It’s the day after Labor Day, the official unofficial end of summer and here’s to hoping we can all say goodbye to the crime surge New York has been experiencing along with the hot temperatures. NYPD crime statistics show that crime rates for the summer months of June, July, and August of 2022 have hit record highs.
The New York Post writes, in an exclusive report, that of last week, the rate of serious crimes was up 35.6% over 2021, with robberies, burglaries, grand larcenies and auto thefts rising between 32.6% and 46.6% each.
The numbers were distressing enough that New York City Mayor Eric Adams tried in late July tried to call in vain for a special session of the state Legislature to address his repeated requests for a rollback of the controversial 2019 bail-reform law.
A rise in gang-related shootings and neighborhood disputes have injured and killed innocent bystanders caught in the cross-fire. A basketball game in The Bronx erupted in gunfire when a dispute between players led one man to pull out a handgun and open fire around 8 p.m. July 11.As terrified people scrambled for cover inside the Arcilla Playground — just blocks from Yankee Stadium — stray bullets struck two 17-year-old girls at a cookout near the court.
A developing story that The Jewish Voice has been covering is the prevalence of the sucker punch game where people randomly run up to strangers to viciously punch them, usually in the head. A man was sucker-punched into a coma during a random, unprovoked sneak attack in The Bronx that left him with a skull fracture, bleeding in the brain and a broken cheekbone around 10:45 p.m. Aug. 12. Jesus Cortes, 52, was standing outside the Fuego Tipico Restaurant, minding his own business, when a surveillance camera allegedly recorded convicted sex offender Van Phu Bui, 55, as he pulled on work gloves and decked Flores from behind with a vicious roundhouse punch to the head.
Subway system delays may be improving but the chaos caused by criminals is not. One subway rider got stabbed in the gut Aug. 22 when he tried to stop an aggressive panhandler from harassing passengers on a B train as it barreled through Midtown Manhattan.
“I just told him, ‘Leave me alone, like just back off,’” Fuentes said from his bed at Weill Cornell Hospital Center in Manhattan later that day.
“He just became aggressive and that’s when I had to defend myself.”
Fuentes, a food deliveryman who lives in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, said the fight “got ugly” but he didn’t realize he’d been stabbed until he got off the train at the 47th-50th Streets/Rockefeller Center station and saw his T-shirt was soaked with blood.
