Now, let’s first go over why this is happening. You see the crime surge began after George Floyd died and Covid-19 hit. These events led to the famed Summer of Love where rioters burned police stations and looters stole from stores and homes and then burned them down.
This was worsened by New York City’s response to the crime, which was no response. Not responding to crime makes people more confident they can get away with crime which means more criminals come out of the woodwork.
Things have not gotten much better in the city. The NYPD, while now arresting people who commit crimes, often see them be released immediately will zero bail. This is mainly due to Alvin Bragg’s policies. Alvin Bragg is the District Attorney, or DA, of New York City.
He has gone out of his way to make sure that lots of people arrested for serious crimes get off lightly while court dates are pending. In one recent case, according to ABC 7 on March 27th, 2024, Jonathan Diller, a 31-year-old New York City Police Officer was shot and killed by Guy Rivera, a 34-year-old at a traffic stop on Mott Avenue. He got away thanks to the driver, 41-year-old Lindy Jones.
However, both were arrested shortly after Diller had died and his partner, Officer Veckash Khedna, was sent to the hospital after returning fire on Rivera. It was noted that Jones was arrested 14 times while Rivera was arrested 21 times. On some charges they both served time in jail but on others were not convicted at all. The amount of times they were arrested shows how bad it is in NYC.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the end, relaxed policies on crime have prompted illegal immigrants to flood into New York City. Thanks to relaxed border policies and southern states sending illegal immigrants up north, a lot of these immigrants have ties or turned to criminal life, getting and selling fake IDs, Green Cards, etc.
Then these people commit crimes like human trafficking, assault, murder, etc. This was shown on full display after a group of 14 migrants beat up 2 NYPD Cops in Times Square, a chunk of them were let loose to walk the streets of NYC thanks to the pre-mentioned policies.
However I wanted to get opinions from people here, so after summarizing all the events affecting the Police, I asked Brandon Colon in the 10th grade how could the NYPD fix their problems and he said, “Add more people to the NYPD so there’s more forces around along with that probably apply more force but not really, a little bit of force, how you gonna arrest a man 20 times.”
I had also asked King Thompson in the 10th grade the same question and he said “They need to reinforce their power and they need to put their foot down and lock up the people who are bad for the world.”
In conclusion, New York City isn’t exactly the safest place. The NYPD is stopped at actually making progress on arrests thanks to the New York City leadership. This prevents the NYPD from actually protecting the people of New York City, and until something changes, the NYPD is going to be dealing with this problem for a long time.
