The New York City tabloids, TV news and other elements of the city’s early-warning system for the apocalypse have noted a steady rise in shootings and homicides. To some this smells like the beginning of the end of many years of falling crime, and with it, presumably, the mayor’s credibility as a leader who can keep the city safe.
Any prolonged increase in violence is worrying, and shootings have been climbing for two years.
But Mr. de Blasio has a ready response, which he repeated on Friday. It’s that serious crime overall is still down — way down — from historic highs. That the shooting problem is largely confined to a few precincts in Brooklyn and the Bronx, where gangs and drugs hold sway. (Police Commissioner William Bratton said it’s “career criminals, killing and shooting other career criminals.”) And that he and Mr. Bratton have got this, through programs, with names like Summer All Out and Operation Impact, that will focus attention and officers on crime-plagued neighborhoods.
Mr. Bratton’s remark about career criminals is meant to reassure everyone else. And the comforting statistics Mr. de Blasio cites have the virtue of being accurate. But they don’t mean much if you live in a problem precinct.
Here’s what is also unsettling: the continued disagreement between the mayor and Mr. Bratton over police staffing. Mr. Bratton has sided with the City Council, which has consistently urged the hiring of 1,000 new officers. The mayor has just as consistently said that the money is needed elsewhere, and that Mr. Bratton has all the officers he needs.
Mr. de Blasio argues that the steep reduction in stop-and-frisk and marijuana arrests has led to a manpower dividend: Cops who aren’t hassling young black and Latino men have a lot more time for smarter, better crime-fighting.
But if the mayor is right, why isn’t his own police commissioner buying it? Maybe some political game is being played here, some budget-related dance or some message being sent to the police unions. The result for those of us in the cheap seats is confusion. Do we need more cops, or not? Does the mayor trust his police commissioner as his No. 1 public-safety expert, or not? If he does trust him, why doesn’t he give him more officers? If he doesn’t trust him, that is a much bigger problem.
The worriers have leveled many such unfair, if not overheated, attacks on the mayor, the worst being that city has been placed in grave danger by the sharp drop in stop-and-frisk arrests since their peak under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. This is hard to support, since overall crime keeps falling.
Then there is the idea that cops are demoralized and unwilling to do their jobs aggressively because of the citywide reaction to police brutality, ignited by the video of a cop choking the life out of Eric Garner. By this account, no officer wants to be the next Daniel Pantaleo, the Staten Island hothead who brought Mr. Garner down, and who — with the help of an inert district attorney, Daniel Donovan — brought upon the city paroxysms of revulsion and grief.
This, too, is a dubious claim, a slander against the department’s professionalism, belied by the overall crime rate.
The mayor’s more fervid critics need to get a grip. But the mayor should, too. It is of barely passing interest whether he appears to be dominating Mr. Bratton, or the other way around. What matters is a unified strategy to ensure that all law-abiding citizens are treated with respect, while keeping the city safe, consolidating and perpetuating its success in lowering crime, and quieting the gunfire where it persists.
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