Joe Lhota is warning against a backslide to the bad old days of 20 years ago, when the city was wracked with crime, chaos and other woes. The GOP mayoral hopeful fears younger folks might not remember that ugly period — to their peril.
Alas, a long memory isn’t needed: This week, the city got a fresh taste of those terrible times. Hoodlums went on a rampage in East Flatbush, looting, trashing stores — and reviving fears of erstwhile lawlessness.
Shopkeepers shut down early Tuesday for fear of violence, as a Post photo of Church Avenue vividly showed. Police were out in force last night and made a number of arrests.
“This is terrifying,” said a woman whose family closed K&S Fruit. Another shopkeeper who quit early cited tens of thousands of dollars in damages from Monday night’s mayhem.
The incident that sparked the turmoil was also reminiscent of pre-Giuliani-Bloomberg days: Cops fatally shot a 16-year-old black youth, Kimani Gray — a Bloods gang member with a notable rap sheet. Police say they opened fire when Gray pointed a .38-caliber revolver at them.
It’s precisely what Lhota’s been warning about: “Many of you don’t look old enough to remember what the city was like 20 years ago,” he told a young crowd last weekend. The drop in crime and the improvements in the quality of life since then “have been nothing short of spectacular.”
Indeed, Rudy Giuliani became mayor in 1994 after one of the worst riots in the city in years: Crown Heights. Murders peaked in 1990, at 2,245. Since then, New York’s become calmer — and last year’s 419 killings set a modern-era low for the city.
The changes were no accident, and in the wrong hands, Lhota says, the city may well see a spike in violence: Anyone who thinks the gains are “permanent,” he says, “isn’t being serious.”
The sad irony is that it won’t be Manhattan’s white liberals who will suffer most if crime surges anew. As the looting in East Flatbush should remind us, it will be poor and minority neighborhoods that take the brunt of it, even as their “champions” — e.g., City Councilmen Ydanis Rodriguez and Jumaane Williams, who oppose police stops — push to handcuff cops.
Folks too young to have experienced how dangerous and unlivable crime once made New York should hope they never do.