This Week's Stories
GG's quick takes on recent NYC news


Week of 3 December 2001:

Crime Surge, II
Officials continue to question whether crime is really on the rise, though there have been an unusually high 18 homicides recorded citywide in the past week, bringing the total for the year so far to 599 (there were a total of 673 murders in the city last year). And, according to police department statistics, shootings increased more than 40 percent last month. Nevertheless, the police department is taking action. The incoming police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, announced yesterday that more police officers who had been assigned to "strategic posts" after September 11th to guard against further terrorist attacks would be shifted back to their normal duties, or redeployed to areas where crime is on the upswing. He also ordered all narcotics officers to work six-day weeks. The most important potential terrorist targets, Kelly said, "are still going to be covered, but probably with fewer people."

The new administration will also continue the policy of cracking down on quality-of-life crimes, Kelly said, with Mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg at his side. "Squeegee people, panhandlers, the selling of bogus items, all those things," he said, "we're very much going to stay on top of that."

Day Of Infamy
At 11:30 a.m. today there will be a wreath-tossing ceremony on the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum to commemorate the attack on Pearl Harbor, which occurred 60 years ago today, on December 7, 1941, a day that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said would live in infamy. Comparisons with this year's terrorist attacks are perhaps inevitable, especially, as the Daily News reports today, among those who witnessed both. But the analogy is not a perfect one, as many commentators have pointed out, such as John Wydra on "Bloomberg Politically Speaking." At the first City Council meeting to be held in City Hall after this year's attacks, Speaker Peter Vallone predicted that December 7, 1941 will now be replaced by September 11, 2001. He said this, awkwardly, during a ceremony in which he accepted a check for $10 million to help in New York City's recovery efforts from officials of the government of Japan. Back to the Stadiums
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani still hopes New York will build new stadiums for the Mets and Yankees, despite the multibillion dollar budget gap facing the city. The mayor says talks have resumed with the baseball teams about constructing two retractable-dome stadiums, at a cost of about $700 million to $800 million apiece.

Construction would be financed through the sale of municipal bonds and, in a bow to the post September 11 reality, the teams would reportedly pay more than half the debt service on these bonds. Giuliani calls the proposal "a very good economic deal" that has gotten even better since the World Trade Center disaster. Supporters say the stadiums would provide jobs, spur the ailing economy and boost New York's chances to land the 2012 Olympics.

But obstacles remain. Neither team would comment on the proposal, and the plan would require the approval of Mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg, whose spokesperson was noncommittal. The First Cuts
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani released his plan for reducing $766 million from this year's budget including cuts to city agencies, schools, libraries and programs for the elderly and children. The City Council must vote on the proposal as a whole, but were not given an opportunity to negotiate with the Mayor's office. The Administration for Children's Services would have to absorb a $71 million loss to a program to expand its child care program. The Department for the Aging would face a $16 million cut, including the elimination of a $3.5 million program to place social workers in centers for the elderly. The Board of Education, which faces a 1 percent cut in its total budget, is planning to reduce the student-teacher ratio, cut $2 million in school safety, and eliminate $20 in school building maintenance costs.

Speaker Debate
The recently elected City Council, which includes 38 new members, must elect their own Speaker of the City Council on their first day in office in January. In the past, the negotiations and campaigning for Speaker occurred behind closed doors. Tonight, a group of newly elected members is sponsoring a public debate for the seven council members vying for the position.

$92.60 A Vote
Michael R. Bloomberg spent nearly $70 million from his personal fortune on his successful campaign for mayor of New York City, the most money for any race in American history other than for president of the United States. (See details in Transition Trail)

Kelly II
When Raymond Kelly returns as police commissioner on January 1st, he faces stiff tests, writes Kevin Flynn in The New York Times: "The threat of terrorism has so expanded the department's responsibilities that overtime could hit $1.7 billion this fiscal year, an amount equal to the entire police budget for 1993, when Mr. Kelly was last commissioner. In addition, an economic downturn threatens to sap the tax revenue that financed the department's recent expansion and to complicate labor negotiations with a police force that believes it is woefully underpaid. And the department's manpower is dwindling, even as its duties grow. A total of 2,099 officers have retired so far this year, about 5 percent of the force and an 87 percent increase over retirements for the same period a year ago. Even the department's success at crimefighting, which has gleamed like a polished badge for much of the last decade, is showing tarnish in spots. Crime for the year remains down, but shootings and murders have risen by double-digit percentages over the last month, and homeless people and squeegee men appear to have returned to some city streets and intersections." And the surge in crime continues, according to the Daily News.

On the other hand, Julia Vitullo-Martin writes in Gotham Gazette, "by just about any criterion, Ray Kelly is almost surely the best-qualified police commissioner in New York City history." Will he be the great police commissioner the times demand? Vitullo-Martin looks at his track record for the answer.

Redevelopers
There were ten murders in New York City over the weekend, six within 24 hours. None have resulted as of yet in arrests. Added to last week's report that murders in a one-month period had risen 25 percent over the same period last year, some are saying that the city is experiencing a crime surge. Before the weekend spree, Mayor Rudy Giuliani said on Friday there was no such surge - that the reason for the statistical increase is that the number of murders in November, 2000 had been abnormally low. All categories of crime, other than murder, are down 11.5 percent since September 11, he said. When he leaves office at the end of this month, he promised, the year-end figures will show "this will be one of our best years."

Backlash
There are as many as 600,000 undocumented immigrant workers in New York City, and businesses have mostly welcomed them. "Some economists think illegal immigration is the reason the city had one of the country's lowest rates of wage inflation during the 1990's," according to Crain's New York Business. But since the terrorist attacks of September 11, Stephen Gandel reports, the debate has shifted from economics to security. There is a growing backlash against all immigrants, with a rise in hate crimes, and legislative efforts "to restrict some kinds of immigration or track people more closely when they're here." New York colleges for example are now required to report those foreign students who are not attending classes to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Most starkly, law enforcement agencies have been rounding up hundreds of foreigners, mostly Muslims, in New York and put in them in detention, ostensibly for minor violations of immigration laws. For this story and for how immigrant communities themselves view what is going on after 9/11, see some dozen articles collected mostly from the ethnic press, in the second edition of Gotham Gazette's The Citizen

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