"After likely the final crime statistics announcement under this administration, as we look ahead to the next, it is critical to acknowledge both the successes and failures of the city’s public safety strategies.
"Despite the effectiveness of new approaches that I and others pushed for which helped make New York City the safest it had been in decades through 2019, this administration's failure to more fully integrate and structuralize some of these successful approaches contributed to crime in our city rising with the national tide that accompanied a global pandemic.
"If this administration had not been so reluctant to fully embrace the innovative, and comprehensive approaches to public safety that were called for, New York would likely be a safer city today and better prepared for the future.
"While we should look to and learn from the past, we can’t simply go back – not to the way some things were pre-pandemic, and not to the over policing, or the hyper-focus on policing that harmed communities and detracted from more comprehensive public safety policies. Instead, we need to more firmly integrate holistic, community-centered strategies into our overall approach to public safety – not as supplements, but essential elements.
"In looking at the current statistics and environment, we have to ignore the voices that decry any attempts at progress or reform, regardless of the results. The surest way to bring back the bad old days is to revert to the reactionary. To play on fears and slogans rather than forward-looking solutions. In defining the future for New York, we cannot go back to the mindsets of the past."
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