We are very glad that NYC crime fell in 2024, but there’s no time for self-congratulation in a city where disorder and some victimization persist at levels higher than acceptable. These are problems to be solved with an intelligent, coordinated strategy developed and implemented by Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Chauncey Parker and Police Commissioner Jessie Tisch — and overseen by Mayor Adams, a former cop elected in 2021 largely on the promise to drive then-rising crime back down.
Crime in 2024 dropped, a 3% yearlong reduction. There was an especially steep decline in major crimes during December — with the seven major felonies down 15.5% over the same month in 2023. However, rape reports went up 18.9% since 2023 (at least partially the result of a changing legal definition of the crime), and felony assaults climbed 5%. And that crime continues to remain stubbornly higher than it was before the pandemic hit.
That’s the bad side. On the good side, shooting incidents fell by 7.3%, to 903; that’s about two-and-half per day in a city of more than 8 million, and a sharp drop from 2022, when they topped 1,500. Incidents of the worst crime of all, murder, declined 3.6%, to just 377 — meaning there was about one killing a day in the nation’s biggest city. Chicago, less than half New York’s size, suffered 573. As recently as 2006 — in Mike Bloomberg’s New York — we had nearly 600 murders.
In the subway, crime fell, but overall numbers often gloss over disturbing trends, such as the fact that both homicides and felony assaults on the trains — awful examples of which we’ve seen in recent weeks — are far higher than recent historical averages. Underground felony assaults these past three years average about twice their annual totals over the previous 15 years, 548 vs. 268.
And the overall increase in felony assaults both underground and on the surface is especially worrisome because they happened 29,417 times in 2024 — more than 80 times a day, about the same number as robberies and burglaries combined. A felony assault is when an individual hurts another one so severely they cause serious physical injury, or when they assault someone using a weapon, or when they prey upon an individual in a protected group.
Why are assaults still trending up even as shootings and murders come down? We don’t have an easy answer, but that’s what we pay deputy mayors and NYPD brass to figure out, and do something about.
Also worthy of a flashing red siren is the fact that hate crimes against Jews continued to rise last year, going up 7% to 345. That’s more than half the total number of hate crimes against any and all groups.
Monday, Tisch said the city has a stubborn problem with recidivists. As she put it, “If you compare 2024 to 2018, we see a 61.3% increase in people arrested for burglary three or more times in the same year…Imagine how disheartening it is for our cops to be out there arresting the same people for the same crimes in the same neighborhoods day after day.”
How to bring those numbers down? Adams proclaimed it to be “not about bail reform” — which may or may not be true. Jailing chronic offenders while they await trial is the surest way to incapacitate them. If he’s got a better way, let’s hear it, and soon.
