It was like something out of the horrors of New York City’s past. At 7:30 yesterday morning, a man approached a woman sleeping on a Coney Island F train. The man proceeded to light the woman on fire, according to police, and then calmly watched her burn to death as transit police attempted to extinguish the flames.
A suspect has been taken into custody. But the killing marks a gruesome milestone—11 murders in New York’s subways in 2024, the highest figure in decades. It adds to the pervasive sense of unease on many people’s daily commutes. Transit statistics show that other kinds of violent crime, too, have risen on a per-rider basis, leaving millions of New Yorkers worrying about whether they will be next.
But it’s not just the subway. NYPD data that I have collected for the Manhattan Institute show that citywide, assaults are at their highest level since at least 2006. Crimes like robbery and auto theft remain significantly elevated over their levels before the pandemic. The city has witnessed a surge in young criminal offenders, and it faces growing disorder, including a spike in shoplifting and an explosion of prostitution on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens.
Not so long ago, New York was proof that big, progressive cities could also be safe and orderly. The city’s deep and sustained reduction in crime in the 1990s and 2000s—twice as deep and twice as long as the rest of the country—earned it the moniker “the city that became safe.” But while the city has brought a recent spike in murder under control, gruesome crime stories are once again a daily occurrence. What went wrong?
The answer comes down to systematic failures that left the city’s criminal-justice system ill-equipped to deal with surging crime. Shortages of police officers, well-intentioned but harmful reforms, and comprehensive dysfunction in city hall have conspired to make it feel like America’s greatest city is spiraling back toward the bad old days.
The problems start with the New York Police Department. The nation’s largest police force, the NYPD numbers some 33,000 sworn officers. But that’s down from about 36,000 in 2020. And as many as a quarter of officers are considering quitting, according to a recent study from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at CUNY.
As a result, the NYPD does less than it used to. The precincts along Roosevelt Avenue, for example, once had 100 foot-patrol officers; today they have 20. The Police Benevolent Association, which represents NYPD line officers, has complained that the Transit Bureau is too understaffed to keep the subway safe—leading to incidents like Sunday’s brutal murder.
But the problems go beyond the NYPD. From 2018 to 2022, New York State implemented a series of sweeping reforms to its criminal-justice system. Although these changes were well-intentioned and, in some cases, successful, loopholes and quirks have often handcuffed the system.
The most well-known is New York’s bail reform, which significantly constrained the use of pretrial detention. Analysis from John Jay’s Data Collaborative for Justice has found that bail reform did not increase overall crime in the city, but likely did increase crime among repeat offenders—including high-frequency recidivists who have driven headlines about multiple rearrests in a single day.
But the state also reformed its juvenile-sentencing laws, leading to a sharp increase in crime among 16-year-olds, according to the New York Criminal Justice Agency. And it made aggressive changes to the process of evidentiary discovery, obliging prosecutors to turn over huge quantities of information to the defense in a shortened period of time, resulting in many cases going unprosecuted.
Blame for the city’s problems, of course, lies first and foremost with the mayor. Eric Adams, a former NYPD officer, was elected on a tough-on-crime platform. But since taking office, he has become embroiled in scandals that have touched every part of his administration. That includes public safety: His former deputy mayor for public safety, Phil Banks, resigned amid a federal investigation. And the NYPD recently forced out its highest-ranking uniformed officer, Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, amid allegations of sexual misconduct. (Maddrey denies the allegations.)
New Yorkers should not have to live like this. Not so long ago, of course, they did. Through the 1970s and ’80s, New York was a hotbed of violence and urban decay. But smart policing and effective governance made it safe. And city residents and Americans alike should want it to be that way again.
Getting there, though, means getting crime back under control. It means substantially expanding NYPD hiring, so that cops can walk the beat. And it also means careful, targeted changes to New York’s criminal-justice reforms. New York judges need to be allowed to detain people pretrial based on their risk of reoffending, as in every other state in the Union. Discovery reform’s too-onerous requirements can be relaxed, and we can make it easier to remove juveniles to adult court, without foiling the basic purpose of reform.
Most important, though, the city needs new public-safety leadership, untainted by scandal and corruption. Veterans of the force are optimistic about Jessica Tisch, the newly installed police commissioner, who is widely regarded as a model of administrative efficiency. She needs to be given the latitude to clean up the department.
All of these steps are necessary because New York’s crime problem is already out of hand. New York subway riders deserve better than to spend their commute wondering if they might be set on fire. And everyone who believes that American cities can, and should, be great deserves better too.
