What Actually Brought New York City Back from the Brink?

A new book by Peter Moskos, professor at John Jay College and frequent contributor to Vital City, is reigniting debate over New York City’s public safety improvements in the 1990s. “Back from the Brink: Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop,” is an oral history of the role that the police department played in producing historic reductions in violence.

While the NYPD has traditionally received the lion’s share of the credit for New York’s turnaround, there are many who are dubious of this narrative. One such skeptic is Andrew Karmen, the author of “New York Murder Mystery: The True Story Behind the Crime Crash of the 1990s.” Karmen credits policing but points to a range of other factors that also contributed to the improvements in New York, including the decline of the crack epidemic, rising incarceration rates and a healthy economy.

We recently brought Moskos and Karmen together for a conversation about what really went on in the 1990s. This debate is not just of historical interest; indeed, it has significant political implications in an election year where crime is a central issue in the mayoral race in New York City.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Peter Moskos: As a proxy for overall crime, my new book uses murder stats: from a peak of 2,262 in 1990, murders in New York City fell rapidly, dropping below 1,000 by 1996 and reaching 382 by 2024. The book explores the changes within the NYPD and its evolving mission. I wanted to capture the inside story — how police on the ground perceived what was happening, and what they were doing differently.

Andrew Karmen: Peter, you and I agree on the basic facts, but we may differ on causes. I generally follow the root-cause school: racism, poverty, family breakdown, poor education, chronic unemployment. Other theories include reduced lead exposure, legalization of abortion, immigration and a decline in alcohol use. Immigration, for example, helped revitalize neighborhoods. There was also a surge in higher education starting in the ‘70s, which bore fruit in the 90s as young adults pursued different paths.

PM: I started graduate school in sociology at Harvard in 1995, after spending a lot of time in New York during the bad years. I saw the city change before my eyes. And yet, in academia, I was reading that policing didn’t affect crime, that we had to fix root causes like poverty and racism. Meanwhile, murders were down 50% in New York City, even as social spending was cut. I thought: something’s off here, the experts are wrong. That’s what really planted the seed for me to get into the academic field of policing.

AK: Crime declined nationwide, not just in New York. We need to remember that. Cities like Chicago and Los Angeles also saw reductions. But New York's decline was earlier and more dramatic, so yes, it's worth examining what was unique here.

PM: Exactly. And I think part of what happened was that New York showed what was possible. Other cities copied it. The "special sauce" wasn't secret: track crime, respond to it, prioritize public safety. When Bill Bratton became commissioner, he said the NYPD would focus on crime, disorder and fear. That alone was a radical shift. His deputy, Jack Maple, asked top brass how many people had been shot the year before. No one knew. Simply caring about violence, counting it and trying to stop it — that was the breakthrough.

AK: In the 1990s, bullets were flying. I remember a stat: over 80 people were hit by stray bullets in one year. Crack turned drug dealing into a young man’s game. The old-school dealers gave way to kids with guns and no restraint.

PM: Right. The nature of the crack market mattered. Crack was sold in smaller, single-use amounts, meaning more transactions, more disputes and more chances for violence. You had kids slinging on corners, competing over turf. And some of the violence was directed at, or spilled over to, people who weren’t involved in the drug trade at all.

AK: The War on Drugs had police out on the front lines, but the question was: were they fighting the right battle? Could it have been won with more investment in enforcement?

PM: I don’t think we could have "won" the War on Drugs. But I do think there was a kind of war on drug-related violence that had some success. What mattered was shifting the public market. Once dealers moved inside or used delivery models, violence dropped. The drugs didn’t go away — but the corner battles did.

AK: In your book, you mention how reforms post-Serpico affected things. After the Knapp Commission, there was fear of corruption. As a result, beat cops were discouraged from engaging too deeply. They were told to avoid situations where corruption might occur.

PM: That shaped an entire generation. Policing focused on stats: make your quota of arrests, respond to crimes, don’t make waves. The department was disincentivized from proactive public-order policing. Even when there were obvious issues like graffiti on the subways, they just made arrests without addressing the root behavior.

AK: Your book has some great "now it can be told" moments. Officers reflecting on the bad old days. Like a precinct commander who gave a patrol officer the number of a bar and told him, "Don’t call me unless it’s serious."

PM: That happened more in high-crime neighborhoods. The very areas most in need of effective policing often got the least. You also had things like "collars for dollars" — making an arrest at the end of a shift to rack up overtime. Everyone knew about it. I saw it in Baltimore too when I was on the job. We called it the 9:01 Club. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the arrests were wrong. There were rules. We didn’t make the rules. We worked those rules.  

AK: Some precincts, like the 75th, were considered dumping grounds for problem officers. But others used that to their advantage — knowing no one would bother them.

PM: True. In tough precincts, some cops just wanted to do the job and be left alone. I had access to a lot of officers for this book, thanks to my time at John Jay and my policing background. Many were retired, but they still felt strongly about that era. They wanted their story told. They wanted honesty — not flattery. And I did share transcripts with them for accuracy.

AK: One powerful story comes from Ray Kelly, who was police commissioner under both David Dinkins and later Michael Bloomberg. He described how crack use fell out of favor in the 1990s. Suddenly, it wasn’t cool. It was seen as pathetic. Young people didn’t want to end up like their older siblings. He said the shift to "40 and a bong" — malt liquor and marijuana — marked the cultural change. That caught police leadership by surprise.

PM: Crack violence started to decline around 1990. But the steepest drop in murders began in 1994. The numbers don’t lie. That drop was too sharp and too fast to be explained by cultural change alone. The timing lines up with major shifts in NYPD philosophy and practice. Before the big crime drop, the crime decline started in the subways. That was Bratton’s domain in 1990 before he became commissioner. Subway crime dropped while street crime was still high. That’s a natural experiment showing the effects of focused policing.

AK: That success helped Bratton get appointed. But Rudy Giuliani ousted him, reportedly because he didn’t like that Bratton was getting the credit. Especially after Bratton was featured on the cover of "Time."

PM: That cover called him a champion of community policing — which is ironic because community policing had been the mantra under Dinkins and Lee Brown. But Bratton redefined it as focusing on what communities said they wanted: less crime, less fear. Arrests did go up under Bratton. But arrests went up more in the 1980s with community policing than in the 1990s with broken windows. 

AK: Your chapter on Bryant Park, Times Square and the Port Authority Bus Terminal is fascinating. These spaces became safe through design, programming and informal control — not just arrests.

PM: Right. I wanted to highlight the role of business improvement districts and the philosophy that laid the foundation for the crime drop. Dan Biederman in Bryant Park and Gretchen Dykstra in Times Square and Ken Philmus in the bus terminal did transformative work. They used principles from Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte. They worked with police, but their part wasn’t dependent on policing. And this happened before Giuliani. Graffiti removal on the subways happened in the late 1980s. Times Square’s cleanup was already in motion when Disney signed on. Even things like squeegee men were tackled under Dinkins and Ray Kelly, but Giuliani got the credit. And Safe Streets, Safe City passed under Dinkins, hiring thousands of new cops. But it was Bratton who was able to use that manpower.

AK: What do you hope readers take from your book?

PM: First, I want it to be a compelling read. But also, I want readers to see police as people — working men and women, often from tough backgrounds, who see policing as a way to do good. The NYPD is a flawed, massive organization. But this is also a management story: how do you motivate civil servants? Leadership, mission and accountability made a difference.

AK: And I got the message that police tried a lot of ideas. Some worked. Some didn’t. But by the 90s, they believed they could reduce crime. That’s a shift.

PM: Cops never like the mayor, perhaps except for Ed Koch. They didn’t ever care for Giuliani. But Dinkins was especially unpopular. Some of that was racial bias, but much was based on how he handled crises and policing. He was seen as ineffective. I don’t talk about police legitimacy in academic terms, but in the terms that police effectiveness creates police legitimacy.

AK: Today, morale is low. Recruitment is hard. The NYPD lowered the education requirement. Why is the job less appealing now?

PM: Police have always complained. But since 2020, nearly every tool has been challenged: gang databases, stop-question-and-frisk, fare evasion enforcement. Laws like the diaphragm law make arrests riskier for officers. There’s a feeling that the public, and the political class, doesn’t want policing to succeed. That erodes morale. And if we’re lowering standards, what happens 10 years from now?

AK: In my book "Issues in Policing," I talk about three camps: law-and-order advocates, civil libertarians and racial justice activists. Some argue policing is inherently racist, rooted in slave patrols.

PM: That’s historically wrong. The NYPD was modeled on London’s Metropolitan Police, not slave catchers. Yes, police have enforced racist laws. But saying policing is evil by design undercuts reform. If you believe it's slavery, you don’t want to fix it. You want to abolish it. That makes recruiting good people harder. We need reformers who believe in improving policing.

AK: And we’ve made progress. Fatal police shootings in New York dropped from over 100 a year in the 1970s to about 10 today. That’s real change.

PM: It is. Police transparency and accountability work. But we can’t lose sight of the need for good policing. We must recognize the mistakes and build on what works. We need to keep moving forward.