NY Times Disses Giuliani on Plummeting Murder Rate

The murder rate in New York City this year is expected to be below 500 people for the first time since records were kept. That's an amazing statistic and it's because of one man and his policies.

Here's the NY Times version:

The homicide figure continues a remarkable slide since 1990, when New York recorded its greatest number of killings in a single year, 2,245, and when untold scores of the victims were killed in violence between strangers.

Homicides began falling in the early 1990s, when Raymond W. Kelly first served as police commissioner, and plummeted further under subsequent commissioners. Mr. Kelly returned to serve under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2002, the first year there were fewer than 600 homicides. There were 587 that year, down from 649 in the previous year.

OK, we have a downturn in murders starting after 1990 when there were six (whoa) per day. In the early nineties Ray Kelly was the Commissioner and then they jump ahead to 2002. Hmmm...I wonder who was Mayor from the 1994-2002. Wait a sec, it'll come to me...Oh yeah, Rudy Giuliani was.

The Times can't even give credit where it's due. They abhor Giuliani and even when a stat such as this is written about, they can't bring themselves to utter his name. Bloomberg continued the successful policies of Rudy and we now have gone from six murders per day down to 1.3, a huge percentage decrease. The Old Gray Lady should be touting this as an amazing feat and calling on other cities to adopt the policies that have allowed New York to become safer. Philadelphia, Detroit and Baltimore (all cities run by Democrats mind you) are all in the midst of surging murder rates. If this had occurred under the leadership of David Dinkins, there would be a statue of him on Times Square.

One other thing:

In the 412 killings this year, the number of people with previous arrests for narcotics was striking: 196 victims and 149 assailants. And 77 percent of the assailants had a previous arrest history, while 70 percent of the victims did, the statistics showed.

Killers and those killed are overwhelmingly male and most in both categories are between 18 and 40, according to the police analysis. In terms of race and ethnicity, whites make up 7 percent of victims and assailants, while 66 percent of the victims and 61 percent of the assailants are black and 26 percent of the victims and 31 percent of the assailants are Hispanic.

So let's see, according to the numbers above, an astounding 92% of victims were black or Hispanic while an equally startling number of 92% of the assailants were black or Hispanic. Blacks make up 28% of the population and all Hispanics 27%. While the Hispanic victim and assailant rates are mostly consistent with their numbers demographically, blacks represent more than twice the crime as their percentage of the population. These numbers should have everyone in the minority communities working hard to figure out how to stop the violence.

Here's an opposing view.