Whatever his motives, it is disturbing that the black mayor of America’s largest city is lending credibility to these ideas. Years of research into these policies have not shown with certainty that they work. Although crime has decreased in many cities since the early 1990s, it is not clear exactly why. However, the effects of the policies are well known and devastating. Mr. Adams is sending a message that collateral damage Policies inflicted on Black communities can be a necessary and acceptable price.
Long before he was mayor, Mr. Adams was a police officer, spending two decades in the city’s Police Department and eventually rising to the rank of captain. He rarely misses an opportunity to showcase his experience, saying that makes him uniquely qualified to keep the city safe as mayor. During last year’s mayoral campaign, he also showed an interest in taking a much broader view of public safety, by investing in education, jobs and even dyslexia test not only to improve the lives of New Yorkers, but to make the city safer in the long run. He won the election in part because of that promise.
Four months after Mr. Adams’ first term, some of those promises are still being made, like a summer job The program aims to recruit 100,000 young people. He has also proposed increasing funding for House and mental health service. That’s all encouraging. His support for community-based anti-violence groups, known as violence interventionists, has shown great promise in reducing gun violence in New York in recent years.
But in the face of rising crime, a nightmare prospect for every major city mayor, Mr. Adams has largely retreated into familiar territory.
So far, Mr. Adams has rehibilitate The Police Department’s controversial anti-gun unit, though with safeguards, he says it will make it more accountable to the communities it serves. He supervised a campaign to get rid of homeless people living on the streets. He supported shrink landmark criminal justice reform in Albany, including pushing to change state law to allow 16 and 17 years old people charged with certain gun crimes will be charged as adults. This week, he suggested more 182 million dollars in taxpayer dollars to the NYPD budget, which is already more than $5 billion. So far, his plan to reshuffle the division remains hazy.
The policy is part of the solution to the city’s concerns about public safety. But in 2022, more aggressive policy may not be the only important response. Five search suggests that New York’s decade-long shift from high crime rates since the 1990s is most likely the result of many factorsincluding but not limited to changes in policing tactics.
Learning those lessons means acknowledging that the other crises New York faces – from housing to mental health to unemployment – may be just as important to public safety as support. to the Police Department. For Mr. Adams, that means accessing the city’s housing policies, mental health resources and quality of work with the same urgency as rising crime. In New York City, the unemployment rate for March was 6.5 percent when adjusted for season, vs 3.6 percent nationwide.
