Last week, the NYPD issued a press release touting the 4.1% reduction in crime in November 2023 compared to November 2022.
But when you look at the numbers year to date, crime is down a statistically insignificant 0.77% this year compared to 2022, but it is a hefty 33.7% higher than it was in 2019, before bail reform and discovery reform trashed our criminal justice system.
While the NYPD notes that, overall, there were 866 fewer crimes in 2023 compared to 2022, there were almost 30,097 more felony crimes and 22,000 more petit larcenies and misdemeanor assaults in 2023 than there were in 2019.
While there were 405 fewer people shot this year than last year, 210 more people were shot in 2023 than in 2019 and 70 more were murdered.
The higher crime rates of 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 should not be the new standard by which the NYPD measures success.
New York City felony index crimes went down in 17 of the 20 years between 2000 and 2019. Crime went down every year from 2014 through 2019.
It was only after thousands of “non-violent” career criminals were released from city jails (pre-COVID) in early 2020 that crime began to rise.
By March 15, 2020, crime had risen 20%. It rose further when thousands of the more dangerous city inmates were released because of the COVID virus beginning in mid-March. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Photo: Kyle Mazza/Zuma Press |
The focus on comparing 2019 and 2022 rates obscures how bad policy has worsened violence.
There’s more to the FBI’s newly released Crime in the Nation Statistics than headlines would have you believe. The story from many outlets is that violent crime is no longer an issue—it surged with the onset of the Covid pandemic in 2020 and has since declined. Violent crime nationally fell 1.3% in 2022, putting the year’s rate on a similar footing as 2019’s. But a glance at the top-line FBI numbers indicates that more is going on. Murders decreased 6% compared with 2021, and aggravated assault decreased 1.5%. But carjackings rose more than 8%, and robberies increased 1.3%.
Part of the problem with most media analysis is that 2019 didn’t represent a historical baseline of homicide and violent crime rates in America—2014 did. Nationally, violent crime and murder were much more prevalent in 2019 than in 2014. So though U.S. rates have fallen back to pre-pandemic levels, the country is well above normal violent-crime rates. Total violent crime in 2022 was 5% higher than in 2014, an increase that represents tens of thousands of additional victims in a single year. The national homicide rate in 2022 was 43% higher than in 2014. Since 2015, there have been roughly 30,000 more murders in the U.S. than there would have been if the homicide rate had stayed at the 2014 low.
None of this is easily attributable to Covid, nor are the vast local differences in violent crime and homicide rates that emerged in the past year and a half. Some cities have seen marked drops in crime. So far in 2023 homicides are down 17% in Atlanta, violent crime has fallen 12% in Dallas, and Miami’s murder and violent crime rates have hit historic lows. Elsewhere, things aren’t going nearly as well. In Washington, violent crime is up 40% in the first 10 months of 2023 compared with this time last year, and homicides are up 33%. Seattle has already had 10 more murders this year than in all of 2022. San Francisco’s murder rate also is on track to surpass last year’s. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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