It’s tempting for New York City to greet last week’s Sixth Avenue killing of UnitedHealthcare chief Brian Thompson with macabre relief: It’s never good to have someone fatally shot in the street, but at least this crime wasn’t yet another “random” attack.
The poor guy, whether for a personal, business, or ideological reason, could have been targeted anywhere.
Wrong: Put in context, it’s yet another blow for a fragile Gotham.
Yes, New York, as a high-profile global magnet for superstars and business and political leaders, has always had more than its fair share of assassinations: John Lennon, Meir Kahane.
But each such incident must be seen in its context. Is a particular assassination just another bullet point of lawlessness in a dangerous, unpleasant city, or is it an aberration in an otherwise safe, pleasant city?
When Lennon was killed, in 1980, Gotham had 1,814 murders; as for broader felonies, The New York Times called it the “the worst year of crime in New York City history.”
In 1990, when Kahane was killed, the city had gotten even worse: 527,257 felonies, including 2,262 murders. Nobody was safe, so why should important people be any different?
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
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Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here. Nicole is the author of Movement: New York’s Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Car, available now.
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