Major crimes in New York City have skyrocketed 37% so far this year — driven by grand larcenies, auto thefts, burglaries and robberies, according to NYPD data.
Grand larceny has shot up 49% so far this year over last year as of Sunday — from 18,058 to 26,908. Auto theft has spiked by 46.2%, from 4,855 to 7,100.
Robbery is up 39.2%, from 6,530 to 9,091, and burglaries increased by 32.9%, from 6,251 to 8,305, the numbers show.
Felonious assault rose by 18.6% and rapes saw an 11% increase so far this year over 2021 .
“This is going to probably be a record year for increasing crime in New York City,” said Joseph Giacalone, a John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor and a former NYPD sergeant.
“You have a short-staffed NYPD and you still have policies that go against police work,” he said.
Giacalone called the huge increase in car thefts “something right out of the 1990s.”
Murders, meanwhile, were down 5.6% so far this year over the same period in 2021, from 252 to 238. The number of people shot fell by 7.3%, from 974 to 903, the data shows. Shooting incidents were down 10.3 % this year, 747 compared to 833.
Giacolone said that grim tally could change in an instant.
“Shootings were up big last week, they took a break this week,” Giacolone said. “That’s good news, but that could all change with one BBQ in Brooklyn.”
A Manhattan detective with two decades on the job agreed.
“There’s going to be a heat wave,” he said. “The shootings will get worse. We don’t have enough manpower to compete with all the crime that’s going on.”
Transit crime was also soaring, the police figures show.
The six major crime categories were up 55.5% in transit so far in 2022 with 1,244 crimes as compared to 800 in the same period of 2021, the data show.
The spike was led by a 250% jump in rapes from two at this point last year and seven so far in 2022.
There was also a 47.7% increase in robberies from 222 to 328 and a 96.3% increase in grand larcenies from 298 to 585, the figures show. Felonious assault increased 17.5% from 269 to 316.
