers, I’ve seen a lot of scary things. But it’s an everyday thing now,” Sumter said. “As someone who grew up here in the 90s, we had to walk together. We don’t let our friends take the trains alone. We are back to that time.”
Sumter is 47 years old and is the manager of a Trader Joe’s supermarket near Union Square. On his way home, despite the blue sky and the happy hum of families playing in the nearby park, he’s not all that happy.
“I love New York more than anything. It’s like finding the whole world in one place,” Sumter said. “But these levels of crime make me not want to do anything else. Even with this beautiful weather, I want to walk around, but what for? I don’t feel safe. There’s a police station here, and I still don’t feel safe. I just want to get home.”
Weston shares similar thoughts as she stands outside a drugstore at the 125th Street subway station in Harlem. She just spoke to a friend whose car was broken into yet again.
It’s “truly heartbreaking,” she said of the rise in crime.
“Having to walk around the neighborhood you grew up in, in your own house, constantly looking over your shoulder all the time and everywhere you go — it really bothers you to do that where you come from,” he said.
“It’s the house”, he laments. “I should feel safe at home.”
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
