The streets of New York are meaner than they’ve been in more than 15 years thanks to soaring felony crimes, new police data reveal.
More than 170,000 felony crimes were reported in the Big Apple last year — the most since 2006, when the NYPD first started making such statistics publicly available.
The data, released last week, shows a record 172,852 felonies reported in 2022. That’s up 20.4% from 2021, when 143,522 complaints were recorded.
“Things in a large city aren’t supposed to grow that much or go down that much in one year,” said Former NYPD supervisor Chris Hermann, now an assistant professor at Manhattan’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“This is kind of like monumental kind of stuff,” he told The Post, “like once in a lifetime.”
Last year’s tally was driven by a surge in major crimes, as well as other felonies not detailed in the NYPD’s Compstat report, including criminal mischief, criminal contempt, strangulation and dangerous weapons possession.
It was even higher than 2006, the earliest year publicly available, which had 171,318 felony complaints recorded, the data shows.
The staggering figures highlight the struggles that remain for Mayor Eric Adams and his police administration, who focused much of their attention on tackling gun violence and subway crime last year.
While murders did drop significantly — which the NYPD attributed to a reduction in shootings — every other category of major crimes saw an increase, with 2022 ending with 126,588 serious offenses, a 22.4% jump from the year prior, the data shows.
It marked the first time the city topped 120,000 major crimes since 2007.
“The end-of-year numbers are horrible like you can’t get like there’s no way to get around that,” Hermann said.
Major crime continued to spike into the new year, with a 4.1% increase in complaints of the seven major felonies in January compared to the same time last year, according to NYPD statistics released earlier this month.
While not part of the NYPD compstat — which includes the most serious offenses, such as murder, robbery, burglary, grand larceny, car theft and rape — police experts warned other felonies should also be taken seriously.
Many seemingly minor crimes can often be a “prelude” to a more serious offenses, Hermann said.
“Criminal trespass is always a prelude to burglary, which can be a prelude [crime], which can quickly become a robbery which can then quickly become an assault,” he said.
“The misdemeanor assault becomes a felony assault becomes the domestic violence shooting, said Hermann, adding domestic violence historically according for a third of city homicides.
“There has always been an escalation of violence with regard to domestic violence. Those things you know, certainly do matter.”
Topping the list of non-major seven felonies that jumped last year was criminal mischief, with 13,006 recorded, up from 11,052 in 2021.
Criminal contempt, which is typically for flouting a judge’s order rose from 8,463 to 10,216. Dangerous weapons complaints, meanwhile, increased from 3,952 to 4,783.
Longtime New Yorkers agreed the Big Apple seems to only be getting more rotten with crime.
“Things are messed up, what else can you say?” a security guard from Brooklyn, who gave his name as Frank L., 58, told The Post on Sunday near the Lower Manhattan courthouses.
“I’ve lived here my entire life and it just continues to get worse.”
Michael Jack, a 37-year-old consultant from the Upper West Side said he just no longer feels safe.
“It makes me sad considering how much potential the city has, but it’s just going the wrong way, year-after-year, in terms of quality of life,” he said. “I’m often looking over my shoulder when walking down the streets regardless of the time of day.”
Criminals appear to be “more emboldened than ever,” Jack said, adding, “I feel like the police don’t have enough support to do their job properly.”
Adonis Rodriguez, an aspiring rapper born and raised in Brooklyn who works at a coffee shop in SoHo noted: “There’s a lot of bulls–t going on in the city.”
“Certain hours of the day I try not to be caught out,” he said, explaining he tried not be out “anytime” after midnight.
Adams, a former cop, and his police leadership have pointed the finger at recidivism for much of the increase in crime last year due to the state’s controversial 2019 reforms.
He vowed to vowed to boost funding to the city’s District Attorneys’ Offices and lobby Gov. Kathy Hochul for the same in his State of the City speech last month.
Hochul’s proposed budget provides $40 million in extra funding for more prosecutors and the same amount to help deal with the discovery burden that has led to an increase in criminal case dismissals under the criminal justice reforms.
Asked about the new data at the Lunar New Year parade in Chinatown, Hochul told The Post she’s working with the mayor to bring the numbers down.
“I’m working very hard with the mayor in partnership to bring our resources to help keep crime down so people do feel safe whether you’re a business owner, someone walking the streets or one of our commuters,” she said. “Everybody deserves to feel safe and that’s my top priority.”
Additional reporting by Kyle Schnitzer and Haley Brown
