Several well-publicized acts of violence by migrants in New York have unsettled some city leaders, but police statistics do not point toward a surge in crime.
Flipping between those sources shows some different things.
The sum of crimes from all 7 categories does show a negligible increase from 2022 (126,589) to 2023 (126,786) but it doesn’t tell the whole story, for that you have to look at the individual categories where Murder, Rape, and Robbery were down small amounts but Felony Assault, Grand Larceny, and Grand Larceny Auto were all up and in some cases the increase was significant.
Comparing 2023 to 2024 we see that Robbery and Felony Assault are up and that’s a problem because those two categories represent literally thousands of crimes of the type that your average NYC dweller is likely to experience.
So is the statement “But police data indicate that there has been no surge in crime since April 2022,…” accurate? That depends entirely on what part of the data you’re looking at. Bottom line number? No. Individual categories that impact tens of thousands of people? Yes.
As an aside where you REALLY start to see the problem is if you compare the 2023 data to the 2019 data because holy shit! Aggregate Felony Crime is up 30% since 2019; 95,606 in 2019 vs 126,786 in 2023!
There’s no way around it, NYC has absolutely gotten more dangerous when compared to its pre-pandemic self. That doesn’t mean its the result of Migrants but since the migrant wave and the crime surge happened at basically the same time as the end of pandemic it’s really easy to say that they’re related and its really difficult to refute since NYC doesn’t gather Citizenship status.
Figures are preliminary and subject to further analysis and revision
Also, from the article,
More than 170,000 migrants have arrived in the city since [April 2022, when Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas started sending buses of migrants to New York], and it is difficult to know what crime statistics would show had they not come. But as the migrant numbers have increased, the overall crime rate has stayed flat. And, in fact, many major categories of crime — including rape, murder and shootings — have decreased, according to an analysis of the New York Police Department’s month-by-month statistics since April 2022.
The monthly number of robberies since migrants began arriving in large numbers has fluctuated. It peaked at 1,730 in July 2022, hit a low of 1,155 in February 2023 and climbed to 1,417 last month.
Grand larcenies have also gone up and down, but the monthly total stood at 4,056 in January, compared with a high of 4,687 in August 2022.
Crime might be up since 2019, but it doesn’t look like it is since spring of 2022 when bussing started. Everything appears to have either gone steadily down or just gone up and down a little bit month to month, but there’s no sustained increases that correlate with migrants arriving.
It’s the only data publicly available so any defects would effect the NYT article as well as my comment. I’m making a good faith effort to explore their conclusion, this isn’t meant to be a “Migrants Bad” comment.
Crime might be up since 2019
There is no “might”. A straight comparison of all 7 categories from 2019 through 2022 shows a MARKED increase. This isn’t even debatable.
…but it doesn’t look like it is since spring of 2022 when bussing started.
The question I have ATM is where can I find a month by month breakdown for 2022, because that will show us when the crime increase actually started and allow us to judge that timing against migrant arrival, and then the same thing for all of 2023 so we can do a direct MtM comparison between the two.
Right now if I had to guess I’d say that much of the 2022 and 2023 crime increase was actually driven by post-pandemic socioeconomic conditions, it just so happens that the the migrant wave happened at the same time making it easy to conflate the two. However the data that’s easily available from CompStat doesn’t have sufficient resolution to tell for sure.
Looking at they NYC Crime Statistics the headline is…subjective.
Here’s the “7 Major Felony Offenses” data from 2001 through 2022.
Here’s the most current CompStat data for 2024 and it includes 2023 for reference.
Flipping between those sources shows some different things.
The sum of crimes from all 7 categories does show a negligible increase from 2022 (126,589) to 2023 (126,786) but it doesn’t tell the whole story, for that you have to look at the individual categories where Murder, Rape, and Robbery were down small amounts but Felony Assault, Grand Larceny, and Grand Larceny Auto were all up and in some cases the increase was significant.
Comparing 2023 to 2024 we see that Robbery and Felony Assault are up and that’s a problem because those two categories represent literally thousands of crimes of the type that your average NYC dweller is likely to experience.
So is the statement “But police data indicate that there has been no surge in crime since April 2022,…” accurate? That depends entirely on what part of the data you’re looking at. Bottom line number? No. Individual categories that impact tens of thousands of people? Yes.
As an aside where you REALLY start to see the problem is if you compare the 2023 data to the 2019 data because holy shit! Aggregate Felony Crime is up 30% since 2019; 95,606 in 2019 vs 126,786 in 2023!
There’s no way around it, NYC has absolutely gotten more dangerous when compared to its pre-pandemic self. That doesn’t mean its the result of Migrants but since the migrant wave and the crime surge happened at basically the same time as the end of pandemic it’s really easy to say that they’re related and its really difficult to refute since NYC doesn’t gather Citizenship status.
Important footnote on that 2023-24 data
Also, from the article,
Crime might be up since 2019, but it doesn’t look like it is since spring of 2022 when bussing started. Everything appears to have either gone steadily down or just gone up and down a little bit month to month, but there’s no sustained increases that correlate with migrants arriving.
It’s the only data publicly available so any defects would effect the NYT article as well as my comment. I’m making a good faith effort to explore their conclusion, this isn’t meant to be a “Migrants Bad” comment.
There is no “might”. A straight comparison of all 7 categories from 2019 through 2022 shows a MARKED increase. This isn’t even debatable.
You can clearly see by comparing the 2021 and 2022 columns in my first link that crime took a BIG jump in 2022. Then in 2023 we have two big changes in a span of just 45 days; in February NYC removed many of its COVID restrictions and then barely 6 weeks later in April the Migrants started show up by the literal bus load..
The question I have ATM is where can I find a month by month breakdown for 2022, because that will show us when the crime increase actually started and allow us to judge that timing against migrant arrival, and then the same thing for all of 2023 so we can do a direct MtM comparison between the two.
Right now if I had to guess I’d say that much of the 2022 and 2023 crime increase was actually driven by post-pandemic socioeconomic conditions, it just so happens that the the migrant wave happened at the same time making it easy to conflate the two. However the data that’s easily available from CompStat doesn’t have sufficient resolution to tell for sure.