Op-Ed | Fighting for safer, cleaner streets

Last week, we celebrated Independence Day — an opportunity to reflect on the values that make the American Dream possible in our city. Public safety and livability are two such foundational commitments — allowing every New Yorker to pursue their dreams without fear for their safety and with a better quality of life.

I am proud to say that New York remains the safest big city in America — and continues to get safer every day.

As a result of our administration’s successful public safety strategy, New York City has seen six straight months of crime reduction. Overall crime continues to trend downward and is down year to date. Homicides are down double digits for the year, as well as for this quarter and for last month. Grand Larceny Auto is also down double digits. Shootings are down. And burglaries are down, too.

Our public transit system is the lifeblood of our city, so keeping New Yorkers safe on the subway is key to ensuring that New York remains the safest big city in America. That is why we surged more than 1,000 additional officers in the subway system in February and introduced additional technology, including cameras and data driven officer deployment. As a result, transit crime remains down for the year, and if you take out one of the pandemic years, we have reached the lowest level of transit crime in 14 years.

We know that community input is critical to improving public safety. That is why we are bringing partners from across the city together to find innovative approaches to reducing crime and improving quality of life. Last week, we announced the creation of our fifth quality of life improvement hub, located in Midtown Manhattan. These hubs bring together law enforcement, elected officials, and community and business leaders to address retail theft, substance use, the mental health crisis, beautification, illegal scaffolding, unlicensed cannabis shops, and more.

The coalition deploys teams to conduct regular walkthroughs where they observe issues in real time and speak with local community members and businesses on the ground. They also identify specific individuals in the area who may need connections to services, such as housing or medical care, and make referrals to the appropriate city agency or service provider.

Similar coalitions across the city are already at work making our neighborhoods safer and our streets cleaner. Our administration is committed to supporting their work and leading the way in the fight for cleaner streets and against rats. I have long been clear: I hate rats. And so do New Yorkers. That is why our administration has been ready to do whatever it takes to cut them off from their all-you-can-eat buffet. We have made enormous progress replacing black trash bags that have long cluttered our streets and fed rats.

This week, we announced the next step in our ‘Trash Revolution’ to get bags off our streets. Starting November 12th, buildings with one to nine residential units will be required to put their trash into wheelie trash bins for easy removal. And to make sure that cost is not a barrier for building owners, we had our own bins made. These bins are high-quality and affordable, with the most common size costing less than $50 — approximately three times cheaper than what you could expect to spend at a store.

For half a century, New York City’s most valuable and limited resource — our public space — has been hijacked by 14 billion pounds of stinky, leaking black trash bags every year. Together, we are changing that. Thanks to our administration’s efforts, as of November 12th, we will have containerized 70 percent of our city’s trash in just two years; that’s nearly 10 billion pounds of trash off our streets.

As part of the ‘Trash Revolution,’ we have changed set-out times for residential and commercial waste, so trash doesn’t sit on our streets for hours on end. We have designed a brand-new model of garbage truck years ahead of schedule. And we have a plan to get containerization done for every building and every business in New York City.

We came into office with the clear goal of improving public safety, rebuilding our economy, and making New York City more livable for all New Yorkers. We are making improvements that New Yorkers feel every day. And every step we take — whether it’s driving down crime or improving quality of life — is in service of creating a safer, more livable city for everyone.