Here's a interesting statistic and op piece from the NY Daily News....
Dec 30,2009
The five boroughs are on track this year to have the fewest murders since 1963, when modern recordkeeping began.
As of Sunday, there were 461 reported homicides - 11% fewer than last year. That's an astonishingly low number: 461 in a city of more than 8 million people. And it's all the more stunning when you consider that in 1990, the city suffered 2,245 killings.
That same year, there were 100,000 robberies and 122,000 burglaries and nearly 150,000 stolen cars. Drivers clamped huge metal bars on their steering wheels and took their car radios with them. Still, they would return to find shattered glass where their cars had been.
Thanks to the NYPD, that New York is no more. Instead of six murders a day, as there were in 1990, this year we had one week in February and one in March when there were none. Zero.
Random, lethal acts of violence - perhaps a citizen's greatest fear - have been tamed to the point that just one-third of this year's 461 victims were slain by strangers.
Overall, major crime declined 11% compared with 2008 and has dropped a whopping 35% since 2001. In six of the seven major categories - murder, rape, robbery, burglary, car theft and grand larceny - crime was down this year. The exception, felony assault, rose just 2%.
Through smart policing, detailed statistical analysis of crime patterns, targeted enforcement against illegal guns, and stop-and-question - and, yes, frisk - operations, the NYPD has transformed New York from crime capital of the country to safest big city in the nation. And the department did it with 6,000 fewer cops than it had in 2001.
Commissioner Ray Kelly and his officers deserve tremendous credit. But their remarkable success hides the inevitable fact that if you are constantly forced to do more and more with less and less, eventually you'll have nothing left to work with.
Every proposed budget cut, suggested reduction in staffing and overzealous campaign to trim aggressive policing threatens to undermine the NYPD's astonishing progress in public safety.
That must not happen. The Police Department must not be taken for granted. And it must not be hindered in any way. New York must never return to the bloody bad old days.
Happy New Year to everyone in the NYPD. They deserve it.
Times have changed certainly for the better from the bygone days of the "Death Wish" era.
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thegalen
14 years ago
New York is one of the safest cities. Just like the post above pointed out. Of course there are bad neighborhoods like any city, but even many of those have dramatically improved int he last 10-15 years. Thinking that New York today is anything like in Death Wish is silly.
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