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I remember visiting my paternal grandparents in the late 1970s in Queens and my grandfather got very upset when he wasn't at home and my grandmother allowed my younger sister and myself to go out on our own locally. I got a "talking to" that it was dangerous to go out alone in less than groups of 3-4!
I prefer good story tellers with stories with details, not just key words......
Drugs + jobs left the city + affluent residents fled for the suburbs = bad times. White Flight
Also was the last high point for the mob. When jobs left and the police retreated from sight the various mob families would step in and fill voids. Organized crime got its fingers over working class jobs that remained like shipping, construction, etc. Foot soldiers working for the mob would act as crime deterrent in some neighborhoods, would be criminals might think twice about robbing a place known to be under mob protection.
The same reason as now, as always: the culture of crime. If crime is permitted and considered normal (or even glamorous), considered among some social groups as an acceptable career, then obviously there will be crime.
I remember visiting my paternal grandparents in the late 1970s in Queens and my grandfather got very upset when he wasn't at home and my grandmother allowed my younger sister and myself to go out on our own locally. I got a "talking to" that it was dangerous to go out alone in less than groups of 3-4!
Even in the 90s in middle school I was not allowed to go out after dark unless with my cousin or step brother because kids were jumping other kids all the time for no reason
But if you had a crew of at least 3 generally they keep walking
Well, it's of course going to come off as racist to you...but here's my twist as someone here 50 years and having grown up with many of the elders who passed the stories down.
50's - NYC was entirely white and conservative mostly. As was America. Is this why crime was low? I can't say, but one could certainly make that argument. And that's what people older than me tell me!
60s - NYC becomes very liberal. Old white neighborhoods in BK/BX become heavily AA as migration from the South to the North happens rapidly. So with that comes crime as people are at an economic disadvantage. However most of NYC is still under control.
70s - You get a flood of immigrants from all over the world. I'm talking Irish, Italian, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Germans, Polish, Greeks, South Americans. You name it. The city becomes quickly over populated. Crime rises. "White flight" starts to take place. NYC liberals can't control their finances. The city spirals out of control. Violence takes over. You now have the Mafia, the Colombian cartels and the plain old Bronx/BK type drug gangs running the streets of NY. Think the movie "The Warriors."
80s/early 90s - More of the above + crack epidemic. NYPD can't keep up with 2,000 murders a year + all kinds of crazy secondary violence and crime. City is out of control. But I'm a teenager and I love it!
Mid 90s - St. Rudy saves the day! Makes the cops do their jobs. Cleans the place up. Real estate rises. People want to live here again. Bla Bla Bla.
There you have it. Now as for 2020, I think we're somewhere between the late 60s and early 70s in terms of our direction. Crime was low but is now ticking back up with liberal over reach. Time will tell how this story ends.
You got the immigration data completely wrong. The earliest post-Anglo immigration was Irish and German, starting around 1820, peaking in the 1840s-60s for the Irish, and accelerating to the peak in the 1880s for the Germans (Polish and other Slavic migrations trailed the German migration in smaller volume. German ancestry remains the most prevalent ancestry of European Americans to this day in the US). Next were Italians 1880s-1820s (the big Italian immigration was over by 1925, only some relatives of the settled Italian-Americans after that). Next was the big Jewish immigration around 1890 into the early 20th century, with the second wave in the late 1930s to late 1940s due to Hitler, and the third wave around in the late 1980s/early 1990s after the breakup of the USSR.
Regarding Puerto Rico, huge migration to the US happened after 1945, mostly in the 1950s. Cubans and Dominicans also the 1950s. Those folks have enormous families with lots of relatives, so the relatives continued immigrating, however, the 1970s immigration was not the peak immigration time for them (ie, the peak was in the 1950s, with continued lower but still significant immigration ever since). Other Central American immigration like El Salvador and Honduras, including without legal immigration process, actually spiked around the year 2000, and remains higher in this century than in the 1970s. In the 1970s, drug supply started coming out of Central America (chiefly Colombia, plus elsewhere), but those people involved in drugs weren't necessarily immigrating in the US. Central American (not really South American) immigration actually accelerated towards the turn of the 20th century into the 21st, and is still increasing with no end in sight.
So, the increase in crime in the 1970s had nothing to do with immigration. In fact, the years around the year 1970 were the years with the lowest number of immigrants in the US in the past two centuries. There was no "flood of immigrants from all over the world" into the US in the 1970s - in fact, just the opposite, ie, immigration bottomed in those years. The crime was homegrown, closely following liberalization of laws in the US.
PS - and then there is the fact that Puerto Rico is a US territory, so Puerto Ricans have facilitated migration rules (ie, they are the US citizens by birth, not immigrants)... so the annual protests in the Bronx, to the effect of demanding full independence of Puerto Rico from the US puzzle me to no end - what, all those folks then want to go back to Puerto Rico, since they came to the mainland US under the rules that assume facilitated internal migration from a US territory to the mainland??
You guys really had to have been there to experience it.
What's happening now is nothing like how it was on the streets back then
I witnessed it first hand.
that is so cute, seventh...I am saying it while picturing a 3-yr old chubby boy in pampers shouting... "I witnessed it first hand"...back in the 80s...if I wasn't misinformed......
that is so cute, seventh...I am saying it while picturing a 3-yr old chubby boy in pampers shouting... "I witnessed it first hand"...back in the 80s...if I wasn't misinformed......
LoL nothing was cute about back then. I remember watching somebody getting robbed at knifepoint outside my house and my mother turned off the kitchen lights so they wouldnt think it was witnesses. Dont remember how old I was, but I dont think I was in school yet.
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