Police cordon in Queens after a fatal stabbing
Image: Picture Alliance
If you walk through New York or Los Angeles, you see a lot of poverty. Especially since the pandemic, many people have complained that they feel less safe. The statistics speak a different language.
ZTwo young men are lying in the New York subway, one appears to be sleeping, the other is muttering to himself. It's after midnight, neither of them is aggressive, but they have to leave the wagon anyway. At the “Broadway/Lafayette” stop, three police officers get on, two men and a woman wearing blue rubber gloves. They grab first one, then the other man by the hands and feet, carry them out and lay them on the platform. One of them comes to, starts gesticulating and arguing with the policewoman. Then the train moves on, the scene is out of sight.
This is nothing special for most passengers; hardly anyone looked up for longer. It is commonplace for homeless people to sleep in the New York subway, and sometimes for someone to become aggressive. The subway and streets are statistically safer here than in many other metropolises. And yet, since the pandemic, something has changed for many New Yorkers – and probably also for some visitors who are mainly in Midtown Manhattan. The numbers don't always reflect this – but reports of a “crime wave” in American cities are becoming popular again as the primary election campaign begins.
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