By Noah Rothman
Thursday, December 26, 2024
New York City officials love to tout the overall decrease
in citywide crime rates. Occasionally, NYC-based media
outlets will even chin-scratch ruefully over why residents still don’t “feel safe” despite these data. Crime may be down, but New
Yorkers’ anxieties are understandable when the crime that persists involves
random strangers slitting your throat and setting you on fire.
In what the city’s police commissioner described as “one
of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit against another
human being,” an illegal migrant from Guatemala, who was deported at least
once, set a woman ablaze on a subway car. Although the attack occurred at peak
commuting hours, the target of the attack became engulfed and later died from
burns and smoke inhalation. “Critics blasted bystanders and an NYPD officer who
were filmed watching idly as the woman, engulfed in flames, writhed in pain
before collapsing,” the New York Post reported.
In a separate attack on one of the city’s subway
platforms, one 26-year-old woman described being “sucker punched” in the back
of the head before her assailant cut her throat. “Witnesses to the stabbing,
many of whom appeared to be tourists ‘just froze,’” the Post report
added. The victim didn’t attempt to disguise her disappointment with her fellow
New Yorkers. “No one called 911,” she told the Post. “I was on the phone
with my neighbor when it happened, and she called 911.”
How we got to this lamentable place is
no mystery. The malicious and blessedly failed prosecution of Daniel Penny
for defending his fellow subway riders against a dangerous menace had precisely
its intended effect: to compel law-abiding New Yorkers to think twice before
they engage in selfless acts. Subway riders are already conditioned to make
themselves small and inconspicuous lest they invite the unwanted attention of
the roving mentally ill. Residents and commuters who are disinclined to risk a
potentially life-ruining encounter with city prosecutors have concluded, quite
rationally, that they are better off keeping their heads down.
There is no culture of heroism in New York City. That
protective impulse has been trained out of its citizens. Given the risks, those
who are still willing to intervene in potentially violent alterations do so
with irrational disregard for their own health, legal status, and even their
family’s financial prospects. Unsurprisingly, fewer New Yorkers are willing to
take those risks.
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