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Bill de Blasio is mayor of two cities, one safe and the other dangerous and sometimes deadly. In Mayor de Blasio’s 2014 inauguration speech he promised to take on NYC’s elite in the name of “social and economic justice.” Hypocrisy and privilege are rampant in many American cities, but none more so than NYC, explains Rafael Mangual in City Journal.
When it came to his signature issue back then—economic inequality—he pledged, using a Dickensian theme, to “take dead aim at the tale of two cities.” But he also recognized that “our city government’s first responsibility is to keep our neighborhoods safe.”
Nearly seven years later, economic inequality under de Blasio hasn’t changed. But the unequal distribution of serious violent crimes like shootings and murders has gotten worse. There remain two distinct New Yorks, and as crime ticks up, the difference between them is growing more pronounced…
Of 20 precincts compared in this article, the ten high-crime precincts have seen 105 murders and 369 shootings, while the ten low-crime precincts have seen just six murders and only 25 shootings.
It’s not enough to declare that Mayor de Blasio has failed to maintain public safety. We need to understand what set Gotham on this course. De Blasio’s campaign speeches obscured how the risk of violent victimization by criminals was unequally distributed across the city.
More disturbing, and consequential, this past June, 97 percent of the city’s shooting victims were nonwhite—a disproportionality that has remained essentially constant, both before his mayoralty began and throughout his time in office.
