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What happened to law and order in NYC?
01:01:18
Manhattan Institute’s Nicole Gelinas and Liena Zagare discuss NYC’s crime situation—what’s working, what’s not, and how the narrative has changed since the last mayoral race.
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the Bigger Apple Podcast. I'm Liana Zagarri, editor of the Bigger Apple at the Manhattan Institute.
- [00:06]
B
And I'm Nicole Jelina, senior fellow here at the Manhattan Institute. Each week, we'll dig into one big issue shaping life in New York City and what other cities can learn from it.
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A
The show grew out of the conversations we've been having around the office and in the Bigger Apple newsletter about how to fix cities at a time when so much feels uncertain and so much is changing.
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B
We'll sometimes be bringing on guests from among our Manhattan Institute colleagues and from across the city, people who think deeply about housing, safety, education, transit, and everything that makes urban life work or not work.
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A
And with the mayor's race just weeks away, we're starting with one of the biggest topics of all, public safety. What's really driving the numbers, how people feel on the ground, and what's working and what isn't when it comes to making New York safer. So perceptions and reality. Nicole, take it away.
- [01:00]
B
So, yes, there's this issue of perception and reality, and we've constantly heard over the past five years that people's perception is different from the facts and different from the reality. But that's not, in fact, true. The numbers back up people's perceptions of greater unsafety and in other surveys, greater disorder, both on the streets and the subways. People feel less safe and they perceive more disorder because there is, in fact, less safety and less order. And, you know, I'll just give you a couple of quick numbers. Total felonies, although they are down a little bit over the past year, are still 29% higher than they were in New York city than in 2019. Across your range of crimes, from robbery, two assaults, you know, your seven major felonies, things are much less safe than they were in the year going into the pandemic. That is a big change for people to process smaller crimes, petty larceny. You know, this is why all the stuff is locked up in the drugstore. These are also still 21% higher than they were before COVID So this is both the long and the short story of the Adams administration. They have made some progress in important areas. For example, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and the mayor constantly saying shootings and homicides are at record lows or near record lows. That's true, and that's a big accomplishment. And felonies are down 4% since last year. Petty larceny is down 3% last year. But overall, this picture of being at greater risk of assault, seeing that theft and other smaller crimes continue to go unpunished. That's completely backed up by the reality. And let me ask you, I mean, do you, if you were to look back to five years ago or even six years ago, before the pandemic, do you perceive yourself to be less safe? Do you think the streets and the subways are less safe? I mean, how do you feel just walking around and living your life?
- [03:14]
A
I mean, I think, you know, your perception of crime changes as you go through your life cycle. And, you know, the. The older you get, if you have small children, you have certain concerns. If you don't have children, you're in a different situation. I have high schooler and older kids now, but I think looking back to before pandemic, I think there was this disorder. I think I certainly wasn't afraid of taking the subway or walking down the street late at night. And there were certainly fewer people struggling with mental health and homelessness in the streets.
- [03:49]
B
Would you say you're afraid to walk around at night or take the subway now? Or is that overstating it, understating it? I mean, what has changed?
- [03:58]
A
I think that's overstating it. I. I'd say I'm more wary and I'm certainly more aware of my surroundings. And there will definitely be times when I have my headphones in and they're not playing anything, just because I want to know what's going on in the train car. But. And you know, as most people have experienced some situation of someone having a mental health crisis or an episode, and not necessarily, you know, imminent danger, but just that sense that, like, you just don't know.
- [04:34]
B
Yeah. And I think one of the things about all these horrific videos that have come out from these random attacks in the past couple years, whether it was Ryan Carson being killed on the Brooklyn walking home from his girlfriend, or Irina Zarutska being killed on the Charlotte light rail, and now, of course, Nicola Tanza being killed in the Brooklyn subway station, is how quickly these things happen. From nothing to just having no way to recover or to defend yourself. Like, I mean, I guess it's good to be aware of your surroundings and be wary and look around you. But we have learned through watching these videos, in some cases, that is not going to help you. And I think that's what's also concerned concerning, is that there's just no way you can defend yourself or no way to protect yourselves in some of these situations. Like, even if you had a gun or a knife or you were really good at martial arts or something like Just putting yourself into the urban environment, particularly in an enclosed space, is to trust that urban environment to be functional. And we see that breaking down more and more.
- [05:44]
A
How much do you think the fact that subways don't. Or public transit more broadly doesn't feel quite so safe affects the bigger perception of the cities? Not as well as it should be.
- [05:56]
B
Yeah. I think this is also, you know, an issue where perception matches up with reality and an issue where people are concerned not only with the crime, but with the rhetoric around the crime. I mean, I made this chart of where subway felonies are from now compared to 2019, because the year that things really all fell apart was 2020. I mean, we had three subway homicides in a row, March of 2020 into April of 2020, and things never really recovered from that. Where we used to have one or two homicides a year on subways, now we've averaged closer to between 8 and 9 in the five years since COVID And this year is a little bit better that we've had five homicides. I mean, that's certainly better than 11 last year, but we are still nowhere back to normal. And just the random nature of these, you know, of. Of these crimes, I think shocks people as well as MTA officials, state officials, and city officials saying, you know, there's nothing to worry about. These are rare incidents, which is also backed up by their own inconsistency. I mean, you have the governor saying the subway is safe, but you also have the National Guard. It continues to be in the subway now for going on two years now. And, in fact, just with the city crime, people's reality is. Or people's perception is backed up by the reality. So if you look at subway felonies from January to August this year, violent felonies are 16% higher than they were in those same first eight months of 2019. Where crime is down is the nonviolent felony, which is mostly just grand larceny.
- [07:48]
A
The.
- [07:48]
B
That's down by close to a quarter over the past six years. But ironically, that's because people are. Or at least you can surmise this is because people are more wary. So you're less likely to have your phone stolen or your watch stolen, you know, partly because you may be not wearing your nice watch into the subway today. Maybe you would have felt comfortable doing that six years ago, but also, you are looking around you. You're hanging on to your stuff more closely. So these sort of rational crimes are down, whereas the violent. Hard to predict, hard to protect yourself rationally. These Continue to be up. Assaults in particular up 64% since 2019. I mean, these are your random crimes that people are most concerned about. So yes, they've made some progress, but nowhere near enough and somewhat concerning that this has receded in people's concerns during the election season being superseded by affordability, although it is still up there. You know, as you know, crime and public safety is the second. People's second biggest concern right up there with affordability.
- [09:03]
A
I mean, some of that narrative is driven by the mayor saying everything is down all the right. We do have historic numbers on, on gun, on shootings and gun related crimes. But that said, crime overall is not back to the pre pandemic situation. That does not get mentioned. Nowhere near enough. Even though if you've lived here before the pandemic, you know that it's not quite as safe as it used to be.
- [09:31]
B
Yeah. And I think, you know, you would hate the reason to be that people are starting to give up. I think that's a big and a very concerning factor in this election compared to four years ago that four years ago Eric Adams won the Democratic primary, the same pool of voters that Mamdani is drawing his support from. And Adams won purely on a law and order platform. I mean, he was a former police captain. He ran on one issue which is keeping New Yorkers safe. Nobody else ran on that issue. And so even though people were well aware of Adams's ethical issues in past offices that he had held, they knew he had a sort of erratic management style, but they picked him anyway because he was the only person on this issue that met what they wanted. And so you would hate to see people sort of thinking, you know, we tried this and it didn't work because we know from history you can succeed here. Adams had good ideas, but he just was not able to manage or execute until the last few months, ironically, when he finally put in place a competent, seemingly honest police commissioner. So we have effectively no one running as a perfect actor on this issue in this election season. Which I guess brings us to the election.
- [10:57]
A
It does bring us to the election. But I just wanted to ask to bring up one other issue, fare enforcement and transit, which is, you know, a little thing. And yet it seems to me that has a big impact. And I'm saying that because just the other week I was taking B41 late at night and watching just how many people did not pay the fare was astonishing. And maybe I just don't take the bus often enough, but I'd say it was good. 40% that just walked on. And as a. And it wasn't just people that, you know, were struggling and obviously, you know, not well or in some other way that's visible. It seemed like perfectly middle class people walking on without paying.
- [11:44]
B
Yeah, and it's interesting that you say 40% as a sort of guess because that's what it is. I mean it's 44% of people are not paying their bus fare, which is just an enormous increase from, you know, high single digits or low double digits of before the pandemic. And this is just. It goes to the fact that the low level antisocial bad behavior is now accepted. And you see that in some cases this leads to violent crime. One of the first subway homicides of the COVID era was when fashion designer and the Bronx held open the exit gate for somebody behind him, seemingly a stranger, and that person stabbed him to death. You know, that was in March of 2020. So it's kind of eerie that we have basically the same thing happening last week where you have the 64 year old victim, Nicole Atanza, commuting either to or from security guard job in a act of kindness, you know, holds the exit gate open for someone deeding the fare. And this person, 25 years old, very long both night nonviolent and violent felony record, goes through without paying the fare and then proceeds to beat this victim to death. And so, you know, this rises partly from the fare evasion. If you had someone monitoring that gate and you know, undercovers and looking for the fair evaders, if you have more of that, you do prevent some of these things and we are giving out more tickets. But the problem is their criminal justice system is less and less likely to arrest repeat fair evaders. So if you were just piling up these civil tickets, there's no deterrent. You know, they can garnish your wages if you don't pay them at some point, but if you're not in the formal economy, you don't have a job. This is.
- [13:44]
A
That's assuming that someone's actually.
- [13:47]
B
Yeah, I mean this system is created for functional people to deter them from evading the fair. It is not created for people with long criminal records and or severe untreated mental health issues. Even though they're giving every warning out there that they need. You know, people always say they need help. They don't need help so much as they need a long term strategy for continuum of care, likely in patients to start with and then graduating to more independence. And that is just not how our system works. Adams has Made some progress, but not nearly enough.
- [14:28]
A
I was thinking about when I, as. As I watched it was the. Just the sense that laws didn't really matter, that the rules didn't really matter, and that there was no consequence but just, you know, doing whatever they. Whatever you wanted and just noticing that if one person didn't pay, the people following them didn't pay either. If the first person getting on the bus did pay, it seemed like more people paid after.
- [14:55]
B
And what you said about middle class people also not paying their fare, I mean, the problem with that is obviously we need the fare revenue, but also that consumes police resources from the real violent, antisocial actors. You know, if. Because I went around with the police about a year ago and watched the undercover intercepting fare vaders, you know, watch them give tickets to people, and it was the same thing. I mean, they're having to spend 20 minutes with this lady with a Whole Foods bag and one of those bags from the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris, you know, those souvenir bags. So maybe we shouldn't judge her from what she's carrying. But it doesn't seem like in a desperate situation to visit her sick grandmother in the hospital and doesn't have $2.90 and the police have to deal with her, which means that's resources taken away from dealing with the person who's going to go stab somebody. So just a massive, massive increase in this just consumes the police resources. And I think they should go back to arresting people on their first offense and do that enough. And people like this woman are not going to take that risk. And so then you can get the numbers down so that it's really just your hardcore people.
- [16:17]
A
Yeah, massive deterrent.
- [16:19]
B
Yeah. I mean, you would if you said if you beat the fair, you're going to be arrested. And it doesn't mean you're going to go to jail even for a minute. It just means you get a desk appearance. But it is a criminal summons. I think there are still a lot of people who are deterred by the idea of a criminal summons. And obviously you don't want two or three or five, because then you will start to spend a couple days in jail. You take care of 75% of your people that way, and then you have more resources for people who don't respond to that deterrence.
- [16:52]
A
Well, this is a perfect segue into the. Into a conversation about the mayoral candidates and in particular the Zoran Mamdani's Community Safety Department that he would like to establish to allow NYPD to focus, in his words, on the more serious crimes.
- [17:12]
B
Yeah. And what are your initial thoughts and, you know, positive, negative concerns about the Mamdani Department of Community Safety plan, which basically, as you said, would move a lot of police interaction with people who appear to be mentally ill away from the police and toward clinicians and outreach workers. So, basically, ambulance calls for mental distress. Make a program that has had a small pilot in the past, since the last two years of the de Blasio administration. Make that a citywide full coverage of the city where it's not police who respond to this. It's civilian ambulance crews with someone with mental health experience and do the same thing in the subways. So what are your thoughts and concerns about this?
- [18:04]
A
I mean, I think. Think it's great that we are focusing on mental illness and thinking of ways of helping people in distress. Worry about how well it could be implemented, just because how. How would you scale it up to that level that would be necessary to respond to the calls? So far, all the programs that I have seen have been very small and pilot programs, and I'm not sure we have the clinicians.
- [18:32]
B
Yeah, I think you're right in that. If we look at, like, what the city has been doing and the mta, they say MTA is run by the state, which runs subways and buses. What they've been doing in the past few years illustrates that progress is possible, but that is really hard, and it is slow to scale up. So the MTA has these scout teams in the subway. They have 10 teams now where you have a registered nurse provided by the city, and he or she is backed by a team of three MTA police officers, and they just walk around the subways and look for. And sometimes respond to someone saying, there's a person in distress here. But for the most part, they know stations that attract distressed people. They know which stations, you know, where a single person whom they know tends to hang out there and walk up to the person if they seem in distress, talk to the person. Does the person seem so severely mentally ill that they need to be transported to a hospital evaluation for 72 hours, which they can do even if the person refuses? Or can they convince the person to go into a homeless shelter? That part of it. Most of the people in the subway have been outreached multiple, multiple times. They know there's a shelter bed, but they know the shortcomings of the shelter system. And some of them also don't want to follow the rules. So they may have a knife with them. They may want to do Drugs or smoke or drink. That's harder to do once you get into the shelter system. But this is helping with the severely mentally ill. I mean, they have made some progress here. And the city has laid out its own similar teams called path teams, which basically just do the same work at different hours. And they do some above ground work as well. But the numbers show that this is difficult to civilianize this. They have the police teams there for a reason. Because the definition of involuntary transport to the hospital, the person can just say no and walk away. Civilian clinician cannot do anything about that. They're not going to chase the person or tackle the person, you know, or whatever. They're just going to let them walk away. So that's why you need the police presence doing this. And we see year to date, you know, the city puts out this report, close to 4,000 of these involuntary transports for psychiatric evaluation since January have been initiated by officers. Only 738 of them have been initiated by clinicians. So most of this work is being done right now by police officers. In some perfect world, can you immediately move this over to civilians? Like you said, really hard to find nurses who want to do this work. I mean, it took a long time for the city to get people to volunteer for this. And they are volunteering in part because they have the police back up. They do not want to do this without the police backup. So that's just a massive challenge for the Mamdani plan. It would be less worrisome if this were like a five year plan. But he is basically saying he wants to do this immediately and that we would see immediate results in public safety. So taking this away from the police without proven that you have the competence to make this work is a real risk for public safety.
- [22:17]
A
Do you know how big part of how big A part of NYPD's daily operation is engaging with these activities that would be taken over by this department? Because the way that he's planning to fund it, I think it comes out to 600. What he promised was $600,000 from the NYPD's overtime budget, which is I think like 5% of NYPD's budget. So it's not.
- [22:45]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's about a billion.1 dollars a year. Something like 635 million would come from existing programs, including the police, and then the rest would be new money that he wants to raise through his tax increases. I'm sure we should ask one of our mental health colleagues for closer to approximation. I mean, just anecdotally it's A lot. I mean, there's a lot of calls for mental stress every year. And one of the reasons police respond to these is because you just don't know what's going on. I mean, if, like, one of the criticisms Mamdani has had of the program where they do have civilians responding to some of these ambulance calls, is there's a lot of them that afterwards it's decided, yeah, you didn't need a police officer. You could have done this with the civilians. But you only know that after, if someone calls and says there's a lady screaming in the next apartment, like you have no idea what that is. I mean, she could be in there by herself, unarmed, and just need civilian help. Or, you know, she could be armed and imminently about to hurt herself or somebody else, or she. She could be in danger from another person who's armed. So you don't know what's going to happen. I mean, that's why people call 911 and don't go over there themselves.
- [24:12]
A
Right. The 911 operator has to decide that it's split second.
- [24:16]
B
And I may be able to get you a number. I'll do a little research and we can. We can tack it on later. But I think that's an interesting point.
- [24:26]
A
Yeah. What do you think about the conversation that was last week or maybe the week before about discipline, police discipline, and taking away the. Was it taking away the final decision from the police commissioner on discipline and giving it to the civilian Review board or in forcing the commissioner to comply with the civilian review boards?
- [24:52]
B
Yes, this is a Mamdani thing. He wants the civilian Civilian Complaint Review Board to make the final decision on whether to fire an officer who, you know, has had a misconduct issue rather than the police commissioner. I think that's unnecessary because we already have civilian control over the police department. And I actually think this is important because a lot of the police department's critics and supporters seem to think it's some kind of autonomous agency, that it does what it wants. That's not true. I mean, the mayor is ultimately in charge of the police department. The city council also has a lot of control over the rules and regulations in which the department operates. So, I mean, if the mayor is unhappy with the direction of the police department, he can fire the police commissioner or have a sit down with the police commissioner. If the police commissioner is making too many of these calls in the wrong direction, rather seeming to be too lenient or too harsh with her officers, the mayor has control over that. I mean, he can talk to her and find out what's going on. Are their goals aligned? There is no. I mean, this is very similar to Trump in the military. I mean, we have elected civilian control over armed departments and agencies, and that should be the case and has always been the case. So considering the mayor already has this civilian power, you don't need to further obscure it by saying we're going to create a new power on the part of the civilian board. I mean, it's kept with one person, a civilian, being accountable right now for these final decisions. So let's just keep it that way and remind people of that once in a while.
- [26:49]
A
Switching slightly.
- [26:51]
B
Yeah, and I did. So the controller did a report on these ambulance calls in May. So there's 37,000 calls being that are eligible for these civilian mental health services within these Justice 31 precincts. But this is also only certain hours. They are. They leave out a whole overnight shift, which is a lot of people. But clearly, you know, if, if you bring this up to the level of the whole city, you are looking at hundreds of thousands of calls a year for mental distress. So that is a lot of what the police department are doing.
- [27:38]
A
Police staffing, one of the issues. I mean, Mamdani promises to keep the current number of officers. Cuomo would like to increase it by 5,000, I believe, to fill all the vacancies. Curtis Levi is calling, I think, for even more. 7,000 if I'm correct.
- [27:56]
B
Yep.
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A
But NYPD is having a really hard time keeping officers hiring officers. They're looking at a large number of officers retiring. So what's your take on that?
- [28:08]
B
Yes. So if we look at the differences among these three candidates, Sliwa is the closest that you're going to get to. If you think the city's policing strategies begun in the 90s under Mayor Dinkins, Giuliani continued by Bloomberg. If you think those things worked and the drawbacks of them were far outweighed by the benefits, basically having a very large, historically large contingent of police officers, 40,000 and above, and having them be more assertive about going out and doing proactive stops and police work and so forth. Slio is the closest who comes to that. Add 7,000 more officers, get back up there 40,000 and let them do their policing. Cuomo is kind of trying to come to a middle ground, bring back the levels, add 5,000 officers, and also do some of what Mamdani wants to do. He wants to do violence. Violence Interrupters wants to rely more on involuntary commitments than Mamdani wants to. So kind of trying to be in the middle of Mamdani and Sliwa, more policing, but also more attention to these other issues. So that's kind of, you know, he's trying to strike a moderate ground here. So I guess that's a broad way of looking at the three candidates along this continuum. How much should police do versus how much should civilians do?
- [29:43]
A
What would be your recommendation for them.
- [29:46]
B
In terms of how do they add the officers? It's hard. I mean, Jessica Tisch, the Adams police Commissioner, has relaxed some of the eligibility requirements.
- [29:57]
A
That comes with its own set of issues.
- [30:00]
B
Yes, it does. I mean, if you look at, and Ray Kelly, former police Commissioner, would say this, that you want a well qualified force and proxies for qualification are important. And this issue with some of the officers added during the Adams administration where they had failed psychological evaluations, you really don't want that. I mean, if you're asking for trouble, yes. If you look at places, Memphis, New Orleans, which just they cannot get officers at all. And so because of that, they've relaxed the standards. These are places where you start to have serious systemic issues with your police force not following the rules of what they're supposed to be doing. So that's important. I think some of it can be done with raising the pay. Everyone always likes to be paid more. The starting pay is not so great compared with other jobs that qualified people can get in New York City right now. But also just raising morale. I mean, I think a lot of it is they just don't feel like their work is valued right now. Having a mayor who clearly welcomes and values their work and can manage them in a predictable, non corrupt, non patronage manner, I think is important as well.
- [31:24]
A
How do you think Mamdani would do with that?
- [31:26]
B
The best hope with Mamdani close to what is true on a lot of his programs, is that you have to hope that he won't do what he says he's going to do. So once he gets in there and he's advised by competent, qualified, experienced people who can say no, civilian clinicians cannot take over a huge chunk of what the police need to do, that he just backs away from that or something like, you know, where he's made rhetorical comments before that on things like fare evasion, he realizes, yes, the police have to be doing a lot of this work because things can escalate very quickly. The best you can hope is that he kind of gracefully and elegantly walks away from some of these positions.
- [32:16]
A
Rikers. We haven't talked about Rikers. The New York City is required by law to close Rikers in August of 2027. It's clear that that's not going to happen, in part because the local jails are not close to finished and partly because the capacity of the local jails is not going to be adequate to home everybody that is currently at Rikers.
- [32:45]
B
Yes. And I just want to I just very quickly look this up for an example of the Mamzani shallowness that lasts. About a year ago, when a person wielding a knife in the subway was intercepted by police, wouldn't drop his knife, and police shot him. Mamdani said NYPD officers opened fire in a subway station after chasing someone for skipping the fair. That's just not true. They weren't chasing him for skipping the fair. They had actually ejected him for skipping the fair beforehand before he showed them that he had a knife with them. And he came back. Very simplistic reading of this. That's not to say that the police acted perfectly in this incident. You had two civilians wounded. This is an issue of police reaction in an enclosed space. But to just say this came from fair evasion enforcement is just not the case. So an example of how he needs to become much more nuanced in his approach to police. But yes, on Rikers, this is another place where Mamdani is very simplistic. He said at the vital city forum, I will do everything in my power to close Rikers on schedule. A little more than a year and a half after he would take office. The new jails being built are way behind schedule. They're way over budget. They will cost cost close to 20 billion or more. Well, more than twice their original cost. And most important, as you said, they will have capacity for fewer than 4,000 inmates, whereas the city's current jail population is close to twice that. So this idea that you can immediately cut the jail population in half without affecting public safety, if you could do that, we would have done it already. We've had two administrations now trying to do that, to make this. Make this four borough jails program work, and they just haven't been able to do it. And you can always point to some idiosyncratic reason. You know, the inmates aren't being transferred to state prison fast enough. The courts are operating too slowly. But there's always going to be some reason that you can't do it. That's just sort of the way things have gone for years and years and years. I mean, proving that you can do it sustainably and not have an effect on public safety would seem to be a prerequisite for building these jails, and they didn't do that. So Mamdani inherited a problem. He has not tried to address it in a constructive manner. Whereas Cuomo, to give him credit, he came out last week and said, this four borough jail plan is not going to work. Let's rebuild Rikers island and place new modern buildings on the island. That makes a lot of sense and is also, you know, basically the Sliwa plan is should voters weigh the fact that Cuomo's plan is late and also a reversal of his own position. But even being late and inconsistent, it is still a better plan than the Mandani plan.
- [35:59]
A
Why have we not rebuilt Rikers?
- [36:01]
B
A lot of the issues with Rikers are superficial transportation to the island that can be fixed with frequent free bus service, which Cuomo proposed, as well as you could see something like on demand shuttles. You know, if a certain neighborhood has a proportion of inmates, let family members in that neighborhood, give them access to a shuttle where you would call a day in advance if you wanted to visit and it would come, you know, quickly and predictably and take you to Rikers after a couple other spots. The environmental remediation, because it's landfill that can be fixed. I mean, you add a bunch of layers of soil to it. They've never even really tested it. And of course, the old decrepit buildings, you fix that by building new buildings. The anti incarceration people, the decarceration people, have loved to use Rikers island as a symbolic, you know, house of horrors without changing the deep seated culture of the jail system, including how the correction officers do their jobs. You're just going to move all those problems to the new four borough jails has nothing to do with the location of Rikers Island. Have you ever talked to anyone who's been there?
- [37:22]
A
I've talked to people who visited. I have not talked to anyone that that's actually gone through it.
- [37:27]
B
Yep. I mean, if you go, it just points up that much of the problem with writers is just the same problem of dealing with any level of government. And this is something Mamdani has to address is competent service provision. So, you know, they've got this little bus that once the visitors go out there, they have to be taken away around on the bus. But the bus, the bus driver is just sitting there for an hour, you know, eating lunch to get people through the metal detectors and everything. It just takes hours and hours. I mean, they treat the visitors very poorly. They look on them with contempt. These are culture Issues that are not going to be changed by just moving to jails.
- [38:12]
A
Well, that is an important component for any mayor to address. And it seems like no mayor has succeeded so far.
- [38:20]
B
Yeah, there is by the st a lot of and this is kind of a generalization too, but it's, you know, there's some truth in it. The stance city a lot of government employees take to the public is to deter them from interacting with them. And that can kind of actually be useful in a way that you have to decide on your own. This interaction has to be absolutely worth it for me to even try it. So maybe you do deter people who don't actually need to interact with the government, but at some level, just a basic interaction with the public. Public, including people to go visit family members at Rikers Island. This has to be improved a lot.
- [39:01]
A
I mean, as a big and wealthy city, I think, yeah, we could have really good jail system that is modern.
- [39:09]
B
And this like the anti Rikers people have said things like my child feels like a criminal because he has to go through a metal detector to visit his father. There's no reason to feel like a criminal because you're going through a metal detector. I mean, most of us do this once a week. But it is also the attitude in the culture that makes people feel that way. And by the way, you're going to have to go through the metal detector when you go to the four borough jails. I mean, this is not going to change. You know, there's a lot of like superficial sleight of hand to the four borrow jail arguments.
- [39:41]
A
Now you go through metal detector when you go on jury duty to court.
- [39:44]
B
Yeah. When you go to the opera. I mean, this is not. This has been normalized in society, you know, for better or for worse, including a lot of elements of stop question of risk.
- [39:55]
A
I don't know much about raise the age and youth crime patterns and how that has changed since this law came into effect.
- [40:05]
B
Yes, youth crime is up, as Jessica Tisch has said, although overall shootings and homicides are down. The share of underage people committing these crimes and being the victims is way up since race age was passed.
- [40:23]
A
Now, Mamdani, what is raise the age exactly?
- [40:26]
B
It means that most perpetrators of crimes who are under the age of 19 are not put into the adult criminal justice system. They're put through family court. And there's a few problems with that. If you're caught with a gun or a knife, but a lot of guns, there's no record of that. You can be caught with a gun six times. And if you're just going through the family court system and through the social work system, these things are sealed very quickly. And you don't really rise to the level of when the criminal justice system is looking at you until you've shot someone and maybe killed someone. So more people are ending up in the adult criminal justice system anyway because we fail to deter them when they're just caught carrying the weapon before they've shot someone. Now, Mondavi and to some extent Cuomo, because Cuomo signed the law, would say this is an issue with implementation. But again, if so, that's an issue of competence. And can we expect a massive change in competence overnight from either?
- [41:34]
A
I mean, one could argue that the current police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, is remarkably competent at her job.
- [41:43]
B
And these are your discovery has been changed. The bail reform has been changed to some extent where the judges do have more flexibility not to use the least restrictive means of bringing someone back to court. They can set bail for more eligible offenses, but raised age and parole. The Hochul era, less is more. Where you had the elderly Queens couple killed in a home invasion by someone out on parole, despite several recent parole violations, is will the next mayor be able to continue to put pressure on Albany to tighten up these laws? Ironically, Cuomo, being the person who signed these things into law, would be in a good position to say I went too far. We still need changes. But he seems oddly reluctant to engage on these issues, whereas it's very hard to see Mamdani lobbying to further tighten up these laws.
- [42:46]
A
What are you most concerned about with each candidate?
- [42:49]
B
What are you most concerned about?
- [42:51]
A
I think my concern with Mamdani is that I feel there is less of a focus on disorder, that with all the talk about police focusing on serious crimes, that there may be less focus on the quality of life issues that are and have been proven to be so effective at reducing bigger crimes that enforcement of taking action against misdemeanors might not be as high priority. I think that would be my concern about Mamdani.
- [43:27]
B
Yes. And I think you're right, because when errol Lewis, the Spectrum 1 anchor, asked him at the Vital City forum and Errol said he just went to the West Indian American parade in Brooklyn, there were just vendors everywhere selling illegal, unregulated alcohol. There just seemed to be no enforcement of vending laws. And Mamdani sort of gave this long, elegant answer that the problem is that we don't give out enough vending licenses and we need to give out more licenses. And then that would solve the problem. And it was just an absurd answer, because even if you did give out more vending licenses, you're not going to give them out for selling alcohol on the street. Like, we just don't do that. So this is an enforcement issue. And even the broader issue of street vending, you have an unlimited number of people right now who would like a street vending license. You just. You cannot support an unlimited amount of vending. So you do need some level of enforcement. And he's just very reluctant to do that at all. So I think you're absolutely right.
- [44:34]
A
Um, and, yeah, I. Yeah.
- [44:37]
B
And I guess if this is, you know, ironically, you have the least to be concerned about about Sliwa, because he just is who he is, and you're not going to.
- [44:47]
A
He would certainly get more subway patrols.
- [44:49]
B
Yes, you're not going to get a lot of surprises. And he has, you know, to give him credit, he has stuck to his core principles for decades. You know what you're getting there. And he actually has managed an organization. I mean, it's nothing like what New York City is. But he does have some executive management experience. I think the concern with Cuomo, if you just think about Mamdani versus Cuomo, Mamdani is a person who hasn't made his mistakes yet, and Cuomo is a person who has already made most of his mistakes. Is that good or bad? And can he learn from his experience and some of the mistakes he made in the third term, including veering too far to the left? Can he show us that he can govern with the wisdom of having learned from some of those mistakes? A good debate question for him would be, name three mistakes that you made and how you've learned from those mistakes. Acknowledging mistakes is not yes, even like the bail reform. He does say in his platform he wanted a danger standard for suspects in doing bail reform, but he didn't get it. So was it a mistake for him to approve the law? Should he have made the legislature override his veto? They just come right out and say, were some of these things, did I make a mistake? Did I not see this right or not? I think a lot of people would just like to see him say that in a broad forum.
- [46:32]
A
But if it wouldn't be hard to argue that he competent and would be able to manage large departments.
- [46:40]
B
He managed to create government. He got big projects built that people said cannot be done. I mean, laguardia, the Tappan Zebra, gay marriage. It's very hard to get things done in New York State. And some of his the mistakes that he made, his demeanor, that's all a product of that.
- [47:02]
A
But it seems in many ways that when we're talking about, about public safety, that in general things are trending in the right direction. The big crimes are all coming down. The felonies are persistently high and seem to have plateaued at a much higher level than they were before. And it will be interesting to see what happens as a result of the adjustments to the bail laws and discovery laws and related stuff.
- [47:28]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [47:28]
A
So I also wonder how much of that might be to do with the way things are being recorded and reported and classified.
- [47:37]
B
Yeah, I think a lot of small crimes are just not reported. It takes an investment of time to report a crime. You can call 911 and wait, or you can go into the precinct, which is an intimidating thing to do. They kind of default is to sort of steer you away. And a lot of low level things that, that something like harassment or menacing or even what a lot of people would be considered an assault, but what the criminal justice system doesn't consider an assault, like if somebody pushes you but you're not injured, things that are. It's a big investment to go report this as a crime. And if you feel like nothing will be done anyway, then why go report it? For example, the Duane Reade that was over here before they finally closed, if you look on the Compstat map, they only had one instance of petty larceny for an entire year. Like that is just not credible at all. There were probably multiple instances every day.
- [48:40]
A
Or they wouldn't be locking up toothpaste.
- [48:42]
B
Right? Exactly. Yep. So just not reporting it, knowing that it's just a pain to report these things. But I think what you said about things at least going fitfully in the right direction, the choice among Cuomo, Mamdani and Sliwa is do you want to start something radically new with Mamdani? Is the problem that we're not being radically different enough, or do you want to basically continue what we've been doing with a few changes in the direction of Mamdani? Like for example, Cuomo would add the violence Interrupters as well as some more police officers. Or do you want to go back to what worked in the 1990s? I mean, these are sort of the three broad choices that people have to think about.
- [49:31]
A
How important do you think it should be to consider public safety implications of the three candidates as you think about who to vote?
- [49:40]
B
I think it's very important. Although about a quarter of people think affordability is their biggest issue. Public safety is right up there, you know, 22, 23%. But as Sal Albanese, a former City council person, told me for an article I wrote for City Journal, without if people perceive public safety falls back significantly, they're not going to support Mamdani on his other programs. And we've kind of learned over and over and over in New York City, without a sort of basic feeling of safety, people don't support much experimentation in other areas. Like Bloomberg could never have pedestrianized Times Square or done his bike lanes if people didn't feel that the city and Times Square were safe enough that you could try these things. So if Mamdani does not start out very forcefully in making very clear to his commissioners, this is the baseline for public safety. We want to make things better, but we are not going to accept an increase in the felony rate. We're not going to accept an increase in shootings. If he doesn't do that immediately, he will just spend his first year chasing a crime crisis and not implementing his program.
- [51:04]
A
I mean, one of the things that he's going to have to deal with is the federal administration and the immigration enforcement.
- [51:12]
B
Yes.
- [51:13]
A
And the threat of National Guard deployments.
- [51:17]
B
Yes. And I would with ice. His job is not to protest ice. Getting entangled in that is not a good idea. There will be plenty of people protesting ice. I think he has a stronger case or Cuomo or Sliwa would have a stronger case of it is not the federal government's job job to put the National Guard or federal troops into American cities. These are issues that have to be dealt with on state or local level. It is people who decide through the democratic state and local process, which we're doing right now, what is the level of crime that they will accept on their streets. And also, of course, if it's so intolerable, you can move. So this is just not a place where the federal government should have a big role.
- [52:07]
A
Well, based on the latest polling, it seems that voters think any of the candidates would do well to, you know, protect the city.
- [52:17]
B
I think it's a mistake to be constantly focusing on Trump, which I know it's hard in practice because if he does take a Mamdani Marathi to do all kinds of crazy things here, Mamdani, of course, can't just ignore that. But I think constantly going out there and having press conferences on how bad Trump is is going to wear thin with the voters. I mean, Trump increased his share of the city vote this year, including in black and in immigrant and first generation descendants of Immigrant neighborhoods, bodega workers, Uber drivers. These are the type of people who have to deal with the potentially violent, mentally ill and antisocial behavior on a constant, constant basis. So they are affected by the disorder. To be constantly saying it's Trump's fault is not going to work with them.
- [53:14]
A
And the positioning himself very much against Trump.
- [53:20]
B
Yep.
- [53:21]
A
As a major campaign move.
- [53:23]
B
Yeah. I mean, he went out there, the Letitia James press conference the other day. I know it's a get out the vote strategy. You know, he wants Letitia James voters, but it's to focus on that and not the bread and butter of the city would be a bad idea. And the federal government has a right to protect its own officers when they're carrying out their jobs. So if you have aggressive confrontations and not peaceful protests with ICE officers, that's just an invitation for federal troops to protect the ICE officers. It's very different from saying we're going to have federal troops, like policing the streets and the subways of New York City. I think that's a very bad idea. But Hochul also opened the door when she put the National Guard into subways. I mean, that's a result of not effectively using the civilian criminal justice infrastructure to make the subway safe.
- [54:28]
A
Yeah, I guess. I guess we shall see.
- [54:30]
B
So if we want to think about ending on a positive note, what would you say nice or good about each of the three candidates?
- [54:40]
A
I mean, the first was easy. I mean, I. I genuinely think that all of them want to make the city better. They want to make it safer and more pleasant to, you know, live in. I do think that adopting some of Mr. Mamdani's ideas would make the city more compassionate. I do think that broken windows has proven to work and that to the extent that quality of life is being reflected is positive as an element that they're thinking about. I think competence is, is a weaker element for Mr. Mamdani as opposed to the other two. As you also mentioned. Curtis Lewis, policing attitude towards crime on subways is rather common sense that, you know, does it, does it have to be police officer? Could it be the conductor walking through the trains and flagging when there is an issue to involve the police department? That is, you know, it remains to be seen, but that's a common sense and solution. So I don't know. What about you?
- [55:47]
B
Yeah, I think going in reverse alphabetical order, Sliwa is a very principled, consistent person. He stuck to the same principles for going on 50 years now, since founding the Guardian Angels in 1979. He stuck to these principles when they're popular and when they're not popular, and that says a lot. And he's also in tuned to what middle class outer borough neighborhoods are worried about. You know, even something that gets no attention of like the massive battery storage installations that they're putting in residential neighborhoods, like that is something if you're just like a normal person living next door to one is concerning. And so having some attention to these sort of normal, like what people actually think about is a good thing. I think with Mamzani, what is a good thing to say about Mamdani? I guess the obvious one is that he's been able to connect with voters by being concerned about what the voters are concerned about, which is affordability. And so learning that lesson that you have to talk to voters about what voters are thinking about and not what you wish they were thinking about, I think that's pretty important. And I hope that he keeps that up as what the voters are thinking about changes. But just being able to run a competent, competent, passionate campaign, a lot of people can learn lessons from that. And I think with Cuomo, the experience where ironically, including some of what we said here, experience brings Cuomo in for a lot of criticism. Because when you've had a 30 year career, you are inevitably going to make mistakes and your flaws are also going to be apparent. It's like, you know, all the flaws of your friends and your relatives and maybe perfect strangers look perfect because it's only because you don't know them, they have just as many flaws. So the experience of Cuomo, in that he's already made most of his mistakes and Mamdani looks good in comparison, but a lot of that is just because he hasn't had time to make these mistakes yet. So I think people should remember, experiment, experience comes with its good aspects as well. And Cuomo does have experience in reasonably successfully managing a large government.
- [58:20]
A
This was supposed to be the end.
- [58:22]
B
Yeah. We're just sitting here on a rainy day so we can just keep talking. Right. People can just stop listening whenever they feel like it.
- [58:31]
A
So, yeah, I think you summarized really, really well the main points of strengths and weaknesses among the three candidates.
- [58:42]
B
No, it's. And you know, I would encourage people go read the platforms of the mayoral candidates. Does it add up? Is it consistent with what they've done and said in the past and whether.
- [58:57]
A
It is something that you'd like to see? I mean, Mamdani is proposing a change in how policing is done. The other candidates are not.
- [59:06]
B
Yep.
- [59:07]
A
As you said before, Cuomo is taking elements of. Well, he shares elements with Mamdani on policing and how to make it better.
- [59:17]
B
Yes, and I think that's an important thing to keep in mind. Like, it's not like Cuomo is stealing these things. It's just that we already do a lot of this. I mean, it's not like when Mamdani says, let's take mental health responsibilities from the police and give it to civilians. I mean, Adams has been doing this for three years. The mta, with the MTA police backing up the clinicians has been doing this. It's not a radical change. It's just that for the level of what Mombani wants, that you're going to take this away from the police and do it with civilians. That is asking a lot. Within a year, beyond the capabilities of what we've shown that we can do. Kind of the more approach of, you know, Cuomo would do some on the mental health side and so would Sleeva. I mean, the two more gradual approaches we've been doing. Because it works. If you could, you know, take a magic wand and get rid of the police, I'm sure someone would have done it by now.
- [60:20]
A
Well, we can always do better, right?
- [60:22]
B
Yes, but how much better? How quickly do, you know?
- [60:28]
A
Constraints.
- [60:29]
B
Right.
- [60:29]
A
I mean, like, there's going to be a lot of competing priorities and limited resources and probably even more limited resources if the federal government comes through on all the cuts that are in the works and have been threatened.
- [60:45]
B
Well, you've been listening to the Bigger Apple podcast. We hope to do a few more episodes considering other big issues in the Merrill campaign over the next three and a weeks. I am Nicole Jelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and I'm Liana.
- [61:04]
A
Zagari, and I write the Bigger Apple newsletter.
- [61:08]
B
Thank you, and please give us suggestions, agreements, disagreements, ideas for future episodes in the comments.
- [61:15]
A
Thank you for listening.