This question of whether cities, particularly New York, will feel the effects of this economic catastrophe in a spike in burglaries, muggings, and murder is being debated by academics and police chiefs across this great nation. With the fiscal crisis now truly in epic proportions with states, like California, needing loans to offset the red on their budgets, is making all wonder how this will affect all neighborhoods–good and bad. New York will need to trim an already slim budget, which, more than likely, means less police forces on the streets, something Los Angelenos know all too well.
I am beyond distressed to think about New York turning into another Los Angeles where police response to a 911 call averaged about an hour’s time, especially if they suspected there was no gunman holding you hostage. This was the city where a traffic accident, unless those requiring the services of EMS, meant the two parties were responsible for exchanging information with no policeman or woman to take down the report. It was a city where your home security company would, more than likely, arrive faster than the LAPD to any call for help.
New Yorkers are bracing for the upheavals that will likely come with the latest round of economic bad news. Areas in Brooklyn and the Bronx, all marginal during even the recent gentrification, will feel the schisms much sooner, but I suspect it won’t be long before it will soon reach the shores of lower Manhattan.
Predictors are for petty theft, like, shoplifting, purse snatching, will occur now with greater frequency. Whether homicide will rise or fall is the real unknown since so much of that is determined by a confluence of factors. A man in Los Angeles had just shot his entire family and himself after learning of his financial devastation. I can’t wonder if more stories of such despair won’t occur with greater frequency since even analysts, those cautious sages, are now using the D-word to describe our current economic state.
Whatever the future brings, which in the recent weeks has been a tsunami of worse and worse news, will surely bring changes to the glossy, Sex in the City-sheen of New York in the post-911 world. Artists, who had complained about the soul of New York being squeezed or decimated as another chain coffee shop replaced the neighborhood dive, should now feel a bit reassured. There is no ignoring the fact this city will change, but the big question will be how far the spiral will take us–a question each of asks as sirens race past you on another emergency call somewhere not far from the corner on which you are standing.
