When the coronavirus pandemic first hit New York and its streets were empty, and then when the metropolis was swept by the epidemic of BLM protests and the same streets were filled with angry crowds, optimists persuaded both realists and pessimists: “You just need to endure.”
The infection will recede.
Will strengthen immunity.
However, over the past two years, the disease has reached the very core of the Big Apple.
Manhattan is now a hotbed of social ill-being in the largest US city.
Homeless tents on the Upper East Side two blocks from Park Avenue - when it's cold.
When it's warm, there are gangs of juvenile robbers on scooters, taking bags from gaping tourists and taking away their gadgets right in front of the entrance to Central Park.
Shooting in broad daylight in the always crowded Times Square.
Chilling details of the attacks of the mentally ill in the subway, pushing passengers on the way in no way and in no way hurt them.
And much more.
The nightmare of two mayors of New York who spent two decades trying to put things in order (we are talking about Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg) is coming true through the efforts of their followers.
First Democrat Bill de Blasio, and now Democrat Eric Adams.
The cauldron of New York trouble really kicked off on January 1, 2020, when the Criminal Justice Act was passed, removing bail for most misdemeanors as well as non-violent crimes, including robbery.
Only three states in the United States have decided on such a drastic measure: California, New Jersey and New York.
Each of them is now reaping the rewards of the highest penal liberalization in American history.
The number of major thefts or thefts worth $1,000 has increased by more than 60% over the past year, according to the New York City Police Department.
The worst situation is where there is something and from whom to rob.
The leaders of the anti-rating are South Midtown, where both Times Square and the famous Chrysler Building skyscraper, one of the symbols of New York, are located.
The chances of you looking at its Art Deco spire and being robbed where the median price of an apartment is nearly $1.5 million have increased by a factor of 1.5 compared to 2021.
However, the main targets of the robbers are not tourists, but shops.
Increasingly, they are carried around in broad daylight.
Not embarrassed by sellers, owners, or surveillance cameras.
Often the police arrive (if they arrive) only to take from the shoplifter what he managed to carry away and give it to the rightful owner.
It makes no sense to deliver to the station, draw up a protocol, read out the rights.
Any robber caught by the police was set free by liberal legislators long before he committed the crime.
Cancellation of the same pledge.
In South Midtown alone, 2,287 thefts were recorded in 2022.
And how many business owners did not apply anywhere at all!
Increasingly, it happens that the same gang returns again and again to the places of already committed crimes.
Patrolmen have no strength and motivation to do this Sisyphean work.
In New York, the number of those who left the service ahead of schedule, without even waiting for the pension so desired by many American officers, has increased by a third.
About 3,200 New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers have written reports since last November.
If we take as a starting point the beginning of a movement to deprive the police of funding in the wake of protests after the death of George Floyd, then there are already 9400 who handed over a gun and a badge - and the exodus continues.
Those who have remained so far are forced to bear a double, if not triple, load.
The overall crime rate in New York increased by 29.1% in a year.
The number of all serious crimes, except for murders, has increased.
They have decreased by about 15%.
In the opposite direction, the statistics of attacks are changing - 22,319 cases.
Plus 14%.
Rape is 11% more likely.
The public transport of the metropolis has become a risk zone.
An increase in the number of crimes in the subway and buses by one and a half times.
Hopes that the current mayor, Eric Adams, will restore order, as a former policeman, did not come true from the word at all.
Again and again, the unshakable theory of broken windows works.
If somewhere they do not fight against petty offenses, then sooner or later real chaos sets in there.
The most recent example of a social apocalypse is the situation in the city of Buffalo in upstate New York.
After an unprecedented snow storm hit the 275,000-strong city, and the streets turned out to be shackled with drifts and snowdrifts, looters took the population hostage.
The Internet is flooded with records and robberies and their consequences.
The police limit themselves to verbal suggestions.
I have neither the strength nor the courage to fight the robbers.
At night, however, shooting sounds.
These are local residents, without waiting for the cops, they take out their guns to clean up the mess.
So the statistics of the victims of the cataclysm, where the death toll is already approaching four dozen, can still be replenished not only at the expense of those who died in an accident on an icy road or froze.
However, Buffalo, New York, and any American city are far from Chicago.
During the year there were 661 murders.
The same already standard for the United States criminal growth by one and a half times in two years.
The situation in Chicago is already being compared to that in Tijuana, Mexico.
She, by the way, is considered the most dangerous city in the world.
But Chicago's Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot is, of course, up for re-election.
And most likely she will succeed.
With this re-election or rampant crime, everything is exactly like with the poverty trap that American liberals love to talk about.
This self-sustaining mechanism has long ceased to need service personnel and repairmen, those who support or, conversely, criticize.
The mechanism is closed on itself.
You can stop it only by completely disassembling it and letting it go for remelting.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.