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NYPD Say 2020 the Bloodiest one in a Decade

NYPD Say 2020 the Bloodiest one in a Decade

By Yehudit Garmaise

   At year’s end, the NYPD recorded 447 killings: making this past year the bloodiest one in almost a decade. 

   Although horrific, New York City is still safer than in was in the 1980s and 90s, when the city saw more than 2,000 killings a year, as a drug epidemic plagued the city.

    From 1991 to 2017, under Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, crime in the city dropped so dramatically that economists and criminologists continue to study exactly what were the factors and measures that enabled the FBI's Uniform Crime Report for 2004 to call New York City “the safest big city in America.”

     In 2017, New York City recorded a record low of 292 killings, but homicides in the city have been rising steadily ever since, although, thankfully, staying far from the staggering rates in the thousands of the 1980s and 90s.

    2020, was however, the third consecutive year that showed rising homicides in New York City. 

    What exactly caused 2020’s appalling 41% spike in homicides?

    Detectives and police officers were stricken by COVID, and they also retired in record numbers after much of the public’s faith in police faltered after numerous cases of police brutality were caught on camera.

     Mayor Bill de Blasio continues to call the confluence of pandemic, protests, lockdowns, isolation, anxiety and economic hardship, “a perfect storm,” that contributes to rising crime rates. Fox News said that the spike in the city’s violence did start just as the coronavirus began to do its damage on people’s health, lives and businesses.

   As multiple vaccines get rolled out and administered, Police Commissioner Dermot Shea sounds more optimistic.

  "We’re definitely coming out of that dark period," Shea told Fox News. 

   As more New Yorkers get vaccinated, the economy continues to recover, and lockdowns and restrictions finally come to an end, police leaders say they are eagerly anticipating the turn of the secular calendar to 2021.


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