Crime, New York and 2022: Eric Adams didn’t create the problem he’s trying to attack

Progressives who’ve never liked Mayor Adams say he’s to blame for the fact that Lee Zeldin came as close as he did to Kathy Hochul in the governor’s race while Democrats here sustained sizable midterm losses. It’s a laughably spurious claim.

Adams’ critics insist that by validating the Republican candidate’s complaints on crime, he fueled a panic and, with it, undercut Hochul. This is akin to blaming the umbrella salesman for the rain.

Total NYPD complaints in the seven major crime categories are up 29% over 2021 and 32% over 2020; they are 21% higher than they were at this point 12 years ago. While murders and shootings are trending down this year, robberies are way up. Felony assaults are rising. Subway crimes are up 40%. Disorder has increased noticeably.

While it may simultaneously be true that the average New Yorker on the subway or a walk to the supermarket does not and should not fear for his or her life — Zeldin painted a caricature of the city as a hellhole, with dangerously facile solutions to boot — backsliding on a steep slope in a city that over the decades has built its renaissance on a virtuous cycle of improving safety is no small problem.

Long before Adams got the bully pulpit, his concerns about crime were put to the test. In the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary, he ran mainly on a promise to more proactively deploy cops — and bested strong police critic Maya Wiley, winning over an especially high proportion of Black voters. And that was before things got worse this year.

In February, it was a record 74% of city voters, not Adams, who told pollsters crime was a very serious problem. Were those voters brainwashed dopes?

No doubt, Hizzoner has made rhetorical flubs. He was wrong in May saying that he has “never witnessed crime at this level.” He was an NYPD officer in the early 1990s, when murders were five times higher, robberies seven times higher, and felony assaults roughly double current levels. Nor is reforming bail a silver bullet to bending the curve.

But it is an insult to small-d democracy to suggest that a man who dared to care about and focus on remedying one of New Yorkers’ chief concerns is a traitor to the Democratic cause.