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The hotter it gets, the less you hear people dismissing the lawlessness in New York City. Even the "crime isn't as bad as it was in the 90s" crowd can't ignore the tidal wave of violent crime anymore. There's just no denying how we've all learned to swerve away from the screaming person heading straight toward us, or how we casually discuss the latest stabbing on our subway line. The new normal is anything but.
But many people are paying a higher price. Behind the rise in crime and disorder are real victims. The same people we clapped for every evening during the height of the pandemic, the ones preparing and delivering our food and keeping our city running, have been left alone to protect their businesses and themselves.
They aren't always successful. And help isn't on the way.
Last week, we saw two examples of how victims of crime were left to deal with insult and injury. Jose Alba, a 61-year-old bodega worker in Harlem, was pushed to the floor and assaulted by an angry "customer" who had gone behind the counter after his girlfriend's EBT card was declined. When Jose defended himself with a knife he had on hand for opening boxes, he was charged with murder and sent to Rikers. The Manhattan district attorney set bail at $250,000, later lowered by a judge to $50,000—the price, in this case, for fighting for one's life.
A few days later, three women trashed an eatery on the Lower East Side called Bel Fries, after being told that extra sauce would cost them $1.75. As they moved on to assaulting the employees, 20 people watched, laughing and aiming to get the best angle in order to film the beating with their phones. The employees were hospitalized, including Maria Baez, who later told the NY Post, "I don't even feel like going to work because as a mother my priority is getting home to my child."
These two crimes represent a boiling point of anti-social behavior, a violent reaction from perpetrators who upon hearing the word "no," or feeling disrespected, see it as appropriate, even justified, to take and to hurt.
No one in good faith can argue that the rage displayed in each of these incidents was appropriate, and yet that's where the conversation about crime seems to trail off.
Instead of just shaking our heads, we should be asking the obvious: Why are people with recent previous criminal convictions—violent offenses that in an earlier time or different place would see them incarcerated—out on the streets in the first place?
Policies put in place by progressive politicians, and supported by perhaps well-meaning yet unaffected community members, have led to lenient sentences and the decriminalization of violent offenses. This summer, the NYPD is reporting a 21-year high for major arrests, but also raising an alarm on recidivism, which has risen in almost every single crime category.
25 percent percent of people who are arrested for burglary go on to commit another felony within 60 days. Back in the long-ago days of 2017, that number was 7 percent. That's not just a statistic; one in four people arrested today in New York City for a burglary will commit another offense before the end of the summer.
If this game of catch and release teaches offenders that crime comes with little to no consequence, it also sends a clear message to the rest of us: You're on your own.
Our elected officials have clearly shown they would prefer to err on the side of caution when it comes to a perpetrator's freedom, but not when it comes to victim's safety.
But the criminal justice system is not the only one failing victims. Over the last two years, elite institutions from academia to the media have been urging us to fight for justice and "re-imagine" public safety. That fight is never on behalf crime victims. At top criminal justice academic programs around the country, scholars seem only concerned about the effect of the system on criminals.
Man vs. the system may feel noble, but the vast majority of crimes are committed by man vs. man.
I'd like to re-imagine a system where the best and the brightest put their minds toward creating safer streets, and where every email I get from Harvard about a de-incarceration panel is followed up with a new study about eradicating gun violence in high-risk communities, increasing trust with law enforcement or improving victim advocacy services.
The victims of violent crime are everywhere these days. A bartender around the block from Bel Fries who asked not to be named told me that lately they've been paying for security to work every day, and not just on weekends. He rattled off incidents that had happened in and around the bar of late, including an employee who was randomly assaulted one night by a man who punched him and then shoved him down a flight of stairs. The next day, the attacker went free, while the employee lay unconscious in the hospital.
For the New Yorkers who whose jobs require continuous contact with all the madness the city has to offer, there are no hashtags, no changed Instagram profile pictures; just momentary sadness and on to the next video on our feeds.
There is no justice, and definitely no peace.
Yael Bar tur is a social media consultant specializing in crisis communications and law enforcement, and was formerly director of social media for the NYPD. She holds a Master's in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School Government. You can find her on Twitter @yaelbt.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
