Writing at the Claremont Institute’s publication The American Mind, Jason Curtis Anderson creates a word picture of how and why New York City went from high crime hellhole to well-ordered urban space under mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg. And then how and why it went back to being a high crime hellhole under de Blasio and continues there under Adams.
Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg transformed NYC into a well-oiled machine, then de Blasio and fellow progressives poured sugar into its gas tank via criminal justice reforms that made the city more dangerous.
Our elected officials decided to focus their attention on the well-being of New York’s criminal population, elevating them to the status of a new protected class. Progressives went on to pass criminal justice reforms that disincentivized police from doing their jobs and undermined the very systems that made New York City so safe and successful. Their policy choices eventually resulted in an unprecedented crime wave, sanctioned riots, and an overall sense of lawlessness that continues to plague NYC to this day.
It took only four years to go from the mayor deciding it was OK for people to urinate in public to instructing the police to stand down while angry mobs looted our stores and burned cop cars in Union Square. (snip) All it took to bring America’s greatest city to its knees was electing progressive activists and letting them tamper with the criminal justice system.
So how did NYC voters choose candidates who promised to go easy on criminals? I have a possible answer.
The broken-windows, stop-and-frisk policing that produced the orderly NYC Anderson fondly remembers was most tough on poor people living in the city. It was their kids who ended up in Rikers, who were hassled for congregating on street corners, doing graffiti, drinking and carrying weapons.
Who liked the Giuliani-style NYC? Tourists and commuters from CT and NJ (who had no vote) and middle class and above NYC dwellers. The latter weren’t numerous enough to win the day. Especially when a fair number of those were, for ideological reasons, “woke progressives.” Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
I am tempted to propose Cotton’s Law which states “In an orderly, well-run city, the repressiveness of policing is proportional to population density.” Or even “ In an orderly, well-run city, the repressiveness of policing is proportional to population density squared.” Translation, the tighter people are packed together the more orderly and regimented they have to be to tolerate each other and the more policing is required. Singapore is an example of this working.
In the low density western WY valley I call home, I often go a week without seeing a deputy sheriff or highway patrol vehicle.
