Is crime really down across New York City?
On December 29 the NY Times reported on Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg‘s news conference at City Hall “where he heralded what he said was the 21st consecutive year that the number of major felony crimes had gone down.
His logic was rooted in a state law that created strangulation as a new class of crime. The law, which went into effect in late 2010, offered three definitions of strangulation (none resulting in a person’s death); first- and second-degree strangulation were felonies, and third-degree strangulation was a misdemeanor. The city’s theory is that many crimes now classified as second-degree strangulations would have been treated as misdemeanors or less before the new law took effect.
If those crimes were excluded from the 2011 felony total, overall crime would have fallen by 1.2 percent, Mr. Bloomberg said.
Mayor Bloomberg discounts the fact that rapes and assaults against women rose in 2011.” Read the rest here.
It seems that the leader of Mayors Against Illegal Guns is seeing his legacy literally shot to pieces every weekend. Shootings are up more than 150-percent from this time last year and were up 28 percent in October.
Amid the flying bullets, the wreckage of school reform, the CityTime scandal, and the looming federal court takeover of the FDNY, Bloomberg ended 2011 by announcing legacy projects and spurious claims about crime and life expectancy statistics. As Ronald Reagan said there are three types of lies, “lies, damn lies and statistics.” Bloomberg doesn’t mind serving up all three in pursuit of his legacy.
Bloomberg’s unabashed hubris compels him to dismiss his critics and the facts. “Things couldn’t be better,” is his favorite rejoinder.
With two years left in a third term that’s coming up craps, the Mayor has ordered his minions to start archiving the official record of his accomplishments. You know what they say about history being told by the victors or in this case, by he who compiles the official record.
Is the curse of a third term, plus a poor national economy undoing Mayor Bloomberg’s legacy? Leave your comment.
