According to a recent report, robberies are on the rise in New York.
Although numbers have fluctuated over the past six years, there are now more robberies than in 2018, according to recent data from the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ).
Robbery, which the CCJ report defines as “theft or attempted theft involving the use of force or the threat of force,” appears to continue to be a problem in New York, despite an overall downward trend in several forms of crime nationally.
In January 2018, the price was still at 13.74 and rose to 17.18 by June 2024.
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There was a significant decline in 2020 when the number dropped to 7.96. However, this number was soon to rise again. By July 2022, the robbery rate in the city had increased to 21.03.
Jeffrey Fagan, a crime expert at Columbia Law School, suspects that the “double shock” of the COVID-19 pandemic and the response to the death of George Floyd in May 2020 may be behind this trend.
“The social and economic dislocations of these shocks have damaged the city. There was no sustained economic recovery, there were fiscal crises during these years as tax revenues declined, a housing crisis in the form of rents and evictions weakened the kind of social controls that had flourished in previous years, and despite police efforts, the flow of weapons was still strong even after the shocks.
“If you spend time in NYC, you’ll notice that downtown never recovered from COVID – empty storefronts and buildings are still common. Criminologists know that sustained economic activity not only affects the well-being of individuals, but also the ability of communities to regulate the street behavior of their residents,” Fagan added.
The interpretation of such crime statistics is not always easy.
“Robbery statistics are based on citizen reports,” said Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“A community may have a higher number of reported robberies because residents are more likely to trust the police and report crimes when they happen. Unreported crimes do not show up in police statistics, but that is not an indicator of public safety,” he added.
A spokesman for the New York Deputy Information Commissioner said Newsweek that the number of robberies decreased by 3.8 percent in July 2024 compared to July 2023 and that the number of serious crimes overall decreased by 4.2 percent in July compared to July 2023.
They also presented a statement from Police Commissioner Edward A. Caban, which said: “NYPD officers diligently patrol the many neighborhoods of our great city every day to deter and prevent criminal activity.”
“They do this because they have the support of the people we serve – New Yorkers who actively embrace the concept of public safety as a shared responsibility.”
Newsweek recently created a map of which states have the highest robbery rates, according to the CCJ report. New York was not in the top ten, but Baltimore came in first by a clear margin with a rate of 67.05 per 100,000 residents.
In comparison, Minneapolis was in second place with odds of 34.11.
Newsweek has also created a map of which states have the most gun deaths and which states have the strictest gun laws.
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Update, 8/22/24, 8:03 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from DCPI.
