Notes from the Passing New York Scene

Being as we are all decent people, we have remained optimistic that New York’s new mayor, Eric Adams, would tamp down the city’s crime problem. Surely, he cannot be worse than his predecessor. 

Then again, New York’s new District Attorney, Alvin Bragg appears to be yet another leftist pro-crime and pro-criminal prosecutors. The media might not have been paying attention when Bragg declared that he would put strict limits on what he would prosecute, but the criminals certainly were. 

Worse yet, when apprised of the dangers lurking in  his policy, the cerebrally limited Bragg seemed not to understand. The example of George Gascon in Los Angeles, of Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, of Kim Foxx in Chicago and of Larry Kasner in Philadelphia did not register. Being soft on crime and going easy on criminal produces more crime. It does not take a triple digit IQ to figure it out. Apparently, our blue city public prosecutors have all missed the lesson.

One day it might befall New York’s new governor, Kathy Hochul, to intervene, but apparently that day has apparently not yet arrived. 

So, here is the record from the crime blotter, reported by The New York Post. Apparently, New York’s newspaper of record does not consider the news fit to print. The statistics come to us from the police department:

Crime in the Big Apple continues to spike, with a nearly 60 percent hike in the past week alone compared to the same period last year — even amid frigid temps, according to NYPD figures released Monday.

“Near-zero temperatures can’t keep the criminals away,” a Bronx cop told The Post. “It will only get worse as it gets warmer.”

The biggest jump for the week ending Sunday came in reported car thefts, with 255 for the week compared to 118 in 2021 — an increase of more than 116 percent, the stats show.

Grand larceny soared by more than 93 percent, with 908 reports compared to 470 for the same week last year, and reported rapes jumped by nearly 67 percent, to 35 from 21 last year.

Transit crimes have also gone up over the past week, with 34 this year compared to 18 for the same period in 2021, a nearly 89 percent leap.

Since the start of the year, overall crime has gone up by nearly 42 percent in the five boroughs, according to the numbers.

Car thefts have gone up by more than 96 percent, grand larceny by nearly 62 percent, rapes by more than 35 percent, and robberies by nearly 35 percent over the same period last year, the statistics show.

The year-to-date numbers also show that transit crimes have increased to 227 compared to 130 over this time last year, a spike of nearly 75 percent.

The Post also takes a look of how things are in DA Bragg’s neighborhood, on West 125th St. The people, presumably those who voted for Bragg, are now afraid:

It’s been hell in Harlem — the backyard of accused soft-on-crime Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.

In the past few days alone, the storied neighborhood has seen a series of high-profile crimes, including an off-duty cop shot, a man pummeled and run over by a car in a brutal gang assault and a city transit bus full of passengers hit by a stray bullet in broad daylight.

And those crimes come on the heels of the shooting deaths of two young NYPD cops in Harlem late last month.

Crime is up nearly 30 percent so far this year in the area. And while the crime rate has risen even more in other city neighborhoods, Harlem residents are shaken to their core, given the recent spate of local crimes grabbing headlines.

“If I saw the DA in the street, I would slap him in the face, honestly,” said Mildred Serrano, 59, who lives in Manhattanville Houses, where off-duty cop Robert Manley was shot in the foot Saturday.

“Crime is just getting worse and worse and worse,” she lamented to The Post on Monday. “A lot of people with horrible charges, including gun crimes, don’t get incarcerated and are out roaming free again. They need to stop allowing repeat offenders back on the street.”

It goes on. The picture is bleak. Time will tell whether our new leaders can find the moral fortitude to do something about their constituents.

But, let’s look at the bright side of things. One recalls that Marie Antoinette, when faced with news about her subjects’ misery, caused by a lack of bread, pompously intoned: “Let them eat cake.” The French word was, brioche, which is not exactly cake, but, what can you do.

The New York version, pompously intoned by your nutritionist in chief, that would be Mayor Eric Adams, is: Let them eat plants. You see, Mayor Adams is a vegan. He believes that veganism, mixed with an occasional morsel of fish, has saved his life. Whether that makes plants something that everyone else should be eating is something else. Surely, it has not been proven.

And yet, now, thanks to our vegan mayor, schoolchildren in New York City public schools will suffer through plant-based Friday meals. Peas and carrots and lettuce and figs. There, that will do it.

As it happens, other school districts in other parts of the country have already tried this zany plan. The result has been clear. The children refuse to eat the plants and, as soon as they can, they run off to scarf down pizza and Big Macs.

Worse yet, is the old adage-- You are what  you eat. If you eat too many vegetables you are more likely to become a vegetable.

Anyway, given New York’s burgeoning crime problem, it’s not encouraging to see our public officials wasting their time trying to impose woke diets on children.