Fix Public Policy or Pay a Price

The U.S. suffered an unprecedented increase in gun violence in 2020. Nationally, the number of murders increased 30%. Certain cities in particular bore the brunt of this increase: Portland, Minneapolis, Austin and Columbus all saw murders increase by more than two-thirds. COVID hit the world in early 2020 and much of America locked down in March 2020. Lockdowns forced people apart and kept people inside. Business districts were empty and train ridership plummeted. Schools closed and went remote. Courts slowed to a crawl. Police were at reduced strength. But there was not a spike in violence.

George Floyd’s murder on May 25, 2020, incited nationwide outrage. People took to the streets in protest, and while the majority of protests were peaceful, many were not. But even peaceful protests taxed police resources already stretched thin from the pandemic. Whether because of vocal calls for depolicing, police staffing shortages or fear of creating the next viral video, quantifiable measures of police enforcement dropped dramatically. Only then did gun violence spike, starting in late May. The number of shootings incidents in New York City more than quadrupled from 56 in April 2020 to 243 in July. 2022 saw 105 shootings in April and 175 in July.

Between 2019 and 2020, Minneapolis saw murders nearly double from 48 to 84. Not so in neighboring St. Paul, where murders increased by but four, to 34. New York City saw murders increase from 319 to 468. In the nearby city of Newark, but a subway ride away, murders increased by three, to 54. Philadelphia skyrocketed from 356 to 499, but neighboring Camden, N.J., saw a slight decline. 

Crime trends vary not just geographically but also with time. While New York and most cities saw a large increase in shootings in 2020, Camden saw its largest increase in 2011 and 2012, Baltimore in 2015, and Chicago in 2016 (and then, unfortunately, again in 2020). While each city is a unique case, they all have a common factor: violence goes up when effective policing goes down. This is not to say that less policing is always bad and more arrests are inherently good. Since 2000, New York City has seen fewer annual shootings in 15 of 22 years. Arrests also declined in 9 of those years, but the key is effective proactive policing didn’t end. 

Since 2020, cities again have taken divergent paths. New York, Newark, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, St. Louis, and Baltimore saw murders decrease last year. But not so in Albuquerque, Atlanta, Houston, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Antonio and Seattle. To understand why trends in cities diverge, one needs to look at each city’s strategy to deal with violence. How concentrated is the violence? How accessible are guns? Are gun offenders prosecuted? Are sanctions swift? Are they certain? And, is the government effective at execution?

Honest crime analysis is muddled by extremists on both sides of the political spectrum. Without an honest discussion, we are left with fearmongering from the right and platitudes from the left. In 2020 New York, the right assigned blame for some if not all of the crime increase to “bail reform.” The left was rightfully defensive and entrenched their position, but to an absurd degree. And while bail reform and “raise the age” are not the primary motivators of violence, they are not blameless. 

Of course the pandemic matters, but not simply because of the presence of the virus. COVID — a global pandemic in which very few other countries saw an increase in violence — is not to blame for Americans shooting each other. And only Americans. And only shooting other people. Murders did not increase in Mexico or Canada, and even in America suicides decreased in 2020. 

Criminologists will be debating what caused the spike in gun violence for years — they still can’t decide why it started to decrease three decades ago. What matters to policymakers is what levers we can pull to address it now.

The debate on crime trends often reflects a simple split between those who believe in the value of policing and those who do not. No matter how often police abolitionists assert "police don't prevent crime," we know that not to be the case. That evidence is conclusive. Not only can mere police presence prevent crime, proactive policing can drastically reduce crime and violence.

Let us look at New York, America's largest city. Bit by bit, the building blocks of public safety were removed: The push to decriminalize and end prosecution for “minor offenses,” a continued and unique inability to hold dangerous suspects pre-trial because they are dangerous, overly onerous "discovery" responsibilities for prosecutors, and a police staffing reduction was pushed by the City Council’s effort to “defund.” After Raise the Age was passed, youth recidivism increased. After bail reform, adult recidivism increased and four in 10 people placed in supervised release programs were rearrested. 

Think of the game of Jenga: Wooden blocks are stacked into a solid-looking tower. Some blocks can be safely removed. But pull one block too many — and it may not matter which one in particular — and the entire structure comes tumbling down. Think of the blocks as akin to prisoners released due to COVID, prosecutors not prosecuting or dropping cases because of overly burdensome discovery reform, the closure of jury trials and grand juries, civic unrest, an influx of guns in cities and police officers’ unwillingness to initiate stops. Pull one or two of these and public safety may be fine. But all of them? That’s what happened in 2020.

This is not meant to be a repudiation of reform but rather a repudiation of the failure to confront its impacts. Changes in public policy should not be made blithely; laws must be evaluated and adjusted as necessary. Most policies won’t be perfect from the get-go. Imperfections should be seen as a chance for improvement rather than a reason to double down in opposition to one’s political enemies. We have to ensure that we calibrate any trade-offs because the harm is more than a game of political gotcha. Real lives in at-risk neighborhoods bear the brunt of bad decisions. 

Some of how family court is implementing Raise the Age, for example, isn’t working. This doesn’t mean Raise the Age is a failure — the goals go beyond just measured recidivism — but it requires adjustment. Bail reform needs to better handle people with frequent and intense patterns of offending. 

The Adams administration appears to be on a path to restore some of these blocks of public safety. It set a strategy and priorities with its “Blueprint to End Gun Violence,” which attempts to coordinate public safety efforts across city agencies.

In its first year, the administration reestablished teams to seize illegal guns, and police made 4,627 gun arrests, a 27-year high. The NYPD conducted major gang takedowns this year, targeting gangs at the center of the city’s violence, such as the River Park Towers gang in the Bronx and Woo and Choo gangs in Brooklyn. The Gun Violence Strategies Partnership improved coordination–and thus focus–between police departments, other law enforcement agencies, and prosecutors. This contributed to the city’s 17% decline in shootings and 11% decline in murders in 2022. 

Yes, overall index crimes were up 22% in 2022. But overall index crime, for better or for worse, is dominated by grand larcenies and auto theft, which make up more than half of the total. More crimes means more calls for service and more reports and investigation at the same time police numbers are down, by at least 2,500 since 2020. The NYPD needs to make careful choices about its more limited but still massive resources.

What should our priorities be now? How does one balance quality-of-life issues and the fear experienced by many with more serious violence that affects quite few? Police can shift resources to transit because of the terrifying increase in subway murders from zero in 2017 to 10 in 2022. But what are the opportunity costs on the street when more cops are deployed underground? Choices must be made that require strong political leadership to push rational policy-making through a din of partisan conflict. Much is at stake.