Murder Rates In New York Have Risen Under de Blasio and the New York Post Is Really Excited
It’s been less than a month since Bill de Blasio took over stewardship of New York and nothing everything has gone to hell. At least, that’s what the New York Post clearly wants you to believe, what with the barely suppressed glee with which the paper announces the fact that, under de Blasio and new police commissioner Bill Bratton, there has been “a 33 percent spike in murders across the city.” Welcome to de Blasio’s New York, everyone. Try not to get MURDERED.
Or, you know, don’t think about it all that much more than you used to, because this isn’t such a big deal after all! The Post is all worked up about the fact that murder rates have “spiked” and that “the city on course for at least one murder a day,” but seeing as how we’re only in January, that only means an increase of seven murders (28 so far this year as compared to 21 last year), which is terrible, obviously, but still not so shocking considering that New York had an incredibly low rate of murders last year, the lowest in the city’s recorded history, in fact. Which, sure, it would be great to do that again! But also it would be stupid not to recognize that when you’re dealing with relatively low numbers, percentage spikes and plummets will happen all the time. That’s just basic math, New York Post. Like, really basic.
But what does the Post blame the increase in murders on? What else? The decrease in stop-and-frisk. Even though stop-and-frisk had been winding down under Bloomberg, the Post speaks to an anonymous law enforcement official (I guess we know what Ray Kelly is up to these days!) who thinks that de Blasio and Bratton are fully to blame with the spike in murders and the small increase in rapes and felony assaults.
Not all the crime news is bad though, while these statistics didn’t make the headline, the Post admits that shootings and robbery and burglary have declined. But Ray Kelly the paper’s law enforcement expert has an explanation for that too, saying, “Robberies are down because it’s too damn cold to go out and rob someone…when it warms up, the number of robberies will go up, too.” So basically, everything bad happening in the city is directly the fault of de Blasio, while everything good is an act of god. Ok, cool. You keep being you, New York Post. Never change.
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