![]() Statistically, the Big Apple is safer than small-town America, and its per-capita murder rate was at the bottom of the list of big cities in early 2022. So why do people keep asking me if I’m safe here? Last week, I found myself assuring a kind older gentleman in town from Boston - where violent crime has been creeping up after pandemic lows - that he was almost certainly perfectly fine walking around the swanky restaurant-laden blocks near Times Square. By the official crime numbers, the most dangerous year that I’ve lived in New York City was the first one - by a lot. The “non-major” felony data has followed a similar arc, dropping almost 30 percent since 2005. By 2017, it was around 96,000, where it stayed until last year, when it snuck back over 100,000, mostly due to an increase in grand larcenies, auto and otherwise. The next year, that number dropped, and it kept dropping. ![]() In 2005, the year I moved to New York City, the NYPD recorded 135,475 crimes in the seven “major felony” categories - homicides, assaults, rapes, and various forms of theft. ![]()
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