January 19th, 2010
Not only is crime down in NYC, so is ‘crazy crime’
Yep, there’s no doubt that NYC in 2010 is a much cheerier place than it was in the bad old days of the late ’70s and early ’80s. The murder rate has dropped from 2,200 homicides a year to under 500. And major crime is also down in every category, including ‘crazy crime,’ a category in which NYC was once the unabashed leader.
‘Crazy crime’ is my own term, and it refers to a crime so off the charts, that it makes you say, “That’s crazy.” It can be brutal or just plain stupid, murder or not, but it attracts your attention for how odd it is. The Son of Sam case (photo left: David Berkowitz) is the perfect example: a serial killer roaming the streets looking for couples kissing in cars and then just opening fire without saying a word.
It’s not that I miss the old days but I can’t help but recall a very different NYC. Strangers would push strangers off subway platforms, stab them in the back as they walked down the street, hit them in the head with bricks. Someone even killed a violinist at the Met — during intermission! These days, Google “Murder at the Met” and you learn of a scavenger hunt by the same name. It’s a very different and more civilized city than in once was imo.
Remember, for instance, when women were afraid to walk down the streets of midtown for fear of being pricked by some crazy guy with a hypodermic needle? Those things don’t happen anymore. With the plummet in sheer numbers of crime, crazy crime is also way down. The last crime I can remember that falls into this category is that mentally ill guy in 2008 who stabbed a shrink to death on the upper East Side, a psychotherapist who was just sitting in her office. The guy even killed the wrong shrink so that is truly ‘crazy.’
It’s not that I long for those crazy old days but I think about them from time to time. I guess you can take the reporter out of the tabloid but not the tabloid out of the reporter, huh?