SEATTLE - New York City is experiencing a decrease in violent crimes, but a subgroup, serious assaults, are on the rise. Felony assaults, which involve physical injuries severe enough to pose a significant risk of death or long-term disability have been on the rise since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
According to a report based on NYPD data and published by nonprofit Vital City, there has been a consistent increase of felony assaults since 2020. Researchers and academics argue that there could be numerous factors behind the trend, and that understanding it is a crucial step towards addressing it.
"[Felony assault is] not just getting punched – the legal definition requires a substantial risk of death or disfigurement," said Vital City founder Elizabeth Glazer. "[The victim] is expected to experience a long-term health problem, lose an organ – these are very serious offenses and yet you see them way up."
According to NYPD's CompStat website, more than 18,000 felony assaults have been reported so far this year. In that same timeframe, murder, burglary and shootings reported have all gone down. Last year, the number of felony assaults reached 28,000, the largest amount since the pandemic began.
In 2023, the city's rates of violent crime (murders, rapes, felony assaults and robberies), shootings and property crime (burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny of a motor vehicle) were all more than 20% higher than in 2019, making it the fourth year in a row in which violent crimes increased in New York City.
However, when compared to the rest of the country, NYC's crime rates still remain comparatively low. In 2022, the most recent year with data that is comparable across cities, New York City's murder rate (5.3 per 100,000) was nearly half of the next lowest rate among the next five largest cities (Los Angeles - 10.1 at 100,000).
New Yorkers are feeling less safe in this context. Last year, a survey conducted by Citizens Budget Commission showed that a large portion of city residents are more worried about safety in their communities than they were before the pandemic hit. Concretely, only 37% of citizens rated the public safety in their neighborhood as excellent or good, down from 50% in 2017.
Former President Donald Trump has continued to raise concerns about safety in the city, linking the recent crime wave with the influx of migrants. In a live interview with X owner Elon Musk earlier this week, Trump pointed to NYC as an area suffering due to what he labels as "migrant crime."
"I saw it today in New York, where somebody was knifed, where they raped the girlfriend of a man that stood there watching in New York in one of the shelters and started pulling out the knives," Trump said. "And bad things happen today, but this is happening every day."
But despite Trump's claims, Glazer, founder of the nonprofit Vital City, said that the migrant influx was not likely a factor in the increase in serious assaults. "The number of migrants [is] not sufficient to have driven the numbers up as much as they've gotten up," Glazer said, noting that most of the city's new migrants arrived after the upward trend in felony assaults had already started.
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