Rising Crime and the NYC Mayoral Race

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Coming up in our second hour today, we're going to have a dreams expert on the show to analyze your COVID-related dreams. That's coming up. Daily News columnist, Harry Siegel pointed out this month that the last time New York City had an apparently uncontrollable problem with gun violence, a massive budget deficit, and a mayor who endlessly pleaded for help that wasn't coming from Republicans in Washington while holding off on making hard decisions within his own power, the last time all of those things were true at once, the city ended up electing Rudy Giuliani, the next mayor.

What will happen this time as we are now less than six months away from the democratic mayoral primary that should be, but isn't necessarily, the election itself in an overwhelmingly democratic city. Harry reminds us between Giuliani and Bloomberg, the city had five pretty recent elections in a row where a Democrat was not elected mayor. We'll use that as a starting point to talk to Daily News columnist, Harry Siegel, and Christina Greer, Fordham University political science professor, politics editor at TheGrio, host of The Aftermath on ozy.com, and author of the book, Black Ethnics.

In their audio lives, Christina and Harry co-host the podcast called FAQ NYC. Hi, Christina. Hi, Harry. Welcome back to WNYC.

Christina Greer: Hi, Brian. Hi, Harry.

Harry Siegel: Hey, Brian. [unintelligible 00:01:40].

Brian: Harry, how far do you want to take your analogy between right now and 1993?

Harry: Not very far because, as you mentioned, there is every indicator that the democratic primary is going to decide who our next mayor is this year. You have a number of candidates including, I would say, Ray McGuire, Andrew Yang, and Max Rose, who in different circumstances maybe would think about running outside of the democratic primary, but all of them have jumped in. On the Republican side, it looks like everyone is waiting on John Catsimatidis, the billionaire who ran a very ineffective primary campaign previously to be mayor, and I think is very hard to take seriously as a general election contender.

It seems like all the action is going to be in this wild new primary that one, is in June for the first time, two, is likely to use rank choice voting for the first time pending a lawsuit trying to stop that, three, where there's absolutely no in-person campaigning, and four, and finally, where almost everything happening in the city right now, the candidates are reluctant to punch because it's not clear how much of it's still going to be relevant come June let alone come January of 2022 when we're going to have a new mayor.

When it comes to the virus, when it comes to some of these disturbing increases in crime that [unintelligible 00:03:07] to the virus including a more than 100% increase in the number of gun shooting victims this year. The candidates have been very reluctant to really engage, even as you mentioned, we're now less than six months away from very likely deciding who our next mayor is and that person almost certainly being a Democrat and one would need about 250,000 or so votes in this crowded primary field to potentially run this city for the next four or eight years.

Brian: Wow, 250,000 votes in a city of 8 million people and we'll go down that mushrooming list of candidates a little later in the segment. Christina, we'll get you in here in a second, but just to follow-up on what you've been writing in the Daily News, Harry, on the shootings, you note that the doubling and shootings compared to last year has come almost entirely in the last six months, meaning the spike coincided with the start of the George Floyd police killing protest, not the start of the pandemic. What kind of cause and effect are you suggesting?

Harry: I really don't know it's striking how this is shadow. Some people have argued that there was some sort of policing slowdown that coincided with the protests and with the massive overtime, they went into extremely over-policing those protests. All of these other reform waves, Commissioner Dermot Shea has said this is about bail reform and other changes to the wars in Albany. It's really not entirely clear, but it is a remarkable rise up. Brian, through the 20th of December, we're up from 896 shooting victims last year to 1,824 this year. We're potentially looking at 1,000 more shooting victims this year than the previous one and that's very disturbing.

Most of the candidates haven't really engaged in this yet. Maya Wiley put out a gun violence plan that very notably has no real element for the police in that, and is arguing that we need more money into community funded and oriented programs to create a shift but it's a big ominous cloud over the field right now, where again, I think they're hoping this has enough to do with the virus and the pent-up frustrations and difficulties of this year, that it answers itself before it becomes a question that the field needs to politically engage in, and I find that disturbing.

Brian: Christina Greer, how much do you agree with your co-host’s premises here about parallels between now and 1993, about the timing of the increase in shootings in the city, about the political class, including these 150 democratic mayoral hopefuls, maybe I'm over counting a little bit, ignoring the issue?

Christina: Well, I think you might be under-counting, Brian, by the time we're done. It's funny, Harry and I tend to agree on the destination, sometimes our journey is slightly different. I definitely think that we're seeing this uptick in crime because anytime we have rampant unemployment, anytime people are feeling economically desperate, these are the things that happen in cities across the country and so until we get the virus under control, until we support small businesses, until we can help people feel less desperate about evictions and possible homelessness and where a weekly paycheck is coming from, sadly, we're going to see this because people are pushed to the limit.

As far as the mayoral candidates, as I've said several times in our podcast, we're still in the musings diagnostic phase and because the primary is on June 22nd, we really need to push these candidates, all 150 plus of them and their grandmothers who are all running to actually say what it is they are going to do. It's not enough just to say, I'm going to fire Dermot Shea and get a new police commissioner. What type of police commissioner are you going to get? Are you going to get someone who wants to invest in community policing? Are you going to continue to fund the NYPD for what types of programs are you interested in?

How do you actually plan to decrease crime in particular neighborhoods that are spiking in the city because we know that there is a correlation between economic suppression and increases in crime? I want the candidates to talk a lot more specifically because, after June 22nd, they're essentially the mayor to be, the Democratic nominee will be and so we need real substantive ideas and plans in place. What types of cabinet are they going to put together at city hall to help them implement whatever it is that they're saying? Right now, and with all the candidates, the fact that Maya Wiley is the only candidate that has ventured down this path to talk about policing is really a sad state.

We need all the candidates to talk a lot more specifically. I know none of them want to be shackled to giving names about people who are potentially on their list but I think that's a fair question for us to ask because once June 22nd happens, you're essentially the mayor in waiting, I want to know. As I've told you, Brian, when we talked a few weeks ago, had I known Bill de Blasio was going to appoint Bill Bratton, he wouldn't have gotten my vote. That is a substantive question that I should have asked. He talks about ending the stop and frisk, but I should have asked more specifically, well, who's going to be the architect behind some of these ideas?

Brian: Interesting. Our listeners are interested in this race because people are starting to call in already for this segment, and listeners, we invite others of you in who don't already have us on your speed dial. How are you making sense so far of the crowded mayoral candidate field? New York City listeners, to what degree is the spike in shootings versus any other issue near the top of your list of priorities or who somebody might name as police commissioner as Christina was just describing as a priority in which you'll make your choice? 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Let's take a phone call right away. Here is Sid in Brooklyn. Sid, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in.

Sid: Oh, thank you, first-time caller and admirer. My question is really around-- It's twofold. One, how come the mayor and or the commissioner is not being held accountable to the fact that there's been no reduction in force to the police department, yet crime is through the roof and there's no discussion? There's just a fall back on the reform bills that took place around the bail reform. There's no discussion at all around-- There is no reduction in force, and yet crime is through the roof, which to me says, and you look around police, they're not necessarily maybe engaging in the way that they were engaging pre-pandemic and pre-Black Lives Matters movement.

Brian: Sid, thank you.

Sid: Question.

Brian: Question. Harry Siegel, how do those dots connect as you see it?

Harry: They're interesting and tricky to connect. We've had a big increase this year in murders and burglaries, both up around 40%, then a car theft, grand larceny auto, up almost 70%, and not in any of the other major categories. What that says about policing, about people's economic circumstances, those questions are hard to unpack. It's troubling that the current mayor and the field of people looking to replace him are all seeming to avoid those questions.

It's also one of the reasons we need answers now about who your commissioner would be, and what sort of person is this? Someone from the NYPD or not is as Christie was saying, we're going to have a shadow mayor for seven months after this primary in effect, which is a really, really long time. If you look at what's happening nationally in this relatively brief period before power is knock on wood transfer in January, seven months of that.

Having some sense of what the candidates' answers to those questions are, do the police need to be doing more? Do they need to be doing less? Do we have the right number of police? Is this way too many? Can we afford this, given the massive budget shortfall the city has? Those are the sort of questions I want to hear these candidates engaging with now.

Brian: I'm just starting to get my own mind around this idea of a shadow mayor for seven months as you describe it. I guess we'll have to decide in late June, whether to segue from our ask the mayor segment to our ask the presumed mayor in waiting segment because that's even months before the general election makes it official, but we have time for that. Sid in Brooklyn, let me follow up and ask you if your premise is that crime is going up because the police are pulling back, does that mean that you would be against a reduction of the size of the police force because you think it matters to public safety?

Sid: No, I don't want to make that straight correlation right away. What I would say is that my hypothesis is that, one, I do believe that the police have to, I will say, re-engage potentially in a different way with the tremendous resources which they have. Again, there's been no reduction in force in real terms and or a reduction in budget in real terms, they've all been financially engineered to make it look that way. That's one. Two, I do believe that there needs to be a level of accountability that comes with the police department because they are civil servants, right, and at the highest level of being a civil servant.

My second thing is around accountability to the police commissioner to the city. There's been no discussion from the commissioner at all, around how he's reutilizing the resources that he has versus talking about, let's just say a reduction as he's saying in force, but he's had no reduction in force at all, but yet has not talked about how is he reallocating his resources. To me, it's not necessarily about taking away funding from the police, first and foremost, but it's about one accountability.

Then two, how are you reallocating the tremendous resources that you have in order to meet the needs of this tremendous city, which is going through a very painful time? Yet there's no accountability back to the city, to the resources, the tremendous resources which you have to be serving the city. I hope I answered your question, Brian?

Brian: You absolutely did. Sid, thank you for your interesting call. I'm glad you got on as a first-time caller, and don't make it your last time. Okay?

Sid: Thank you for that. Continue the good work, happy New Year to you, and be well.

Brian: Thank you very much, and back to you. Here's a former police officer, he says calling in. Alec in Queens. Alec, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling.

Alec: Good morning, Brian. I've actually called in the past. Thank you for taking my call. That is actually not my real name because I'm actually very careful about calling because I don't want any retaliation. What I did want to say is that for years, this department has failed to recognize or even to hear the voices that come from within the department as to pointing out what is wrong. Oftentimes, we think that the leadership in the department is actually the ones that are there to fix these problems, but they're so far removed from what's going on in the street. Not just with the work that's going on out there, but with the communities, with the cultures that are out there.

You have to remember what the pillars of the foundation at this department are and you're asking the community to trust a department that has been violent towards these communities. Corrupt, that have destroyed some of these communities, that have put their parents behind bars, that have caused so much pain over the years. Now, you're asking the communities to trust this department moving forward because you're making these changes. No, that's not the right way to approach this.

No one is talking about how do we move forward? You have to take this department and reimagine it, reinvent this department, tear it down to the very pillars, tear it down and reimagine a whole different department from the ground up. This is like an outdated form of policing.

Brian: Alec, let me ask you for a quick reaction to something that Harry mentioned before, which is that candidate Maya Wiley, who in fact used to be the head of the civilian complaint review board has released a unified anti-violence and police reform strategy as she portrays it. I don't expect you to be familiar with this yet, but it includes what she describes as a democratic process to help identify communities' own strategies for "transforming potential perpetrators, intercommunity investors, and shareholders of public safety." It might sound like highfalutin language, but from your experience, assuming you were a police officer out there, do you think it can take shape at the community level and emerge from the community level what kind of public safety programs, including what kinds of policing they want?

Alec: It has to because you know what, the community itself has to be a participant on shaping the department and shaping a police officer. At the level of educating a police officer in the academy, it is not sufficient to have someone and teach them for a period of five or six months and expect them to turn them out there and be someone who knows that community. When that person comes from perhaps upstate New York, they come from areas where they haven't even encountered minorities. What kind of teaching are you giving these candidates to turn them out into a community that they have never known?

Brian: Alec, thank you very much.

Alec: Maybe, like I said, reimagine the police department. Have educators teach candidates at the academy, not other police officers. There are so many things that can be done. No one has presented a solid plan on how to restructure the police department. We got to this point by the leadership. That's at the department at this moment, people who have served for years. These are the people that have driven the department to this point. Why are not they being held accountable?

Brian: Alec, I appreciate you giving us your input, again. Please keep calling us. This is WNYC-FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are a New York and New Jersey public radio with a few more minutes with Daily News columnist, Harry Siegel, and Fordham University, political science professor, and political editor for TheGrio, Christina Greer. Together, they are co-host of the podcast, FAQ NYC. Few more minutes with them before we do our next segment.

Christina, how do you see the large democratic mayoral field shaping up in general so far? It is overwhelming for people to get their minds around such a long list. I said we were going to go down through the list and this isn't even going to be a complete list. We've begun having the candidates on the show already. I keep saying to the listeners, this June primary is going to come up on people faster than you realize. My goodness, the field is so crowded with Eric Adams and Scott Stringer and Maya Wiley and Shaun Donovan and Kathryn Garcia and Ray McGuire and Carlos Menchaca and Dianne Morales and Loree Sutton. That's an incomplete list. Now, we hear Max rose and Andrew Yang may both be getting in.

Are there lanes in this race like we used to say in the presidential primary, the conservative lane, the progressive lane? Well, how can a voter who isn't a political science professor like you begin to sort this out for themselves?

Christina: In some ways, it's both overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time. Sadly, so many voters can't really fully focus, Brian, on local elections just yet because we haven't gotten past January 20th, and especially for voters of color, knowing what the President has said, the types of people he supported, his members of his own party essentially trying to actively create a coup within American democracy. It's a very unsettling political moment. A lot of folks can't really focus fully on a local election until there is a peaceful transition of power which quite honestly is not guaranteed at this moment.

Once we get past January 20th at say 2:00 PM, then I think that there's a sigh of relief and we can start looking at, well, who were the millionaires who were waking up in the morning saying, "I should be a leader." That's one bucket. Who were the folks who were currently unemployed and need a job? "Hey, I should run for mayor too." That's another bucket. Who were the progressive folks who have interesting ideas for New York and some sort of managerial experience, but no previous electoral experience? That's another bucket.

Then you have the politicians who've been elected to office once or quite a few times, and they want to expand that leadership style in a city that might be looking for something totally different. We have minimum four buckets. Obviously, there's descriptive politics. Some people think it's about time that New York City has female leadership, some people want to make sure that there's leadership of color, whether it's another black mayor, post-Dinkins, or if we should have someone from the Latinx community. There are lots of different angles.

Right now because it's so crowded, it's hard to even hear what people are actually saying but also, that's on the candidates because of rank choice voting, many people are reticent to attack their opponents. They're reticent to say any big bold ideas. It's a milk toast election. As of now, that's not garnering any attention from the vast majority of New Yorkers. We know that municipal elections in New York City have abysmal embarrassingly low turnout for someone who will not only be the leader of New York but a political figure on a national and even international scale.

Brian: Harry, I know-

Christina: Can I just-

Brian: Go ahead, Christina.

Christina: I just want to say something really quickly about Harry's point about 1993 moving forward with crime. I think we need to back up just four more years and think about the Dinkins years, what Mayor Dinkins was successful in trying to reimagine the police department in a more community policing way. We have to be honest about the amount of money we pay out as citizens for bad behavior of the NYPD, how bad officers are continuously protected, and in, I would say terrorize particular communities, and the fiscal implications of that bad behavior goes beyond just training.

It is a fundamental reimagining that mayoral candidates must talk about because there's something going on, not just in the top brass leadership, but there's some corrosion throughout particular departments in the city that needs to be rooted out in a real substantive way that we just have never seen before.

Brian: Well, since you brought all that up, let me go to another caller who I think wants to compare New York today, not to 1993 but to a different year in the city's past. Jim in the South Bronx. Jim, you're on WNYC with Christina Greer and Harry Siegel. Hi, Jim.

Jim: Hi, good morning. First thing, I moved into the South Bronx about the time Giuliani became mayor and he really clamped down hard on the crime that was rampant here when I first moved here. There was a building right around the corner here that was taken over by a crack gang. Giuliani sends the police in there, clears them out, and he forced the owner of the building to post the 24-hour guards there for like two years so they wouldn't come back and I have plenty of examples of that.

My main point was this. I was a kid in the 1970s when the fiscal crisis hit and that is what this moment is reminding me of. The big drop in population, I've read about rising crime, massive layoffs. I remember in classes when I was a kid in school, this gets thronged with students who had nowhere to sit because so many teachers had been laid off and sitting in the window sills and that sort of thing.

New York City's population is up at 800,000 in the 1970s. Here, it's already dropped like some 100,000 already here. I think 1975 might be a better analogy to where we are now rather than 1994 or 1993. I wonder what your guests might think about that, and I'll take my answer off the air. Thank you.

Brian: Jim, thank you very much. Before we get an answer on that, I want to throw one more caller on here, and then we're going to get a last response from each of you before we run out of time. Gregory in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, Gregory. Thank you so much for calling in.

Gregory: Hi, Brian. Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my call. Listen, I've always touted the 28th precinct. It's funny that he mentioned the '70s, the last caller because the 28th was really a bad place at that time and it has turned to be into one of the great precincts. I wonder if the thing that they're doing here can't be shipped around to the rest of the city. My initial question to your screener was, does anybody know what the numbers are around the city concerning all this massive crime that I'm not seeing in my own neighborhood?

Brian: In Harlem, that's very interesting. I happen to have a Wall Street Journal article here from yesterday that singles out eight low-income neighborhoods including six in Brooklyn and two in the Bronx that have the highest number of shootings of any neighborhoods in the city according to the analysis and Harlem is not on that list. Christina, let me give you a last shot at these last two callers. Then, Harry, I'm going to ask you a last question about one of the mayoral candidates who you took a shot at in your Daily News column yesterday but Christina, you're first.

Christina: For the first caller, I definitely think that the fiscal crisis is real. I would suggest he pick up professor Esther Fuchs's book, Mayors and Money where she details, the 1970s fiscal crisis and I think that there are some really substantive parallels. As far as crime in the cities, some of us don't necessarily feel it, but those who do, it's quite damaging emotionally, economically, and in other ways. I think if we see ourselves as a collective New York, we have to recognize that even if it doesn't hit us personally, we should still be concerned and aware of what's happening.

Brian: Harry, not to bias voters for or against any candidate, but I thought it was interesting that you took a little shot in your new column yesterday at Andrew Yang saying he has no apparent qualifications to be mayor or apparent rationale for running. Why do you think he is considering running?

Harry: He has [unintelligible 00:28:02] recognition from running for president. He has the Bloomberg-related people who have been working with the business community and frantically trying to find someone outside of the Democratic regulars lined up behind him, and I'm not sure he has anything better to do with this time. I just think at a moment when we're looking at many billions of dollars of deficit in debt, and huge holes to be filled with all the rest of this uncertainty, that somebody who seems fundamentally unqualified and whose main credential, by the way, is this UBI idea, Universal Basic Income, that just doesn't relate to the actual governance of the city or the money the city has.

There's something very obnoxious and entitled about that run that he's going to have to really explain and justify. I know that his bet is this is all happening virtually, there is no in-person campaigning, it's an incredibly weird year and a crowded field. Somebody has to win, so why not. I think the challenges we're facing are just way too big for that glib or opportunistic rationale.

I'm concerned that in this crowded field, people like that running can lead to all sorts of weird bank shots in terms of who actually wins and becomes mayor. I think it's a very strange and disruptive role to play. I'd love to hear from Andrew. I hope you'll talk to him, I hope we will, and he can explain why that's wrong. That's my read at this point. I don't see anything about his resume or his ideas that indicates he should be running for mayor at this moment.

Brian: We didn't even get in this segment, and we'll have to do it in the future with the two of you as well as with other guests. The new rank choice voting system that will make its mayoral race debut in this election, it could be-- You talked about political bank shots, it could be that the person who gets the most first-place votes doesn't actually win the mayoral primary in June, but a lot more to come on that.

We thank Daily News columnist Harry Siegel and Christina Greer, Fordham University political science professor, politics editor at TheGrio, author of the book Black Ethnics, and together, Harry and Christina co-host the podcast called FAQ NYC. Thank you for answering so many of our questions today. Thanks, both of you. Happy New Year.

Christina: Thanks, Brian. Happy New Year.

 

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