A Lot Has Changed, Not Just Bail Reform

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The three year anniversary of “two weeks to slow the spread” is only a few months away, and for many of us, this also marks the beginning of online discourse about crime, criminal justice reforms, and changes to local policy surrounding these issues.

Even though quite a bit of time has passed, there appears to still be a huge disconnect between the conversation about what is happening on the streets of NYC and the reality of it.

Today, I’m going to try to help clear this up.

Our frustrations seem to have only been exacerbated by spending so much time arguing over singular issues like bail reform, when in reality, there was always a myriad of issues at play that had severe impacts on public safety. Like an orchestra, full of many instruments playing all at once.

Things like broad daylight shootings in Rockefeller Center were unheard of for much of the last 20 years, proving that the dangerous scenarios we see playing out in once-safe neighborhoods are very much a new phenomenon. It also appears that the way law enforcement interacts with criminals is less effective than it was before and that our criminal justice system has changed its ethos entirely. The old model once centered around keeping the public safe appears to have pivoted to a more progressive model of providing criminals infinite chances.

There has been a fundamental shift in the problems the city faces, as well as the way the city deals with them.

To really understand the current state of NYC, we need to finally ask the billion-dollar question: What recent changes have significantly contributed to making NYC drastically more dysfunctional in recent years? As it turns out, a lot. Many of the issues are crime (and criminal justice reform) related while the other half are not, but still had profound negative effects on NYC. 

After several years of heated debate, it is time we finally take a more holistic approach to understanding the recent changes that have affected city living.

While progressives insist that crime isn’t as bad as in 1990, it’s important to acknowledge that the public discourse around this becomes even more tricky when you realize how easy it is to manipulate data by simply omitting a single variable.

A recent example that comes to mind is how gunshot incidents are only included in the statistics if someone is injured, but if you report all gunshot incidents including ones without injury, the numbers jump from 1,562 gunshot incidents to 3,799 - A 59% increase. The omission of this single noteworthy variable could convince large swathes of the public (depending on their political beliefs) that gun incidents are down when they are in fact higher.

This makes public discourse about public safety extremely hard to pin down, even when people appear to be sticking to the data.

Over the last few years, NYC’s Public Advocate Jumaane Williams keeps saying “We can’t go back to 2019, because 2019 didn’t work for everyone” but that raises another very important question, “Well then, who is the current NYC actually working for?” 

The answer is criminals and their advocates, the elected officials who just received $32,000 raises for the horrible job they’ve been doing, and the NGOs that now control much of NYC and its budget. To be crystal clear, if our current Comptroller audited the nonprofits that we pay so much to do so little, it would directly harm his wife’s income, and therefore his own.

I hope this infographic helps explain what’s changed in NYC. Next time someone gives you the “at least it’s not as bad as 1990!” routine, please share it with them and ask if ALL of these things (not just bail reform) made the city better or worse, and for whom?