{"id":298422,"date":"2021-07-14T05:02:49","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T02:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/hard-times-as-nyc-soft-on-crime-doomed-by-reforms\/"},"modified":"2021-07-14T05:02:49","modified_gmt":"2021-07-14T02:02:49","slug":"hard-times-as-nyc-soft-on-crime-doomed-by-reforms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/hard-times-as-nyc-soft-on-crime-doomed-by-reforms\/","title":{"rendered":"#Hard times as NYC soft on crime, doomed by reforms"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Hard times as NYC soft on crime, doomed by reforms<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s beginning to look like \u00adgoing soft on crime \u2014 especially juvenile crime \u2014 wasn\u2019t such a hot idea. Is it time to reform New York\u2019s \u201creforms\u201d?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Obviously, it is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And a reasonable place to begin is with those concerning children who bear adult arms \u2014 and who use them with deadly abandon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The problem is stark and clear, the most recent example being three murders in The Bronx \u2014 teenagers killed by other teenagers in what police say were gang-related tit-for-tat shootings of a sort not seen regularly in New York since the \u201990s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That is, not since the last time New York grew tired of the bloody consequences of lax law enforcement and concentrated its prodigious energies on protecting all of its citizens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The results were spectacular \u2014 a city so secure that over time safe streets came to be seen as nature\u2019s way. But complacency set in; activists and their apologists chipped away the policies and practices keeping criminals at bay \u2014 and then the dominos began to fall.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Perhaps most relevant right now, and among the most corrosive, is the 2017 \u201cRaise the Age\u201d law, a statute strongly backed by Gov. Cuomo that reset the age of criminal responsibility in New York from 16 to 18.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A
Teenager Jaryan Elliot was gunned down and killed on July 11, 2021. <\/figcaption>
Gregory P. Mango<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Criminal
Criminal responsibility was raised to ages 18 and up in New York.<\/figcaption>
Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The result was entirely predictable \u2014 more 16- and 17-year-olds on the streets with guns. And, fast forwarding to this week in The Bronx, three teenagers dead allegedly at the hands of other teenagers \u2014 casualties in what one cop described to this news<\/a>paper as a \u201cmajor gang war.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t go to jail,\u201d said a prosecutor. \u201cThey do robberies, get in fights and carry guns.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But teen gangs are part of the New York fabric, you say? \u00adRemember \u201cWest Side Story\u201d?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course. But that\u2019s nonsense \u2014 a Glock 19 is not a zip gun, it\u2019s a military-grade sidearm, and today\u2019s gang fights are over drug turf, not basketball-court sovereignty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Indeed, it is because of the relative immunity of 16- and 17-year-olds that they often are recruited by senior dealers for turf-security duties \u2014 an entirely predictable side effect of Raise the Age legislation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And it is difficult to imagine anything more potentially lethal than a teenager with an attitude, a gun and a belief in his own \u00adimmortality.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That belief comes naturally; so too, attitudes. But illegal guns are not inevitable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

America\u2019s cities are awash in them; nothing is going to change that. But New York had effective policies meant to keep them off the streets \u2014 stop-and-frisk, quality-of-life enforcement and dedicated anti-gun units among them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One by one they fell to activist opposition, and bit by bit violent crime advanced.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Police
Police at the scene where two people were shot on Intervale Avenue near Fox Street in the Bronx on July 4.<\/figcaption>
Christopher Sadowski<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cause and effect? It\u2019s more complicated than that \u2014 but not much more: The road to true reform leads back to the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s hoping Mayor-Almost-Elect Eric Adams takes it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Twitter<\/a>: @rlmac2\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Eric
Eric Adams has warned against using slogans like \u201cDefund the Police.\u201d<\/figcaption>
Stephen Yang<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n