âWho wants to live in a city like this?â a Sunset Park man asked a TV reporter Tuesday, then answered his own question: âNobody wants to live like this no more.â
Indeed. Nobody wants to live in the city New York is becoming.
Another nail in the coffin â thatâs what the Brooklyn subway attack was. Crime, crime and more crime, and now this.
Subway terror is the stuff of nightmares â and a banner day for the owners of moving companies. Helping people get out of Dodge already is a booming business, and nothing spreads the determination to escape New York faster than the fear of being trapped in the subway with a madman with a gun and a sack full of explosives and smoke cannisters.
The 40 or 50 people actually in the attackerâs N-train car are stand-ins for the other 8.8 million people who are now terrified themselves. Everyone is realizing that they or someone they love could have been there. Just to imagine the possibility makes the heart beat faster.
Gov. Hochul knows that, which is why she rushed to be part of the first police briefing. She started out in a soft voice talking about what had seemed âa normal dayâ but soon warmed to the significance of the moment, declaring firmly and loudly, âIt has to end. It ends now.â
âWe are sick and tired of reading headlines about crime,â she said. âIt has to stop. Iâm committing the full resources of our state to fight this surge of crime, this insanity that is seizing our city, because we want to get back to normal.â
âNormalâ is such a comforting word. But if Hochul means she wants New York to get back to a safer time, sheâll have to be more specific about the era she has in mind.
The city is in the third year of a crime wave, with 2022 more dangerous than last year, which was more dangerous than 2020, which was more dangerous than 2019. That means lots and lots of murders, muggings, shootings, rapes, car thefts and burglaries are all part of the new normal.Â
Worse, summer in the city is the biggest crime time, and itâs fast approaching.
Cops handcuffed
Hochulâs promise to throw the stateâs âfull resourcesâ into the battle is also suspect. The measures she produced in the budget negotiations with the lefty Dems who control the Legislature donât even qualify as half-a-loaf and are wholly insufficient to do whatâs desperately needed.
Sure, itâs good she got more discretion for judges about whether to release suspects on bail before trial, but that was a modest step in stopping the revolving-door syndrome where too many perps commit a crime and are back on the street within hours.
Because of their many promises, she and Mayor Adams, who has COVID, are now on the hook for making the city as safe as it was before Bill de Blasio, Andrew Cuomo and Albany lawmakers handcuffed the cops and coddled the criminals.
Stop pandering to left
Hochul and Adams are an odd couple to be facing this crisis together. She replaced the disgraced Cuomo and is seeking election on her own for the first time in what looks like a Republican wave year across America.
As a result, she hasnât quite figured out what kind of Democrat she wants to be. One day she echoes the platitudes of the nutty left and the next sheâs talking like the Buffalo moderate she used to be.
Her political judgment also took a hit when her hand-picked lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, was indicted on federal corruption charges. She demanded and got his resignation Tuesday, but just last week said she had full confidence in him.
Recall that she picked him for the post because he was a far-left black Dem from the city who supported defunding the police. She thought he could help her turn out the vote in the five boroughs to offset likely GOP margins in much of the state. Now heâs a big burden to her.
Adams is largely untested as well. He just finished his first 100 days in office and if his honeymoon was still in effect, it was ended abruptly by the Brooklyn attack.
A former cop who was a thorn in the side of the police brass in the past must realize now that his success depends almost entirely on the NYPD taking back the streets, parks and subways.
To do that will take time even under the best of circumstances. It will also mean that Adams, like Hochul, must stop trying to please the far left wing of their party.
The Midge Decter line I previously cited especially applies now: âYou have to choose the side youâre on.â
If the governor and mayor sincerely want to crush the crime epidemic, they must think and act like wartime commanders. This is a war for the survival of New York and there are no partial victories. Itâs win or lose.
To have a chance, the pols must speak to two audiences. The cops must know the governor and mayor have their backs and the criminal class must know that the days of kid gloves and sympathy are over. Only when both things are clear to both groups will there be hope for sustained progress.
Itâs whoâs leaving
Thatâs not to suggest that otherwise the five boroughs will empty out and tumbleweeds will blow down Broadway. Even at its low point in the late 1970s, during the fiscal crisis, the city still had about 7 million residents.
The point is that many of those who can leave will leave, including the uber-wealthy, but not them alone. Young families, older couples, singles â they all will take their money, their votes and their stabilizing influences on schools and neighborhoods to safer climes.
And outside the city and around the world, people who might have come here to visit or live will be frightened away. They will be noticed only by their absence.
Moreover, thanks to technology and the pandemic experience, more and more companies are adopting policies that allow their employees to work from home.
The New York Times reported in Tuesdayâs edition that increasing numbers of big city employers, including Verizon, PwC and some large firms, are telling their staffs they can permanently work from home or follow a hybrid model, switching back and forth between their homes and the office.
As for one impact, the paper cited research saying the average city office worker would spend $6,730 annually near the office this year, about half of the pre-pandemic average of around $13,700.
That, too, is the new normal, one that has enormous implications for small business that depend on commuting office workers to survive as well as commercial landlords. Already the city has an unemployment rate of 7.6%, nearly double the national rate of 4%.
Can the odd couple in Albany and City Hall work together to save Gotham? Weâre about to find out.
