Crimes have revived memories of decades past when the city of skyscrapers was a dangerous place to live.
The recent violent deaths of two women in New York have set off alarm bells and revived memories of decades past when the city of skyscrapers was a dangerous place to live.
Michelle Go, a 40-year-old Asian-American, died last Saturday when she was pushed by a 61-year-old schizophrenic homeless man onto the subway track as a high-speed train was entering a Times Square station.
A few days earlier, on January 9, Puerto Rican teenager Kristal Bayron-Nieves was shot dead by a thief who was trying to steal a handful of dollars that was in the cash register of a “Burger King” store in East Harlem (NYC).
They are homicides with a high emotional impact, which have shocked a city whose recovery from the economic and social consequences of the coronavirus pandemic was altered by the multiplication of infections attributed to the omicron variant and which has left restaurants and shows almost deserted.
According to police data, in 2021 there were 488 homicides in the city of almost nine million inhabitants, 4.3% more than in 2020, the year in which they increased radically (468 to 319 in 2019).
“The number is small but worrying because there is an increase and we don’t want to go back to where we were 25 years ago, when the rates were four times higher,” Jeffrey Butts, professor and researcher at the John Jay Center for Criminal Justice, tells AFP. New York University.
400 million weapons
What sets the United States apart from other countries is the “number of people who have access to a gun, and that’s what causes lethal violence,” Butts says.
“When people don’t know how to navigate through their frustrations and conflicts with others and when there’s a gun to hand, it becomes lethal,” he explains.
At the beginning of the pandemic, which hit the Big Apple with special virulence in the first wave, there was a “jump” in the purchase of weapons, he recalls. On Wednesday, an 11-month-old baby girl was seriously injured by a stray bullet in the Bronx while she was in her mother’s car.
Richard Aborn, president of the Crime Prevention Commission, an organization that works to improve public safety, sees “a combination of factors” in the rise, not only in violent crime, but also in robberies and rapes.
In addition to the proliferation of weapons – 400 million circulate in the country, more than one per inhabitant – and the covid pandemic, which hit the most vulnerable neighborhoods and populations especially hard, Arborn considers that the protests against police action as a result of The death of George Floyd, suffocated by the knee of a police officer in May 2020, have had an impact on the increase in violence.
To this is added the recent reform of criminal justice that may have created the false sensation that committing a crime is less penalized than before, when it is not, he explains to AFP.
Mental health
After Go’s death, the authorities have turned their attention to mental illness, particularly among homeless people, who, faced with the cold temperatures and the increase in omicron infections in shelters, choose to take shelter in subway stations, where they sometimes Sometimes they show an aggressive attitude.
The mayor himself, Eric Adams, a former police captain, chosen for his promises to return security to the streets of New York, acknowledged this week that “he does not feel safe” on the subway.
However, according to data from the New York police traffic authority, crimes in the public transport system only represent 2% of the total registered in the city.
However, “one must not demonize those who fell through the cracks (of the system) and did not receive treatment for the mental problems they need,” he said Tuesday at a vigil to honor Go’s memory.
Adams, who took office on January 1, announced on the 7th that he will reinforce the police presence in the New York subway used by millions of people every day.
For her part, the governor of the state of New York, Kathy Hochul, promised the construction of 100,000 affordable homes and 10,000 places in support centers in the next five years.
“We have to create solutions that go beyond policing, because we can’t just rely on law enforcement,” Butts warns. (I)
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