Be honest about NYC crime

Maybe fourth time’s the charm: Last week, Mayor Adams named Sanitation Chief Jessica Tisch to serve as his latest NYPD commissioner.

Tisch, who once served as the NYPD’s deputy IT commissioner, is good with data, so she’ll quickly learn that the city’s crime numbers aren’t stellar.

She will serve the mayor well if she uses her independence to address this fact to the public and explain the problems and solutions.

What does Tisch inherit? Through mid-November, major crimes (murder, rape, robbery, assault, theft, burglary and car theft) fell by 1.9% compared to last year.

But such is crime still a massive increase — 30.4% — from 2019, the year before all of New York State’s defendant-friendly criminal justice laws went into effect.

Murders are 12.1% above 2019 levels — and since the summer, the mayor’s progress here has slowed, indicating distraction.

New Yorkers elected Adams because they experienced the largest increase in crime over such a short period of time; the homicide rate increased by 53% between 2019 and 2021.

So the public expected one crucialdouble-digit drop in crime after Adams’ re-election.

Instead, felony crime increased 23.2% his first year in office and increased slightly (statistically flat) in 2023.

It’s not enough for the mayor to say, as he did after a fatal stabbing across Manhattan that left three people dead last week, that “we’re still looking at (the suspect’s) record, but there’s a real question as to why he was on the street” after a brief sentence for theft at Rikers. “He has some serious mental issues that should have been investigated.”

It’s something the mayor might forgivably say during his first year in office, not his third: Why does it keep happening?

Tisch is in a unique position to impose some discipline on the mayor. Because of his charges, and because he’s only in office right now because the governor hasn’t removed him, he has little room to interfere with her management of the NYPD.

After all, he screwed up the department with his ill-conceived appointments of people like the now-deceased Phil Banks and Edward Caban, despite their own shady backgrounds.

If she leaves because he won’t let her do her job effectively, he toasts.

Tisch should use this power to treat the public as adults who deserve to know the sober picture: No, New York is nowhere close to where we need to be with crime numbers.

For starters, get the NYPD to stop insisting the subways are safe when we’ve had 10 homicides this year, easily double the pre-COVID level.

She should also be aware of whether she has enough officers to do the job.

Yes, Adams said when he announced Tisch’s appointment that he would cancel two police academy classes he had canceled. So 1,600 new officers will graduate next fall, bringing the number of officers closer to 34,000.

But during the height of the Giuliani-Bloomberg anti-crime era, the NYPD ranks were over 40,000.

There is only so much the department can do with overtime. If she needs more officers, she should say so publicly.

Finally, Tisch, who helped upgrade CompStat, the police’s crime-fighting data system, should introduce data to better demonstrate what is not the police’s fault.

Of the number of arrests police make and summonses they issue, how many cases are dropped compared to the few years leading up to 2019, when state lawmakers finished making their changes to bail laws, rules for discovery and juvenile suspects?

Rather than top police brass and the mayor pointing out problems with individual suspects, Tisch should make this an integral part of publicly available and frequently updated CompStat: What happens to people who are arrested or issued a summons when the NYPD’s responsibilities are over?

Then she should consider collecting and publishing data on migrant crime.

Sanctuary city laws don’t preclude this, at least not if it’s done indirectly: She could release regular reports on how many suspects there are, for example. listing their addresses at migrant havens, or how many suspects have arrived in New York in just the past three years .

As Tisch said last week, “Let me take a moment to speak directly to New Yorkers. I hear you loud and clear. The mission is to keep you safe, to make you feel safe and to improve your quality of life.”

She can do that by being honest with us about the city’s continuing public safety emergencies.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.