It was the summer of 2007, when my younger daughter, then a rising sophomore in high school, was considering architecture as a potential collegiate major, and she and I went to New York City on an architecture tour. One of the places that she wanted to see was the Episcopal Cathedral of St John the Divine, which is located at 1047 Amsterdam Avenue, at 112^th Street.

Well, we missed our subway stop, and instead of getting off at 110^th or 116^th streets, we wound up getting off at 125^th Street. That’s Harlem!

So, my daughter, who was the whitest white girl in town, and I walked back down to our destination. The streets were clean, the people were pleasant, and we didn’t have the first moment’s trouble.

Rudolph Giuliani had succeeded the abysmal David Dinkins as Mayor of New York City on January 1, 1994, and served through December 31, 2001. From Wikipedia:

Giuliani led the 1980s federal prosecution of New York City mafia bosses as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.^[3][4] After a failed campaign for Mayor of New York City in the 1989 election, he succeeded in 1993, and was reelected in 1997, holding a platform of toughness on crime.^[1][5] He led New York’s controversial “civic cleanup” as its mayor from 1994 to 2001.^[1][6] Mayor Giuliani appointed an outsider, William Bratton, as New York City’s new police commissioner.^[5] Reforming the police department’s administration and policing practices, they applied the broken windows theory,^[5] which cites social disorder, like disrepair and vandalism, for attracting loitering addicts, panhandlers, and prostitutes, followed by serious and violent criminals.^[7] In particular, Giuliani focused on removing panhandlers and sex clubs from Times Square, promoting a “family values” vibe and a return to the area’s earlier focus on business, theater, and the arts.^[8] As crime rates fell steeply, well ahead of the national average pace, Giuliani was widely credited, yet later critics cite other contributing factors.^[1] In 2000, he ran against First Lady Hillary Clinton for a US Senate seat from New York, but left the race once diagnosed with prostate cancer.^[9][10] For his mayoral leadership after the September 11 attacks in 2001, he was called “America’s mayor”.^[5][11] He was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2001,^[12][13] and was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

By the time my daughter and I made that trip, Mayor Giuliani had been succeeded by another Republican — who later became an independent, and later still, a Democrat — in Michael Bloomberg, and as mayor, he kept the strict policing policies of Mr Giuliani.

But, after three terms, Mayor Bloomberg was succeeded by far left social justice warrior Bill de Blasio. From the New York Post:

NYPD union slams Big Apple as ‘city of violence’ amid surge in shootings

By Amanda Woods | April 27, 2021 | 1:09pm | Updated

The NYPD’s Sergeants Benevolent Association slammed the Big Apple as “the city of violence” amid a 250 percent surge in shootings last week, and a slew of other disturbing crimes citywide.

“Mayor de Blasio has allocated 30 million dollars to bring tourism to NYC,” the union tweeted Monday morning. “Welcome to the city of violence.”

The SBA included a screengrab showing nearly two dozen shootings across the five boroughs between Friday and Sunday.

“Shootings and Homicides plaque [sic] NYC and the numbers aren’t final,” the union tweeted.

NYPD data indicates that 50 people were shot in 46 separate incidents over a seven-day period ending Sunday evening.

The department said it logged 12 shootings with 14 victims during the same time last year — more than a month into the city’s COVID-19 lockdown, according to the weekly Compstat data.

Chicago and Philadelphia laugh! The latest weekly NYPD CompStat Report, for the week of April 12^th through 18^th, indicates that there had been 106 murders in New York City through the ^th, up from 100 at the same time last year.

As of the 18^th, Chicago had seen 177 homicides, up to 185 as of the 25^th, while Philly had piled up 159 dead bodies by the end of the 25^th. With New York’s much larger population, their effective homicide rate is significantly lower, but it’s climbing, and getting away from the stricter policing under “Broken Windows” has proven to be ineffective.

The left have, for years, decried “mass incarceration,” but lenient law enforcement has proven to be a bad idea even for the criminals. We have previously noted how John Lewis, AKA Lewis Jordan, who slew Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy, and Nikolas Cruz, accused of the mass murders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, were given every possible break. Had they been in jail at the time they committed their murders, yeah, they might have served a year or three, but Mr Jordan wouldn’t be on death row today, looking at spending the rest of his miserable life in prison, and Mr Cruz wouldn’t have the same kind of sentence looking him dead in the eye.

Philadelphia Police Officers and FOP members block District Attorney Larry Krasner from entering the hospital to meet with slain Police Corporal James O’Connor’s family.