{"id":32426,"date":"2022-02-13T07:48:57","date_gmt":"2022-02-13T13:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/?p=32426"},"modified":"2022-03-02T23:43:41","modified_gmt":"2022-03-03T05:43:41","slug":"nyc-crime-spiked-in-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/2022\/02\/13\/nyc-crime-spiked-in-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC Crime Spiked in 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many urban areas are known as hubs for criminal activity, as the correlation between city size and violent crime rates is well documented<\/a>. Indeed, many cities in the United States reached all-time high annual homicide records in 2021.<\/p>\n

Even though crime in New York City experienced a steady decline<\/a> from the 1990s through the mid-2010s, that trend was broken in 2019. In January 2022, the city reported a 38.5% spike<\/a> in overall crime compared to the same time last year, prompting both official<\/a> responses<\/a> and media reactions.<\/p>\n

High-Profile Incidents<\/strong><\/h3>\n

One of the recent violent crimes in New York City was the murder of a 40-year-old Asian-American woman when she was shoved in front of a train<\/a>. Her suspected attacker is a homeless man with a history of violence and mental health issues; he has since been charged with second-degree murder<\/a> and has undergone a psychiatric evaluation.<\/p>\n

A 62-year-old man was also injured after being pushed onto subway tracks in January. Other cases of violence last month resulted in an infant being shot in the face<\/a> by a stray bullet and a New York Police Department (NYPD) officer being killed<\/a> on the job. Several more police officers have been severely wounded during the rise in gun violence.<\/p>\n

Causes<\/strong><\/h3>\n

While there are many speculated causes for general crime in urban areas, the reasons for the recent spike in New York City are mostly unclear. One potential motive is hate; the NYPD reported almost a twofold increase in hate crimes<\/a> from 2020 to 2021. Although anti-Semitism is still the primary hate crime motivation, Asian-American hate has been the main driver for the increase. Many people have mistakenly scapegoated Asian-Americans<\/a> for the COVID-19 pandemic, which is believed to have originated in China.<\/p>\n

More general causes of criminal activity include poverty, homelessness, mental illness, easy access to deadly weapons, and the proliferation of addictive substances.<\/p>\n

While these causes do not entirely account for the sudden increase in crime, many believe that certain government initiatives<\/a> may be effective in reducing illegal activity. Proposed programs encompass public housing, affordable mental health treatment, gun control, and drug rehabilitation.<\/p>\n

Reactions<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The New York City government has primarily responded by promising to increase police presence<\/a> across the city. However, the newly inaugurated mayor’s long-term plan, known as the Blueprint to End Gun Violence, is more nuanced. Mayor Eric Adams aims more to prevent violence<\/a> rather than merely react to it. Nevertheless, concerns have arisen about the plan’s potential reliance on methods that have been abused in the past to over-police people of color and their neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

Outside of official press releases, news media have extensively covered many instances of violence in New York City. In addition, several opinion pieces have been written about the effects<\/a> of increasing crime<\/a> and methods to curb violence<\/a>. Despite the city’s anti-crime efforts throughout the pandemic and regardless of the speculated causes, illegal and violent activity in New York City has significantly increased since 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many urban areas are known as hubs for criminal activity, as the correlation between city size and violent crime rates is well documented. Indeed, many…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":694,"featured_media":32506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2724,1],"tags":[3595,3077,2997,3799,3798,1548,3797],"coauthors":[3690],"class_list":["post-32426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-worldnews","tag-crime","tag-gun-violence","tag-hate-crimes","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-violence","tag-violent-crime"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/694"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32426"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32970,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32426\/revisions\/32970"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32426"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=32426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}