NYC’s low homicide rate is due to the decades-old policies that Manhattan D.A. Bragg loves to hate – Wirepoints

By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner

Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg used Wirepoints’ recent New York City homicide data as a bludgeon in his ongoing fight with Ohio U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan over Trump’s indictment. Bragg’s argument is that since NYC is so safe, Jordan has no right to criticize the DA’s policies. 

Bragg’s defense is that Columbus, Ohio’s homicide rate, at 15.4 per 100K population, was nearly three times higher than New York City’s and that the Big Apple ranked 64th among the nation’s 75 largest cities. Based on just homicide numbers, Bragg is right that NYC is one of safer big cities in the country. (See appendix for full homicide data).

The big irony of Bragg’s comments, though, is that he’s flaunting NYC’s success story based on policing and sentencing policies that are antithetical to Bragg’s own progressive, decarcerationist policies. New York’s low homicide rate is due to the set of crime-deterring ‘broken-windows’ policing reforms that Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Police Commissioner William Bratton instituted in the mid-1990’s and were carried on by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

And even though progressive Bill de Blasio was mayor from 2014 to 2021, he never dismantled the criminal justice policies of the city, much to the chagrin of progressive activists.

Those policies helped quash out-of-control crime, including homicide. Murders collapsed from 2,245 in 1990 – or 30.7 per 100K – down to about 650 after a decade. By last year, murders were down to 438 in a city of more than 8 million people, for a rate of 5.2 per 100K. 

For comparison, Chicago with its population of just 2.7 million, had 697 homicides in 2022, for a rate of 25.8 per 100K.

Years ago, the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal covered the Big Apple’s crime reduction in How New York Became Safe: The Full Story. We recommend you read the whole article, but here are just a few excerpts:

New York’s drop in crime during the 1990s was correspondingly astonishing—indeed, “one of the most remarkable stories in the history of urban crime,” according to University of California law professor Franklin Zimring. While other cities experienced major declines, none was as steep as New York’s. Most of the criminologists’ explanations for it—the economy, changing drug-use patterns, demographic changes—have not withstood scrutiny. Readers of City Journal will be familiar with the stronger argument that the New York Police Department’s adoption of quality-of-life policing and of such accountability measures as Compstat was behind the city’s crime drop.

…Better than any other politician, Rudy Giuliani understood the pent-up demand for public order and built his successful 1993 run for mayor on quality-of-life themes. Once in office, he appointed Bratton, who had orchestrated the subway success and understood the importance of order maintenance, as New York’s police commissioner.

Under Bratton, the NYPD brought enormous capacities to bear on the city’s crime problem—particularly Compstat, its tactical planning and accountability system, which identified where crimes were occurring and held local commanders responsible for their areas. Giuliani and Bratton also gave the force’s members a clear vision of the “business” of the NYPD and how their activities contributed to it. In short, a theory previously advocated largely by elites filtered down to—and inspired—line police officers, who had constituted a largely ignored and underused capacity.

…Clearly, Giuliani and Bratton were heroes in reclaiming public spaces. But Glazer, Sturz, Gunn, Kiley, Biederman, and others were stalwarts as well. They set the stage for what was to follow. Current mayor Michael Bloomberg and police commissioner Ray Kelly also deserve kudos; rather than overturning the Bratton/Giuliani innovations and going their own way—as new administrators are wont to do—they adopted, refined, and strengthened them.

The article should give hope to cities like Chicago and Philadelphia that are experiencing a resurgence in crime and mayhem under progressive officials. Real change is possible. But it won’t happen until DAs and all other decarcerationist players are removed from the chain of criminal justice – from arresting to convicting to sentencing.

In the meantime, look for NYC’s numbers to get worse if Bragg, who is the ideological counterpart of Kim Foxx in Chicago, gets his way. Bragg told the American Prospect in 2021: 

“We need to address the urgency [of crime], but not with old tools. There is a push to say, “Let’s go back to stop-and-frisk. Let’s do some of these old 1980s tactics.” I think we need to be smart and use effective law enforcement…I oversaw the stop-and-frisk report showing that for a four-year period, only 0.1 percent of the stops resulted in a conviction for a gun offense. That speaks to inefficacy.” 

Bragg’s decarcerationist policies are already in place. His first staff memo on taking office said he “will not seek a carceral sentence” except with homicides and a handful of other cases, including domestic violence felonies, some sex crimes and public corruption, and that “this rule may be excepted only in extraordinary circumstances based on a holistic analysis of the facts, criminal history, victim’s input (particularly in cases of violence or trauma), and any other information available.”

Sounds like the beginning of a revolving door for criminals, just like the one in Cook County.

Read more from Wirepoints:

• Walmart’s flight from Chicago: ‘Corporate racism?’ Or crime, taxes and dysfunction?
• What Chicago requires immediately is deterrence. Stop the bleed. Fast.
• Chicago’s pursuit of ‘criminal justice reform’ an utter failure: Windy City homicides top nation for 11th year in a row with crime still rising.
• More cops on Chicago’s streets won’t help until criminals are prosecuted and sentenced
• It will take exceptional political courage to end Chicago’s ‘crisis of values.’ Good luck