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New York City defeated in Bill de Blasio’s last year as mayor, even his costly initiatives proved disastrous as Hizzoner continued to focus on his public image with daily briefings on a pandemic, even though he acknowledged that the city was ready to set up the rear view, staggering new statistics.
The Mayor’s Management Report, released Friday evening and covering the period July 1, 2020 to June 30 of this year, reveals a fundamentally dangerous city due to police cuts and the inability to enforce laws already in place – the all against the backdrop of a sharp drop in school enrollment amid a push to end advanced classes for gifted children.
The revelations contained in the report, prepared by the town hall, include:
- Serious crime increased for the third year in a row
- The streets of the city – the Mayor’s No.1 priority under his key initiative, “Vision Zero”, are less safe as 275 people – including 133 pedestrians – have been killed in traffic accidents, a jump of 30% compared to the previous year and the most since 2014
- Meanwhile, the NYPD has only managed to stop 13 drivers for hitting pedestrians with their cars, despite recording nearly 1,800 of those crashes. And the number of speeding and non-compliance notices issued by cops has fallen by more than 27% and more than 63%, respectively.
- Despite the mayor’s frequent statements about the urgency of tackling climate change, the city has not added any new Select Bus Service kilometers in the past fiscal year – and the number of new cycle lanes was the lowest since 2016 .
De Blasio presides over the chaos, whose daily briefings, started amid the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, have often turned into side shows seemingly meant to strengthen his personal brand as he assesses his political future – au point to think about a race for governor next year.
Asked about the report during Thursday’s virtual city briefing, the mayor continued to blame the pandemic.
“Road deaths, for example, part of what we saw with crime, part of what we see in terms of the Department of Corrections, it’s all because COVID has triggered a whole series of things, “insisted Hizzoner.
“There are always other problems. I’m not trying to say COVID is the only problem. I am saying that the numbers that you will see in the report that are not at all satisfactory have, in many cases, a basis in the disruption of COVID. It doesn’t mean anything, but we have to keep working with all the tools we have to fix it.
This drew a reprimand from Councilor Bob Holden (D-Queens).
“COVID has been the mayor’s convenient excuse for his administration’s failures since the very beginning of the pandemic,” Holden told the Post. “And this was repeated by almost all of its staff and commissioners. Everything else is to blame for his poor management skills and bad decisions. He shouldn’t be looking any further than the mirror.
Here’s a look at where the report says the city is running out:
CRIMINALITY
While the number of serious crimes in the city increased only 0.6% from last year, some crimes were much more prevalent than others. There were 489 cases of murder and manslaughter without negligence in fiscal year 2021, a 38.9% increase from the same 12-month period last year.
Fiscal year 2021 was also a bad time to bring your car to town, as the number of major auto theft cases increased by 47.2%.
Subdivisions were found to be more dangerous than the rest of New York City, as major crime there increased by 10.9%. Meanwhile, the number of arrests for serious crimes fell 14.5% from the previous year.
The news was not all bad, as the number of reported rapes, thefts and major thefts fell from the previous year.
MEDIUM STREETS
The number of road fatalities in the city has skyrocketed in the past 12 months as 275 people – including 123 pedestrians – have been killed in crashes, a 30% increase from 211 traffic-related deaths reported during the same 12-month period in 2020 and the highest number of deaths on the city’s streets since 2014, when 285 people have died.
Despite the carnage, the number of summons issued by cops fell 57% from pre-pandemic levels.
The NYPD reported that it wrote only 298,377 violations of driving laws between July 1, 2020 and June 31, 2021, the twelve-month period covered by the report.
That’s just a fraction of the 696,012 police officers subpoenaed over the same period in 2019, when the Big Apple recorded just 218 traffic-related deaths.
Public transport advocates have used the massive drop in the app to press again on Albany state lawmakers to allow city officials to operate speed cameras and speed cameras 24 24 hours a day. Currently, they can only operate on weekdays between 6 am and 10 pm.
FIRES
The number of severe fires per 1,000 structural fires exceeded 70 for the first time since fiscal 2017, and some of these fires have been fatal.
In FY2021, 64 civilians died from injuries sustained in fires, a 20% increase from FY2020.
The FDNY also saw an increase in the total number of service-related injuries, with a 12% increase in firefighter injuries and a 15% increase in firefighter burns.
The report also finds that the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a several-month halt in mandatory fire inspections, with 26% fewer mandatory inspections and 62% fewer risk-based inspections compared to the previous year. ‘last year.
BEHIND BARS CHAHUT
The Corrections Department (DOC) section of the report shows the extent of the chaos unfolding on Rikers Island.
About 70 percent of current inmates are awaiting trial for a violent crime, and gang members now make up 23 percent of the prison population, up from 17 percent last year. Violent incidents in urban prisons have also increased from 80 per month last year to 98 this year, an increase of 23%.
The report attributes the violence to two of the mayor’s favorite croquemitaines – the pandemic and the pending state justice system.
DOC is trying to quell the chaos by dismantling gang members’ housing and cracking down on “serious violence” by inmates, but the understaffing is so severe that there are not enough police officers. correction to bring inmates to the infirmary. Visits to health clinics are down a whopping 68 percent from last year.
EDUCATION
Cradled by the controversial mandate and brutal exit of former Chancellor Richard Carranza and the ongoing upheavals of the coronavirus, the 2020-2021 school year has been marked by uncertainty. Many of the traditional measures used to assess the performance of the Department of Education – such as grades, school safety and attendance – have been skewed by the impact of the pandemic and have not been covered in The report.
The report noted that kindergarten enrollment fell by nearly 10,000 children last year, from 67,589 in 2020 to 58,469. Kindergarten enrollment has declined by 15% overall since 2017, but the trend has accelerated due to the pandemic.
The number of city children enrolled in special education fell for the first time in five years, from 305,429 to 295,623 last year, according to the report.
Perhaps the statistic that best reflects last year’s upheaval is the number of calls from families to school parent coordinators, which rose from 8,863 in 2020 to 12,800 last year – and a doubled since 2017.
MENTAL HEALTH NOT PROSPEROUS
The Office of Community Mental Health, formerly known as First Lady Chirlane McCray’s ThriveNYC initiative, has struggled to help some of New Yorkers most in need during the pandemic.
Two in-person training programs, mental health first aid and crisis response training, are still on hold due to COVID-19 security measures, even though city workers have been back in their offices for months .
The number of victims of crime providing emotional support services also fell from 49,000 in FY2020 to 39,000 in FY2021. Officials attribute the decline to the program’s shift from a face-to-face support for telephone counseling during the pandemic.
From this year, mental health services in high need schools will be managed by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health, not the Office of Community Mental Health. The report does not explain the change, but officials have moved programs out of the office in the past when they were not managed effectively.
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