For the first time in several decades, this megalopolis of eight million inhabitants has not recorded any assault by bullet or stabbing for more than twenty-four hours.
“It’s a good way to start the week,” exclaimed Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, spokesperson for the New York Police Department (NYPD). Monday, for the first time in memory of a peacekeeper, no blood crime was recorded in the territory of the Big Apple for more than 24 hours. A sort of feat for this city of more than 8 million inhabitants which, twenty years ago, was considered the capital of crime.
According to the daily New York Daily News , the police did not deplore any assault by gunshot or stabbing between the head injury, Sunday November 25 at 10:25 p.m., of a man in the district of Bedford-Stuyvesant, and a gunshot wound inflicted in another part of Brooklyn, Tuesday 27 at 11:20 a.m.
Hailed by NYPD officials, this murder-free day comes as the number of homicides committed since early 2012 – 366 compared to 462 last year at the same time – is shaping up to be the lowest since 1963. If the trend is confirmed, the statistics of violent deaths recorded this year at New York should mark a decrease of 23% compared to 2012 while general delinquency, it is on the rise.
“Babies slept in bathtubs”
According to historian Tom Repetto, a specialist in the American police force, such a crime-free day in a city the size of New York constitutes “an extremely rare event”. In 1990, he recalls, the NYPD had recorded 2,245 murders. The Bronx or Harlem looked like a cut-throat. “We lived in a city where people were afraid to leave their homes and where babies were made to sleep in the bathtub to prevent them from taking a bullet,” he recalls in the columns of the New York Daily News.
Since then, the policy of vigorous fight against delinquency carried out under the authority of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (1994-2002) and then of his successor Michael Bloomberg has helped bring blood crimes down dramatically. Many experts attribute this decrease to the adoption of statistical tools allowing a more detailed study of crime as well as the systematic prosecution of petty crimes and the increase in checks and searches on public roads.
Some observers stress the importance of other factors, such as the continued decline in the number of births within the most disadvantaged social classes. Still others hail the role played by the gun control policy put in place by Mayor Bloomberg, and the widespread use of video surveillance.
Despite its results, the constant strengthening of the security arsenal concentrates criticism from defenders of individual freedoms who denounce the multiplication of facies checks. According to NYPD statistics, more than 80% of the approximately 600,000 arrests carried out each year on the public highway are against blacks or Latinos.
The promoters of these policies, for their part, stress that these measures allow the seizure of many illegally held firearms. And contribute, each year, to preventing as many blood crimes.
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