Crime Gaslighters
Lies of the see-no-evil fantasists
TIRED of crime? Me too! Luckily, there is a solution: You can pretend that everything is fine. A whole subculture of “urbanpolicy Twitter” — mostly affluent young white men — has spent the last 18 months expertly minimizing growing disorder, mayhem and violence in America’s cities, including New York.
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Here are some handy ways to surprise and impress your family and friends when they complain about that latest random shooting a little too close to their house for comfort.
Crime is not up. This is the mother of all crime-minimization arguments, the “Go big or go home” bet. You may feel silly making this argument, like boldly pronouncing that cats are dogs and east is west.
Nevertheless, a major think tank, Third Way (you know, like Tony Blair), produced a “memo” in September called “The Crime of the Crime Narrative.” In it,
Third Way scholars proclaimed, “Contrary to the media narrative, overall crime decreased in 2020 compared to 2019.”
Except for, um, homicides. Murder, which is “most feared by people,” the report helpfully notes, was up 31 percent nationally (and 47 percent in New York City).
And except for assault, which was up 11 percent.
Oh, and as an FBI report noted two weeks after the Third Way memo, these double-digit hikes — a record increase when it comes to murders — meant that overall violent crime was up by five percent.
Property crime declined, sure — because people were home guarding their belongings during the pandemic.
Still, tell people, “Crime is down,” and they will be amazed at your counterintuitive genius; that’s why they are looking at you funny.
Crime is up, but it’s below the level of 1990. Not quite ready for the “Crime is down” leap? Another option exists — one that makes you look like a wise urban historian.
There’s no denying New York City murder is up, you can intone, as are, over the past two years, robbery, assault, burglary, auto
theft and hate crimes.
But! In 1990, New York City had 2,262 murders; 468 is a lower number than 2,262. Therefore, crime is down, if you take the long view. As long as we don’t get above 2,261 murders, we are doing great.
The flaw in this theory is that a healthy society rarely takes its worst low point and measures all future success against that benchmark. Nobody sits around and says that infant mortality is below 1915 levels, military deaths are below
1945 levels, greenhouse-gas emissions are below 2005 levels, so, therefore, we should declare victory and forget it.
The other flaw in this theory is that it’s not actually true: From Indianapolis to Philadelphia, a dozen cities have smashed their previous murder records. But a lot of people don’t know that, and they won’t know if you don’t tell them, so it’s fine.
Crime is up, but it’s the pandemic. The pandemic made us crazy, baking bread and not getting our hair cut. It’s not concerning at all that for a small subset of the population, pandemic crazy meant murdering someone on the street.
We should on no account attempt to do anything about this, but just wait a few more years and see what happens. We shouldn’t think about the data or even know that they exist, as that might just clutter our heads with irrelevant nonsense or upset us.
Crime is up, but your chances are pretty good. This argument works well on the subways. Twelve people have been killed underground since COVID began, compared with one or two a year in pre-COVID times. None of the victims appeared to know his or her attacker.
A little concerning — but! Twelve is a small number. It’s smaller than 13 and 26 and 3.3 million, the number of people riding the subways each day.
You’ll probably be OK, and so it’s just kind of too bad about the woman pushed down the stairs to her death or the soccer player who begged to live as he died from a stab wound.
Crime is up, but it doesn’t affect me. Pictures help here — a handy selfie, maybe at brunch, with an appropriately snarky comment: Some people say crime is up, but look, here I am, nobody is fatally shoving me to the ground in the middle of the day in Times Square or shooting me with a “stray bullet” in The Bronx or Queens. Stay safe, bro!