The Disparate Impact of Crime

The soft-on-crime side likes to pride itself as being somehow the champions of the poor and downtrodden. They are not. Rafael Mangual has this article in the City Journal on growing inequality in the impact of crime on New Yorkers.

In his 2014 inauguration speech, New York mayor Bill de Blasio said that he’d take on the city’s elite in the name of “social and economic justice.” When it came to his signature issue back then—economic inequality—he pledged, using a Dickensian theme, to “take dead aim at the tale of two cities.” But he also recognized that “our city government’s first responsibility is to keep our neighborhoods safe.”

Nearly seven years later, economic inequality under de Blasio hasn’t changed. But the unequal distribution of serious violent crimes like shootings and murders has gotten worse. There remain two distinct New Yorks, and as crime ticks up, the difference between them is growing more pronounced.