NYPD activity slowdown praised by the left

I recently read an article by the Free Thought Project where the headline proclaimed: “The New York Police might have just solved the national community-policing controversy.”

 

The article surmised that “many people are now looking at the ‘work stoppage’ itself—which reportedly resulted in drastic reductions in arrests, citations, and even parking tickets, as rather positive evidence that a city with less arrests may be something to celebrate, not criticize.”

New York based journalist and radio host Allison Kilkenny took to Twitter and commented that “Arrests plummeted 66% but I just looked outside and nothing is on fire and the sun is still out and everything. Weird.”

I don’t mean to sound dismissive of the article or Ms. Kilkenny, but it is hard to wrap myself around their logic.

Now the FTP is admittedly anti-police, so I don’t expect too much, in the way of fair reporting, from them, but I am not well versed in Ms. Kilkenny, or her positions, so I opted to take a closer look.

She was born in 1983, just two years before I became an NYPD police officer, and describes herself as a social critic and blogger who covers “budget wars, activism, uprising, dissent and general rabble-rousing.”

That’s Awesome!

Right off the bat that tells me a little bit about her.

It says that she most likely doesn’t recall the 161,489 violent crimes that were committed in New York State, the year she was born, driven largely in part by the crime in NYC. She probably also doesn’t remember when it spiked to 203,311 by the time she was 9 years old. The truth is, for the formative years of Ms. Kilkenny’s young life the New York State continually ranked either 1^st or 2^nd in the nation in violent crimes.

In her defense, I probably wouldn’t have remembered, or even cared to remember, such dark and brutal times. Unfortunately, while she was wondering what new Barbie that Santa was going to bring her for Christmas, I was actually working the mean streets of NYC, and it did affect me.

I recall the years where the annual murder count was in the 2k range. When robberies topped 100k and burglaries topped 200k. You see, soaring crime rates where part of my youth as well as my career, so I understand the significance of them. By the time she hit her teen years, crime in NYC was dropping rapidly, even as the population level was increasing.  All thanks to those much maligned, quality of life measures, instituted under then Mayor Rudoph Giuliani and continued under Michael Bloomberg.

I’m not saying this to trash Ms. Kilkenny, but to bring light to the misguided notion that the slow down by NYPD’s Finest is somehow going to show just how really ‘serene’ the city actually is.

No, Ms. Kilkenny, it’s not.

I, and the other members of the NYPD, fought long and hard to make NYC the place it is today. We literally poured our blood, sweat and tears on the street corners of this city, to bring order out of chaos. To make it safer for children in minority neighborhoods to play in the streets, instead of being huddled inside their apartments, for fear of getting caught up in a drug deal gone bad. That is a position based on real world experience and not some rainbows and unicorn utopian fairy tale.

I don’t think that the 66% reduction in non-violent quality of life crimes is anything Earth shattering, nor does it prove that the city is a truly peaceful place. Excuse me if I’m not ready to believe that a two week ‘snippet’ is going to disprove thirty years of actual hard work and supporting data.

You see, the way I look at it, addressing quality of life violations is akin to keeping the street lights burning. As long as the cops are out there enforcing those laws, the lights keep the bad guys away. Stop doing it, and it’s like the lights burn out. Once the light is gone, the criminal element will reappear, emboldened by the fact that they cannot be seen. Crime will increase which will only serve to embolden their activities again.

Think that it won’t happen? Then tell me why? Show me the empirical data to support your belief, or explain to me why, based on your extensive experience, that you believe that allowing minor crimes to take place won’t create an environment for more crime to thrive. That’s like going a doctor saying “oh, you have an infection, but there is no need to treat it. It won’t spread.”

Think you’d go get a 2^nd opinion on that?

Once again the left wants you to believe that it is really all the cops fault. That somehow these evil civil servants are somehow responsible for all that ails the city. Why shouldn’t they? The mayor said as much when he was campaigning. If the police would just stop harassing the poor, economically depressed criminals, we would have a veritable paradise in NYC.

Good luck with that.

Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind I secretly wish that the NYPD would keep this going. That they would throw in the proverbial towel and say ‘okay, you win’. I wonder just how long it would take for the numbers to begin creeping up. Would it take thirty years for the city to get back to the levels of the 70’s and 80’s?

Probably not. Crime is like losing weight, it takes a helluva lot longer to take it off then it does to put it on.

The city is a lot better off than it was in the 70’s and 80’s. One only has to look at the Times Square area to see just how big an improvement the city has witnessed. There are a lot more potential victims, ripe for the pickings, then there were back then. I’d venture to say that you could realistically see a 50% increase in crime if de Blasio were to get re-elected. This isn’t based on fiction, but a career spent in law enforcement.

Either way, it doesn’t matter to me. They say people get the government they deserve and, right now, it seems as if the folks back in NYC certainly have. They got too comfortable, taking the security that they enjoy, by way of the hard work of the NYPD, as some sort of sign that the police really aren’t needed.

I think they should embrace that concept. Let the ‘street lights’ go out. If folks like Ms. Kilkenny are correct then nothing will burn down and the sun will still be out shinning.

But, if she is wrong, then the men and women of the NYPD should not be asked to put their lives on the line for a society that doesn’t deserve it. We’ve already shed too much blood in this fight already.

They won’t do that though, because they understand that they are the last line of defense, between the wolves that wait at the door and the sheep who despise them.

Good luck NYC, you’re going to need it.