Op-ed: Making New York safer
When I came to office, I inherited a city with many crises, including increasing crime. And my top priority has always been public safety. From day one, I got to work with the police commissioner, our deputy mayor and our team to make our streets and subways safer.
And our public safety strategy is working. New York City is getting safer. 2022 ended with crime trending downward in New York City. In December, we saw major crimes go down by 11.6 percent and in the fourth quarter of 2022, overall index crime dropped by 1.5 percent.
Last month, we saw murders, shootings, robberies, burglaries, grand larcenies, and hate crimes all going down. Our efforts — including taking 7,100 firearms and more than 400 ghost guns off our streets — are bringing gun violence down. What these numbers tell us is that we are turning the corner on crime in this city. And the results speak for themselves. New York City is back.
You can see it and feel it across the five boroughs. Tourism is back at a roaring pace and subway ridership is at its highest since the pandemic started.
Broadway attendance is at its highest since before the pandemic and our hotel occupancy is the highest amongst the top 25 markets. New Yorkers and visitors are flocking back to our city, with more than 62 million visitors expected to visit this year.
Our city is well and truly back. But there is much more work to be done. We will not surrender to crime and violence in our city. We are going to make sure that these crime numbers continue to trend in the right direction. We are going to double down and continue to get ghost guns and illegal guns off our streets. We are going to protect our subways and transit stations with our police officers patrolling subway platforms and trains each day.
And we are going to continue to invest in prevention through our Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, Crisis Management System, and our youth programs like Saturday Night Lights and the Summer Youth Employment program. We know that these programs work and that they keep our kids safe and away from gun violence. This is a major task to undertake, but our city is ready.
And we are making progress. Safe communities are something that all New Yorkers deserve, and across all five boroughs we are building a city that is safe for everyone. A city that ensures working people have decent jobs, good health care, a roof over their heads, clean streets, and good schools. Public safety is the prerequisite to prosperity. Together, we are making sure that, in 2023, New York City remains the safest big city in America.
