It’s tempting for New York City to greet last week’s Sixth Avenue killing of UnitedHealthcare chief Brian Thompson with macabre relief: It’s never good to have someone fatally shot on the street, but at least this crime wasn’t yet another “random” attack.
The poor guy, whether for a personal, business or ideological reason, could have been targeted anywhere.
Wrong: Put in context, it’s yet another blow for a fragile Gotham.
Yes, New York, as a high-profile global magnet for superstars and business and political leaders, has always had more than its fair share of assassinations: John Lennon, Meir Kahane.
But each such incident must be seen in its context. Is a particular assassination just another bullet point of lawlessness in a dangerous, unpleasant city, or is it an aberration in an otherwise safe, pleasant city?
When Lennon was killed, in 1980, Gotham had 1,814 murders; as for broader felonies, the New York Times called it “the worst year of crime in New York City history.”
In 1990, when Kahane was killed, the city had gotten even worse: 527,257 felonies, including 2,262 murders. Nobody was safe, so why should important people be any different?
After 1990, crime, including murder, steadily fell until 2019.
Now, Thompson’s sidewalk murder in the heart of Midtown punctuates nearly five years of rising crime and disorder.
After nearly three decades of sure decline, murder rose 53% between 2019 and 2021, the highest such rise in such a short time on record. Murder is still 14% above 2019 levels, and there’s no sign we’ll get back there anytime soon. Felonies are 30% higher than in 2019.
And random chaos reigns: Thompson’s killing came barely two weeks after Ramon Rivera, sprung on no-bail supervised release on a recent theft charge, after having just served a months-long sentence in Rikers for repeat thefts and burglaries, stabbed three stangers to death across core Manhattan.
And Thompson’s killing came the day before one teenage migrant fatally stabbed another, also in core Manhattan — a five-minute walk from City Hall Park, a place generally teeming with armed officers.
