Crime Continues to Rise in New York City, as COVID Pandemic Wanes

  By Yehudit Garmaise

    The NYPD reported today that in May, crime overall in New York City continued to rise by 22%, when the department compared its statistics with those of May 2020.  

   Last month, shooting incidents increased to 173, compared to 100 in May 2020. Other increases in crime included a 46.7% increase in robberies, a 35.6% increase in grand larceny crimes, and a 20.5% increase in felony assaults.

    Only burglaries decreased, showing a 21.8% reduction compared to last May. Last month, 37 New Yorkers were murdered, which is the same number of victims in May 2020. 

    More than half, 51% of the residents of New York City have received at least one vaccination, and the COVID positivity rate today was .83%, a record low not seen since last March, however, Mayor Bill de Blasio continues to blame the ever-increasing rise in crime on the disruptions caused by the COVID pandemic.

    “I'm absolutely convinced that we're going to turn this around,” the mayor repeated at his press conference for a time that is not countable. “I have a lot of faith in the NYPD we had 850 more officers join the force coming out of the academy last month, 600 coming this month. We have put the most police in the subways in 25 years.

     “We have the court system, finally, this is the second week only. It has been fully operational since over a year ago, it will take time to ramp up, but it's going to make an impact. The recovery itself is helping us to make people safer. The investments we're putting in communities: Cure Violence, Crisis Management System are all of these things going to add up.”

   “But, you don't turn around the results of a global pandemic and a whole dislocation of our society, don't turn around overnight, but we are going to turn it around.” 

    But the crime numbers keep rising, and in 19 days New Yorkers will vote for in the Democratic Primary, which will most likely determine the city’s new mayor.

     Yesterday at a press conference, while addressing crime in New York City, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that New York City mayoral candidates need to lay out their specific ideas about what should be done to reduce crime.

     “Tell me what you would do,” the governor rhetorically told the candidates. “Do you believe we need more police in the subways?

     “At one point we had an NYPD officer on every train in the system, would you do that again?

     “How do you restore the trust [between the police and the community?] Do you hire more police, fewer police? How do you reform the police department, and how do you [allow] the police to feel empowered to do their jobs without being attacked?”