At the last TV debate, Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota raised Bill de Blasio’s work in the administration of former mayor David Dinkins as a point of fear of what might be – bringing NYC back to the days of high crime. “Bill de Blasio served in the administration of David Dinkins and during that period of time we had 2,000 murders a year,” Lhota said, adding that Dinkins’ tenure was “the last time we had a race riot in the city of New York.”
Appearing Saturday night on WPIX11, Mr. Dinkins defended his administration, saying crime in the city actually began to fall well before Rudy Giuliani took over as Mayor.
“Crime started to go down as early as 1991,” said mayor Dinkins. “Crime has never decreased under any administration as it did with ours.”
Responding to Mr. Lhota’s claim that there were 2000 murders a year under his administration, Mr. Dinkins said, “Does anyone really believe that on December 31st, 1989 there was no crime in New York, just the next day – January 1st when I took office? Crime was there when my friend Ed Koch was there. And when we took office, we started our ‘safe street – safe city’ program and crime started to go down.”
“The man’ss desperate,” Mr. Dinkins said of Mr. Lhota’s controversial attack ad on Bill de Blasio.
Speaking in front of a Republican audience in Queens Thursday night, Mr. Lhota elaborated–in visceral detail–on his “true fear” of what will happen to the city if rival Bill de Blasio wins the mayor’s race.
“Somebody would smash your window and rip out the dashboard and take your radio and sell it for 25 bucks so they could get a quick hit of whatever their problem was,” Mr. Lhota warned. “I remember walking the streets and thinking I was walking on glass but I was walking on crack vials … It was an epidemic.”
To be fair, Mr. Dinkins claim that crime started to go down during his administration may be accurate. Though, truth must be said, crime was still extremely high when he left office in 1993. According to the NYPD’s Compstat, there were 1,927 murders, in NYC, in 1993 compared to 2,262 in 1990. Nonetheless, after 5 years of Rudy Giuliani as mayor, only 629 murder were reported in 1998. Robbery also dropped from 100,280 in 10990 and 85,892 when Mr. Dinkins left office, to 39,003 in 1998 and 27,873 when Mr. Giuliani left office.
(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)
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7 Responses
“Crime started to go down as early as 1991,”
Mr. Dinkins is so absolutely correct, because in in 1991 on the day after the Crown Heights Riots, of-course crime was way down from the day before.
Dinkins has a good sense of humor
Crime was on the rise during the 80’s and early 90’s due to the raging crack epidemic, not any Mayor. As crack use subsided, and jails filled up, crime went down. The man most responsible for the decrease in crime was the late Jack Maple who originated the COMPSTAT program.
Delusional is the only way to describe this report
Nebach…Dinkins could be suffering from dementia.
Dinkina had too much coffee
The only reason crime may have started to come down was because there was no one left to kill by the end of his term.