New York City: 80 people shot in a week
New Yorkers have a high tolerance for this sort of chaos. Your editor remembers driving through the Bronx and Harlem in the early 1980s. They looked like war zones. I was 7 and I think I saw someone shooting up on a front stoop. But still New York functioned.
Over time things got generally better. The graffiti came off of the subway (a new type of anti-graffiti paint was put on the trains) and the crime rate went down. Why this happened is open to debate. Some think Giuliani turned things around. Others argue that the crack scourge burned itself out. Still others argue that fresh blood came into the cities in the 90s after years of it leaving cities. Regardless, things did get tangibly better.
Now, New York feels like it’s slipping away again. A deeply crony system of governance is a big part of why.
From The New York Post
Officers responded to an electronic ShotSpotter alert just before 4 a.m., and discovered a block party still raging. Worse, the crowd attacked the police, with members screaming obscenities as they hurled bottles and other debris at the cruisers.
We are very much for police reform and have said so in this space for years. But there is a problem (beyond police accountability) here. New York is not on a good trajectory and as tax revenue leaves the city – we have heard that as much as 5% of the population has left in recent months – things could become far uglier.
(From NBC New York)
New York City’s homicide rate has hit a five-year high as the amount of people shot has jumped 42 percent compared to last year on the heels of an “implosion” of the city’s judicial system, according to NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea.
A perfect storm of COVID-19 shutdowns within the judicial system (which have shunted indictments against the most dangerous illegal gun criminals), a breakdown in the city’s social safety nets (which has prisoners being released from jail straight into homelessness), and bail reform laws and case deferments have all hindered the NYPD’s efforts to staunch the bleeding, Shea believes.
Reprinted from: https://www.ac2news.com/2020/06/new-york-city-80-people-shot-in-a-week/
