With apologies to Mark Twain, the rumors that New York City is an out-of-control, crime-ridden hellscape are greatly exaggerated.
For months, we have reported the NYPD’s progress in stopping violent crime around the city, with record lows achieved for shootings and homicides. Overall, crime is down to levels not seen since before the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Transit crime is down, too, and ridership is rebounding.
But maybe the best sign of our city’s ever-improving public safety is the drop in retail theft, aka shoplifting.
In the years immediately following the pandemic, retail theft became a business-busting, job-killing plague in New York. Professional shoplifters used the “five-finger discount” more effectively than they had in years, grabbing whatever they could get their hands on and selling the hot commodities online for profit.
The city and state fought back — not by sending in armed troops, but with common-sense solutions. Chief among those solutions was increasing criminal penalties for assaults on retail workers and empowering prosecutors to pursue higher charges against those involved in retail theft crews.
Gov. Kathy Hochul proclaimed in Harlem on Tuesday that such efforts have worked. Retail theft is down 12% in New York City this year alone, with 5,000 fewer incidents reported.
Even with that progress, shoplifting continues around the city. Indeed, there are recidivist thieves who still walk the streets and still pilfer stores; they keep getting caught, and cops and prosecutors are flabbergasted that many of them still walk the streets.
As Hochul pointed out Tuesday, that is not due to the laws that are on the books, which have been tightened to stop recidivism in recent years. It is due to judges not knowing or misinterpreting the law, and that must change.
Recidivism must be stopped, and recidivist criminals must be held accountable for their actions. With cops and prosecutors empowered to lock them up, it is up to the judges to follow suit, and the law, to the fullest extent.
In the meantime, New Yorkers should realize that the efforts made by the NYPD on the ground, and by state and city lawmakers in the halls of government, are providing a safer city for everyone — and those efforts will not cease. If anything, those efforts should increase with the hiring of more officers to ease the NYPD’s staffing crisis.
Don’t listen to the negative Nellies about New York; we’re in a far better place than we were five years ago.
