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2020-

2020-10-24 c
Anarchy in the City

Anarchy in New York?

One senses order slipping away.

After Attorney General William Barr designated New York, along with Portland and Seattle, as “anarchistic” cities, Gotham mayor Bill de Blasio expressed outrage. He characterized it as a political attack on “black and brown cities”—though Portland and Seattle are two of the whitest cities in the nation—and denied that New York is remotely lawless or otherwise anarchic. Now the mayors of the three jurisdictions, facing the loss of federal funding, have sued the administration, calling the designation false and illegal.

It’s true that New York City wouldn’t be confused for Tegucigalpa or Mogadishu. And its violent crime rate, while soaring, is still much lower than that of Baltimore or St. Louis, for instance. But comparing New York today with the New York of even a few years ago makes clear that the city is undergoing a serious fracturing of civic order—one trending toward further disintegration.

One late summer Sunday morning, Demetrius Harvard, a 30-year old Bronx man, stood on a subway platform in Greenwich Village and methodically threw construction material onto the tracks. Bystanders tried to stop him, and someone even went into the train well to remove the debris, but Harvard persisted in his sabotage. Eventually, he succeeded in derailing an uptown A train, injuring several passengers.

You had to read to the end of tabloid news reports to get the real story. Two weeks earlier, in the same neighborhood, Harvard had tossed a steel bench through a bus window. He was arrested, charged with criminal mischief, and immediately “ROR’d”—released on his recognizance—with no bail.

This cycle is now all too common in New York, where public order and safety have been buffeted by chaotic forces. Criminal-justice reform at the state level removed bail as an option for all but the most heinous charges. Locally, the NYPD has stopped enforcing many quality-of-life laws.
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In New York City, it feels as though things are getting out of control. When wildcat protests can take over the streets, blocking traffic at will while cops indicate they have been ordered to stand down, one observes a lack of order. Homeless drug addicts set up camp on lower Broadway and shoot up openly—a sight hard to imagine not long ago, but now common. Hotels on the Upper West Side have been converted into homeless shelters; when neighbors complain about random crime, public defecation, and harassment, local elected officials excoriate them as racists. (read more)

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