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In NYC, Giuliani's anticrime measures (stop and frisk, directing NYPD squads primarily into high-crime areas, removing shady businesses, cleaning the city of graffiti and trash) have probably had the greatest impact, because the crime drop trend started when he implemented the measures (which also causes a concern that going directly opposite of his measures may cause an uptick in crime).
One of the somewhat contributing factors was likely the availability of abortion after Roe vs. Wade in 1973. Many people who would have grown in a ghetto and become violent criminals were prevented from that by being aborted as fetuses. Legalization of abortion has been followed by drop in crime 15-20 years later in a worldwide pattern. People who use abortion as the main or the only way to limit the number of their offspring are almost entirely low income (people in other income brackets are much more likely to plan and prevent pregnancies in the first place).
I believe that almost every man-made calamity (including particularly poverty, crime, and damage to the environment) is due to tremendous overpopulation. In terms of adequacy of resources, the optimal size of the human population on the planet is probably around 15% of the population that we actually have right now. I believe that will become obvious and commonly accepted in the next century or so - because seeing this obvious fact and behaving accordingly is the only way for human civilization to survive at all.
There's a bit of mismatch in what you're saying. Giuliani's anti-crime measures might have done something, but you have to match that up with the fact that crime had started dropping prior to Giuliani taking office and that the drop in crime in urban areas of the US happened around the same time across the US. Giuliani was obviously not the mayor of every large urban city in the US. This makes the idea of Giuliani anticrime measures having had the greatest impact probably bunk.
You do at least mention the idea of Roe vs Wade and the legalization of abortion as another possible contributor and that might be more accurate as a national federal-level action would make a lot more sense in light of dropping crime rates in US urban areas during the 90s rather than solely NYC. There is possibly something there at least, but then it doesn't explain the massive ratcheting up of crime from decades prior. Follow-up statistical analyses have been a bit varied in agreement with this, but even the original authors of the paper cite an estimated drop in crime rates that are substantial, but not the kind of substantial that is enough to account for the major drop that many major urban areas saw in crime.
There is another alternative hypothesis that has gained a lot more traction due to it corresponding well to both the initial ratcheting up of crime and then the subsequent drop of crime--and again, on a national level for urban areas of which Giuliani was mayor for just one and came into office while crime rates had already started dropping. That hypothesis is the lead-crime hypothesis which is that the massive rise in consumption of leaded gasoline for cars up until it was outlawed was a heavily contributing factor to crime rates. The US used to allow leaded gasoline (gasoline with lead compounds in it) which had wonderful qualities, but also very bad ones since emissions, leaks, and handling of leaded gasoline meant greater exposure to lead. That exposure was particularly bad in urban areas, because a lot of jobs, retail, and events were in urban areas and the US literally paved the way for massive highways to cut through densely inhabited urban neighborhoods to allow residents, suburbanites, and visitors to get to the downtowns of US cities. These highways quickly became packed with cars zipping by and peppering the neighborhoods surrounding the highways and in densely trafficked areas with lead compounds. These highways were also often cut through some of the blocks most densely populated by minorities and the poor since they didn't have the political power to stop these highways from being built through their neighborhoods and they also generally didn't have the access to capital to pay for a home out in the suburbs and the cost of relocation.
You're a medical professional of some sort, I believe, so you are probably aware of the detrimental effects of lead exposure especially when that exposure is during early childhood development. That lead exposure corresponds to a statistically higher chance of being of lower intelligence and producing attention deficit disorders as well as anti-social behavior and crime is a very anti-social behavior and a person of addled intelligence not being able to recognize the long-term negative effects even to themselves of committing crimes probably doesn't help. Well, the majority of lead contamination in the US is traced back to the addition of tetraethyllead and tetramethyllead to gasoline and those living near highways when traffic was burgeoning with cars exhausting with leaded gasoline means an amazingly toxic cocktail all day long, all year long for years!
I'm not going to go into population control with you, because that's an issue with far less definitive answers.
The whole thing is, yea, crime has gone way down from its peak and it's not just homicides going down because of medical advancements. That's bunk and it's remarkable that you can both posit for reasons for drops in crime and in prior posts talk about how great the danger is today compared to your youthful excursion to NYC in the 70s.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 10-14-2019 at 03:07 PM..
hah, I love when people have this response on autopost!
Happens every day on city-data it seems:
POST: "There's been a lot of shootings and rapes this year"
AUTO-REPLY: "You idiot, that's NOTHING COMPARED to the Holocaust when 5 million were slaughtered in concentration camps!!"
Did you try reading the original post he was responding to? That's more outlandish. And saying that crime has gone down since the 70s isn't the same as saying that crime shouldn't go down further.
Did you try reading the original post he was responding to? That's more outlandish. And saying that crime has gone down since the 70s isn't the same as saying that crime shouldn't go down further.
If you don't see the parade of CD naysayers to any mention of increasing crime then you are blind.
If you don't see the parade of CD naysayers to any mention of increasing crime then you are blind.
The OP was the one bringing in the specter of the 70s. Yea, crime should be lower--the rates should be nil. However, someone responding to the OP's comparison isn't "a parade of CD naysayers."
OP asked for intelligent discourse, but set it up in a not terribly intelligent way.
The question should be that since low-hanging fruits like getting rid of leaded gasoline and legalized abortion is already plucked, what can be done to further reduce crime in the city as the drop has hit a stasis of sorts. That's a fine topic, but then you've got posters saying dumb things like their comparisons to the 70s.
Well, given what else is going on in the US, I'm not surprised more shootings will/have happened in any city. From a micro neighborhood view, I get the sense that the Lower East Side is in its safest period in history, as with many other neighborhoods. I also will always feel safer here vs Chicago. LA is so spread out and hot to me I don't even think about it. I often feel comparing areas where I'll never be to ones I will be is pointless as it doesn't change your day to day or long term goals.
NYC is still by far the safest US metropolis, prefer to keep it that way
Things are no where near bad as they were from say 1900's well into the 1980's.
Between mob/gang violence, criminal activity, people taking law into their own hands to settle scores, and climaxing with the ravages of crack cocaine and drug wars of 1980's NYC in any given year during last century saw far more crimes committed with guns than today.
Reasons have already been noted by others; large population of that criminal element is either dead or so old to be of any real threat. That and or they are rotting away upstate and will be one or the other of above sooner or later.
Abortion and birth control has meant less children born into poverty. This in turn has made a huge dent that vicious cycle where poor males turn to a life of crime due to few other choices. If you look at where gun violence still occurs often enough in city, it is exactly that demographic.
Reduction to near elimination of lead poisoning has also removed those born or developed twisted minds prone to violent behavior.
You can walk most anywhere in city late at night or over night including some once very bad areas, and not risk being held up by some thug with a gun and an itchy trigger finger.
1976 was a long while ago and you were much younger then and maybe not as risk-averse as you are now.
Yea, medical advances have made deaths from wounds, which would then be homicides, less likely. Sure, weigh that against the much lower homicide rate. Then how about the much lower crime rates pretty much across the board since the 70s? What is that then?
I saw 3 white kids no older than 13 y/o getting off the A train at Euclid Ave on Sunday. 30 years ago their last stop in Brooklyn on the A train would have been Jay St.
I think that folks need to ask all of those upper middle class white folks calmly walking around former war zones who did they not do he same when Koch was mayor, or even during the Giuliani era?
There's a bit of mismatch in what you're saying. Giuliani's anti-crime measures might have done something, but you have to match that up with the fact that crime had started dropping prior to Giuliani taking office and that the drop in crime in urban areas of the US happened around the same time across the US. Giuliani was obviously not the mayor of every large urban city in the US. This makes the idea of Giuliani anticrime measures having had the greatest impact probably bunk.
You do at least mention the idea of Roe vs Wade and the legalization of abortion as another possible contributor and that might be more accurate as a national federal-level action would make a lot more sense in light of dropping crime rates in US urban areas during the 90s rather than solely NYC. There is possibly something there at least, but then it doesn't explain the massive ratcheting up of crime from decades prior. Follow-up statistical analyses have been a bit varied in agreement with this, but even the original authors of the paper cite an estimated drop in crime rates that are substantial, but not the kind of substantial that is enough to account for the major drop that many major urban areas saw in crime.
There is another alternative hypothesis that has gained a lot more traction due to it corresponding well to both the initial ratcheting up of crime and then the subsequent drop of crime--and again, on a national level for urban areas of which Giuliani was mayor for just one and came into office while crime rates had already started dropping. That hypothesis is the lead-crime hypothesis which is that the massive rise in consumption of leaded gasoline for cars up until it was outlawed was a heavily contributing factor to crime rates. The US used to allow leaded gasoline (gasoline with lead compounds in it) which had wonderful qualities, but also very bad ones since emissions, leaks, and handling of leaded gasoline meant greater exposure to lead. That exposure was particularly bad in urban areas, because a lot of jobs, retail, and events were in urban areas and the US literally paved the way for massive highways to cut through densely inhabited urban neighborhoods to allow residents, suburbanites, and visitors to get to the downtowns of US cities. These highways quickly became packed with cars zipping by and peppering the neighborhoods surrounding the highways and in densely trafficked areas with lead compounds. These highways were also often cut through some of the blocks most densely populated by minorities and the poor since they didn't have the political power to stop these highways from being built through their neighborhoods and they also generally didn't have the access to capital to pay for a home out in the suburbs and the cost of relocation.
You're a medical professional of some sort, I believe, so you are probably aware of the detrimental effects of lead exposure especially when that exposure is during early childhood development. That lead exposure corresponds to a statistically higher chance of being of lower intelligence and producing attention deficit disorders as well as anti-social behavior and crime is a very anti-social behavior and a person of addled intelligence not being able to recognize the long-term negative effects even to themselves of committing crimes probably doesn't help. Well, the majority of lead contamination in the US is traced back to the addition of tetraethyllead and tetramethyllead to gasoline and those living near highways when traffic was burgeoning with cars exhausting with leaded gasoline means an amazingly toxic cocktail all day long, all year long for years!
I'm not going to go into population control with you, because that's an issue with far less definitive answers.
The whole thing is, yea, crime has gone way down from its peak and it's not just homicides going down because of medical advancements. That's bunk and it's remarkable that you can both posit for reasons for drops in crime and in
prior posts talk about how great the danger is today compared to your youthful excursion to NYC in the 70s.
Millions of people lived through the high-crime years in hundreds of large cities, and we were all (me included) breathing the same leaded air. According to your hypothesis, we should have all been criminals with an IQ of 55. As a medical professional of some sort, I think lead toxicity is incredibly, mindbogglingly overhyped. Yes, lead is toxic, but only in massive doses that are impossible to receive unless you literally eat lead chips daily. There are millions of far more likely reasons for being stupid and/or aggressive than lead exposure.
FYI, those white ceiling tiles with a pattern of little holes (sometimes called acoustic tiles), that are often found in drop ceilings everywhere, are made almost entirely of carcinogenic and toxic materials, at least about 15 of them. Inhale a few microfibers of that stuff into your lungs and pray for an extremely good immune system to save you from lung cancer. Go to Home Depot sometime, and read the label on that stuff . Just one of numerous examples of something that is everywhere, and is incomparably worse than a few nanograms of lead that anyone might gave gotten from leaded gasoline while walking in the streets of NYC in the 1970s, which few nanograms I don't believe can be implicated in any behavioral issue at all.
I did not say that the danger of crime is so great today compared with 1976 - I do believe the statistics about drop of crime. But I honestly don't feel all that safe today around Times Square, the alleged paradise of safety for tourists from Ohio. I do not feel safe anywhere in NYC the way I feel completely safe in, say, Bangkok, a city with approximately the same size of population as NYC and much lower mean income. Crime mentality is very much still present in NYC, and the crime rate is still unacceptably high.
FYI, those white ceiling tiles with a pattern of little holes (sometimes called acoustic tiles), that are often found in drop ceilings everywhere, are made almost entirely of carcinogenic and toxic materials, at least about 15 of them. Inhale a few microfibers of that stuff into your lungs and pray for an extremely good immune system to save you from lung cancer. Go to Home Depot sometime, and read the label on that stuff . Just one of numerous examples of something that is everywhere, and is incomparably worse than a few nanograms of lead that anyone might gave gotten from leaded gasoline while walking in the streets of NYC in the 1970s, which few nanograms I don't believe can be implicated in any behavioral issue at all.
Lead is in its own universe as a toxin that massively affects cerebral developmental skills, it's completely irrelevant to compare it to carcinogens, ceiling tiles have absolutely nothing to do with this
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. Just one of numerous examples of something that is everywhere, and is incomparably worse than a few nanograms of lead that anyone might gave gotten from leaded gasoline while walking in the streets of NYC in the 1970s, which few nanograms I don't believe can be implicated in any behavioral issue at all.
