April 3, 2026 • 19 mins
Are murders in the U.S. really at a historic low or is there more to the story? Crime expert Rafael Mangual joins to break down the reality behind the headlines, from national homicide trends to what’s actually happening in cities like New York and Memphis. Buck and Rafael dig into the data, the policies shaping crime rates, and why a drop in murders doesn’t always mean communities are safer.
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast, make sure
you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or
wherever you get your podcasts. Pambondi is out as Attorney
General as of today. What the heck is going on
at DOJ? Also Trump giving her a high five on
the way out about a national violent crime drop that
(00:32):
he says she played a role in, and who should
be the ag? How's that whole anti crime approach working
for this administration? And also we'll talk a little bit
about Coami Mamdani in NYC and his crime policies. Raphael
Mangual is with us now, senior felt the Manhattan Institute.
He's a crime guy, not that he commits them, he
knows a lot about them. He is an expert in
(00:56):
the crimes. He is not an expert in doing and
doing the crimes. So anyway, my friend, great to have
you here on the program today. So we got the
the Raphael Manguels here, we got the attorney general is out,
Pam Bondy, And we're going to get into a replacement
(01:16):
talk here in a second. But I wanted to read
something to you from Trump's Truth Socially. It says Pam
Bondy is a great American patriot and a loyal friend
who faithfully served as my Attorney General of the past year.
He did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in
crime across our country, with murders plummeting to their lowest
level since nineteen hundred. Let's drill down on that for
(01:38):
a second, whether you know Pambondy was really the one
mainly in charge of that or not. Put that aside
for a second. Is that right? Are we really at
this massive murder drop nationwide? Talk us through the numbers
in the reality.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, yeah, So what people are predicting is a one
hundred and twenty five year low on homicides in this country.
And that look, I mean data you know prior to
nineteen fifty is probably significantly more shoddy than you know,
post war data, but it is with Liz, there's no
question that we've been making progress on that front nationally.
I always tell people there are kind of two cautionary
(02:14):
notes here whenever you talk about this stuff. One is
resist the temptation to nationalize the conversation. Right, Like a
one hundred and twenty five year low for the national
homicide rate doesn't really mean a whole lot, because the
national homicide rate doesn't mean a whole lot, right. It
doesn't describe accurately what life is like where any person
is at a given time. Right, the national homicide rate
(02:34):
doesn't describe almost any locality. Right. So you can be
living in West Garfield Park, Chicago, and maybe the homicide
rates one hundred per one hundred thousand, if the national
homa rates the homicide rate is five per one hundred thousand,
that doesn't mean a whole lot to you, because you're
just living in a very different reality. So resist the
temptation to nationalize, and just resist the desire for a
(02:56):
very clean, neat and sort of unifactorial explanation. The reality
is is that yes, we are moving in that direction.
Yes homicides are at a significant low, but there are
probably a dozen, if not more factors that are dry
this and I would put them into two buckets. I
would put them into policy related buckets and non policy
related bucket. And on the non policy related front, I mean,
(03:18):
there's been a lot of real changes in America over
the last few years that I think have helped drive this.
Since the pandemic more and more people are working from home,
which means a lot of them have decided to move
out of cities altogether. So the urban population is dropping
the suburban populations increasing. That's important because crime tends to
be an urban phenomenon, So if urban populations are losing people,
(03:39):
then there are fewer opportunities to commit serious violence against
those individuals. People are drinking less in America. Alcohol consumptions
way down, Attendance at bars and nightclubs is way down.
What that means is that alcohols are criminogenetic substance. People
tend to get into fights and stuff at bars and
nightclubs that spill over into more serious kinds of violence
outside those those places. And then we had massive homicide
(04:03):
spikes in the lead up to twenty twenty and then
certainly in twenty twenty and twenty one. And the reason
that that's relevant is because there's a lot of overlap
between people who kill and who get killed. We tend
to think of homicide victims, you know, when we hear
that term, we think of like the cases of innocence
who are tragically killed. But the reality is is that
if you were to look at the prior arrest history
(04:24):
the likelihood of gang membership and the demographics of you know,
both homicide victims and suspects which you're going to see
or you know, a relatively indistinguishable pair of groups. Right,
So homicide victims tend to have similar numbers of prior arrests,
similar likelihood of being in a gang. And what that
means is when you have a massive spike and homicides
over a short period that's multi year, you're taking a
(04:47):
lot of chess pieces off the board and that's going
to help reduce crime. And then of course you have
the policy stuff, which is where BONDI comes in. And look,
I think what the federal government has done is helped.
There's no question that the task for So can I.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Ask you specifically about some of this just because you know,
go no place by place like on radio. We have,
for example, station in Memphis, and we have a big
listenership in Memphis and they are saying that Trump started
his and now, to be fair, the mayor of Memphis,
we invite him on the show. He hasn't come on yet.
We're hoping he will. He's a Democrat, but he was
willing to say, you know what, let's work with the
(05:20):
federal resources here to bring down crime. People are saying
Memphis is in a different place. I mean callers are
telling us this, We're getting emails and is that one
reflected in the data? And what do you think the
changes are that caused it.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, you're seeing more than a forty percent decline in
crime since the launch of the Memphis Safe task for US.
I was just in Memphis a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Actually, oh you were there, Wow, okay, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I did some ride alongs with some of the task
Force members and it was eye opening. I mean, there
were a couple of things that were really surprising about
what I saw. One was just how much community support
these guys have. And we walked into a restaurant and
you know, it was like they were celebrities. I mean,
a very different reaction from the people on the ground,
from the public than what you were seeing in places
(06:04):
like Minneapolis and Chicago, where these guys were getting hounded
with cameras and yelled at and docksed. People are very
very happy to have these agents on the ground in Memphis,
and that's because that city has been living with insane
levels of crime. I mean, Memphis has consistently been one
of the most dangerous American cities in the top ten,
you know, for my entire lifetime. And so, you know,
(06:25):
flooding that zone with a massive amount of federal resources
that have also partnered with state and local So every
single team on this task force has either a local
Memphis Police officer or a Tennessee Highway patrolman riding with them.
And that's been important because not only does it allow
them to take an integrated approach there's intelligence sharing, but
(06:46):
also you know, it gets over some of the jurisdictional
limits on federal agents, right, Like, for example, if they
are looking for guns, and you know, there's a known
gang member that they've been tracking and he gets into
a car, they would really love to pull him over.
But the federal government doesn't have jurisdiction on traffic, right,
they can't make car stops for traffic offenses. But they
(07:07):
always have a THHP or a Memphis PD guy who
can pull them over for the broken tail light and
then that can lead to the gun arrest. And so
that kind of teamwork and that integration and that cooperation
I think has been central to a really super steep
crime decline that we've been seeing in that city, and
we saw the same thing in Washington, d C. With
that task force, you know, And so I think those
(07:30):
are two really positive models that tell a compelling story
about the federal government's capacity to help drive some of
this stuff down. Now, does that explain the national level decline, No,
but it has certainly helped, especially when you couple it
with the immigration enforcement and the focus on criminal aliens.
You know, and then just look at what states like
(07:50):
Tennessee and other states like Louisiana and Florida have been
doing on the policy front. You know, the last twenty
years have kind of been characterized by policies aimed almost
exclusively at decarceration in deep policing. But the last handful
of years you have seen some parts of the country
really turn it around. Tennessee, I think has been a
great example of that. You know, cam Sexton, the Speaker
(08:13):
of the House there is he's been leading and no.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Relation by the way, no relation accounts to ask.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
But he's done truth and sentencing. There's a three strikes
proposal making its way through. They just passed a constitutional
amendment that will allow judges to jail people of pre
trial if they're dangerous, right, So in Tennessee, you have
a constitutional right to have bail set in your case
as long as it's not a capital offense. Well, that's
going to change the blended juvenile sentencing a repeat offender
(08:41):
statute for misdemeans. I mean, Louisiana rolled back a bunch
of its twenty seventeen criminal justice reforms. So you're seeing
a lot of these trends. Same thing in Texas, Florida,
I mean, the country is changing its too, and even California.
I mean, you know Prop forty seven got partially reversed
by Prop thirty six in November twenty twenty four, which
(09:02):
was a year in which you had a lot of
progressive prosecutors lose their re election bids, get successfully recalled,
or you know, decide not to run for reelection. So,
you know, Chicago, Kim Fox is gone. You know, Baltimore,
Marilyn Moseby's gone. You got Ivan Bates now taking a
much more aggressive approach. George Gascon in La gone. You
got Nate Hockman now, Pamela Price in Oakland she's gone.
(09:25):
Chason Boudin and San Francisco he's gone. You know, Athens
Georgia where Lincoln Riley was killed. That DA is gone.
So you know, there's been a lot of change on
the policy side. Police departments are re asserting themselves. Arrests
are up, and for the last two years that we
have data, the prison population nationally is up, which you
know is a reversal of a more than decade long trend.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Very interesting stuff. We'll come back with Rafael Mangul here
from the Manhattan Institute in a second talk about the
New York City situation specifically on crime and on policy
in general, and Mayor Mundnnie. But our sponsor is pure Talk.
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(10:31):
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All right, Raphael Kamimmdani in New York City, how is
it going there? Is there any chance that any of
these major cities you think, given what you you laid
(10:51):
out about the federal local partnership and how effective it
is in reducing serious crime, you know, the bad crime
that everyone really wants to, uh to get rid of
or lower as much as possible, I should say, is
there any chance of a more sane police approach in
New York City under the Mumdani administration? That was maybe thought?
(11:11):
Where do you stand on that?
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah? Look, I do think that there's absolutely a chance
of it, because we're seeing it happen right now. I
mean so far. Looks over on Mam. Donnie is not
a mystery, right. We understand what drives him politically. He
has a very long and clear record of being a
police antagonist. Right. He doesn't like cops, he doesn't like
the criminal justice system. He wanted to abolish them until
look about five up to about five minutes ago. Right,
(11:35):
So his change in tune is really just about political expediency.
And I don't really care what it's about as long
as he keeps his power to dry on some of
these more radical ideas. I'm a happy guy, and I
think New York City will be better off for it.
And so far, that's what we've seen in the first
one hundred days or so of his mayoralty. You know,
on the campaign trails over on, Mamdani took some pretty
(11:56):
radical positions, but he also backed off of some others. Right.
He backed off of defunding the police and dismantling the
police department and abolishing jails, but he did also take
radical positions like committing to abolishing the New York City
Police Department's gang database. He committed to taking disciplinary authority
away from the Police Commissioner and Executive command staff and
(12:18):
handing it to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which would
be a disaster in part because the CCRB is perceived
by the rank and file as being very anti cop
and not without reason. And you know, he wants to
get rid of the SRG. The Strategic Response Group, which
is part of the nypt's Critical Response Command and is
a unit that has counter terrorism capabilities and is meant
(12:38):
to respond to large gatherings and do crowd control and
respond to mass casualty events. So, you know, these are
some pretty big deals and so far he has not
pulled the trigger on any of them. And I think
the reason for that is one that he tied his
hands with Jessica Tish right. He on the campaign trail
committed to keeping her on board before the election, and
what that meant was that he had to keep her
(13:00):
around for at least some significant period of time after
the election so as not to look like he was
breaking a campaign promise. And my guess, although I have
no inside information on this, is that she has used
that leverage to keep the NYPD in the posture that
has allowed it to make progress on the crime front.
And that progress has been very real. New York City has,
(13:23):
you know, really seen tremendous declines and shootings and homicides
in particular, and that's gotten a lot of media attention,
as it should. But what hasn't gotten a lot of
media attention is that New York City is still very
much in a worse place when it comes to all
of the other crime measures. So if you look at robbery, rapes,
(13:44):
felony assaults, car the f's, I mean car thef's are
one hundred and fifty percent higher last year than they
were in twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah, So this is really interesting about therfl what you're
talking about, because I would used to be that everyone
assumed in the crime stat business, if you will, and
in the media side of it, at least, that murders,
because you can't hide a dead body and people pay attention.
That murder is the you know, that's the big thing,
and everything else will kind of move in tandem with that.
(14:10):
If it's going up, everything else is getting work. Like
nineteen ninety one New York twenty two hundred murders, give
or take. I mean, there were so many robberies and
everything else. It was totally right, totally like hundreds of
thousands of robberies. It was completely out of control. But
what you're telling me is that it is actually possible
to see a situation where shootings are going down, murders
are going down, which is a good thing, but everything
(14:32):
else is still actually really bad. What's going on like,
what's causing that dynamic in New York as you see it?
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah, So I think what's happened is that the MPD
understood that this was such a dire problem that has
redirected so many resources to controlling that problem. Right, So
the homicide in the shooting problem is a very discreete problem.
It affects a very narrow slice of the population, and
it happens in a very small slice of the city.
So what the MIPD has done really well is directed
(14:59):
and flooded those zones, those high crime zones with more resources,
with more patrol officers, and it has really dedicated its
resources to developing the intelligence on the gang front to
figure out who the gang are that are driving most
of the shootings, and then using that intelligence to do
these gang takedown prosecutions. So in twenty twenty five, I
think the NYPD did almost seventy gang takedown prosecutions, which
(15:21):
took over four hundred gang members off the street. Now
that doesn't sound like a lot. Four hundred in a
city of eight.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Min that's a lot.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
I mean, yeah, if you're talking about four hundred of
your real shooters, I mean that's a lot, especially when
you're talking about only about fifteen hundred shootings a year.
You know, during the spike, you know, you can make
real progress by getting people like that off the street.
And I think that the department has been incredibly effective
with that sort of precision and gang led policing strategy.
(15:51):
But on the other side of the coin, right, there
are other problems in the city that require a different
approach that you know, you need more resources to get
your arms round. And I don't think it's been a
secret that the MPD has been short officers.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Let me ask you, as a former New Yorker, Sorry,
I fled for Florida. Eventually you down here, Raphael, Eventually
it you'll love it down here. But you know, maybe
it'll be when you retire, but maybe sooner. Some people
are saying maybe sooner. But let me ask you, how
much of what we're seeing in New York is the
the decision by prosecutors And because I would assume this
(16:27):
is true in other cities as well, large cities that
are run entirely by Democrats that basically, unless you kill
somebody or do like a violent rape, you can get
arrested one hundred times, Like, how much of the other
stuff is that we're just actually refusing to is that
the main reason? Is it the mental health thing of
we have true wackos, And I mean that people who
are really just extreme mental health cases who keep committing
(16:51):
crimes short of throwing somebody in front of an oncoming
subway train, but they get arrested fifty times.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah. No, I think that's a big part of it.
And I do think that the prosecutors are playing a
role in that problem. But it's not just the prosecutors.
It's the criminal justice reforms. You know, New York has
not undone a lot of the reforms that it did
in the e up to these spikes that you had.
You know, raised the age in twenty seventeen, which went
into effect in twenty eighteen, which made it basically impossible
(17:18):
to send teenagers who commit even serious crimes to prison
in jail, and you know, not coincidentally, the one group
where you haven't really seen a reduction in the serious
violence has been in the juvenile sector. So juveniles have
kind of resisted the broader trend of declines in serious violence,
and I think that has a lot to do with
that reform package. There is still very much in effect,
(17:39):
bail reform discovery reform has made it, you know, significantly
more costly to carry a criminal prosecution from inception to
a case closure, and so a lot of cases are
getting dropped, they're getting dismissed at significantly higher rates, were
not being brought altogether, not just because of the ideological
commitments of the prosecutor, but just because of the structural
(18:00):
barriers to prosecuting cases you know that these reforms have erected.
And then, of course, bail reform makes it so that
even if you get arrested, the vast majority of crime
that you can get arrested for in New York City
are not bail eligible. So there's basically zero chance that
you're going to end up in pretrial detention, which means
that if you can get arrested over and over and
over and you're still going to go back out into
(18:21):
the street as long as it's not for one of
those really serious crimes that are bail eligible, which are
you know, rareer kinds of offenses. And so it's not
at all surprising to me that you see this sort
of disparity between you know, crimes like robberies and burglaries,
and felony assaults, and then crimes like homicide and shootings.
(18:42):
You know, you can pay really close attention to those
most serious problems. But in a world of limited resources,
which the NYPD is very much living in, you know,
you can't wrap your arms around the entire crime problem.
And now you're starting to see that divergence. And look,
I think what the NYPD has done is defensible, right,
I mean, like, if you have to pick and choose
where you're going to put your resources money, save lives.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, that's great soft Raphael, Thank you so much, Raphael
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Speaker 2 (19:47):
For having me. Appreciate you
You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast, make sure
you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or
wherever you get your podcasts. Pambondi is out as Attorney
General as of today. What the heck is going on
at DOJ? Also Trump giving her a high five on
the way out about a national violent crime drop that
(00:32):
he says she played a role in, and who should
be the ag? How's that whole anti crime approach working
for this administration? And also we'll talk a little bit
about Coami Mamdani in NYC and his crime policies. Raphael
Mangual is with us now, senior felt the Manhattan Institute.
He's a crime guy, not that he commits them, he
knows a lot about them. He is an expert in
(00:56):
the crimes. He is not an expert in doing and
doing the crimes. So anyway, my friend, great to have
you here on the program today. So we got the
the Raphael Manguels here, we got the attorney general is out,
Pam Bondy, And we're going to get into a replacement
(01:16):
talk here in a second. But I wanted to read
something to you from Trump's Truth Socially. It says Pam
Bondy is a great American patriot and a loyal friend
who faithfully served as my Attorney General of the past year.
He did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in
crime across our country, with murders plummeting to their lowest
level since nineteen hundred. Let's drill down on that for
(01:38):
a second, whether you know Pambondy was really the one
mainly in charge of that or not. Put that aside
for a second. Is that right? Are we really at
this massive murder drop nationwide? Talk us through the numbers
in the reality.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, yeah, So what people are predicting is a one
hundred and twenty five year low on homicides in this country.
And that look, I mean data you know prior to
nineteen fifty is probably significantly more shoddy than you know,
post war data, but it is with Liz, there's no
question that we've been making progress on that front nationally.
I always tell people there are kind of two cautionary
(02:14):
notes here whenever you talk about this stuff. One is
resist the temptation to nationalize the conversation. Right, Like a
one hundred and twenty five year low for the national
homicide rate doesn't really mean a whole lot, because the
national homicide rate doesn't mean a whole lot, right. It
doesn't describe accurately what life is like where any person
is at a given time. Right, the national homicide rate
(02:34):
doesn't describe almost any locality. Right. So you can be
living in West Garfield Park, Chicago, and maybe the homicide
rates one hundred per one hundred thousand, if the national
homa rates the homicide rate is five per one hundred thousand,
that doesn't mean a whole lot to you, because you're
just living in a very different reality. So resist the
temptation to nationalize, and just resist the desire for a
(02:56):
very clean, neat and sort of unifactorial explanation. The reality
is is that yes, we are moving in that direction.
Yes homicides are at a significant low, but there are
probably a dozen, if not more factors that are dry
this and I would put them into two buckets. I
would put them into policy related buckets and non policy
related bucket. And on the non policy related front, I mean,
(03:18):
there's been a lot of real changes in America over
the last few years that I think have helped drive this.
Since the pandemic more and more people are working from home,
which means a lot of them have decided to move
out of cities altogether. So the urban population is dropping
the suburban populations increasing. That's important because crime tends to
be an urban phenomenon, So if urban populations are losing people,
(03:39):
then there are fewer opportunities to commit serious violence against
those individuals. People are drinking less in America. Alcohol consumptions
way down, Attendance at bars and nightclubs is way down.
What that means is that alcohols are criminogenetic substance. People
tend to get into fights and stuff at bars and
nightclubs that spill over into more serious kinds of violence
outside those those places. And then we had massive homicide
(04:03):
spikes in the lead up to twenty twenty and then
certainly in twenty twenty and twenty one. And the reason
that that's relevant is because there's a lot of overlap
between people who kill and who get killed. We tend
to think of homicide victims, you know, when we hear
that term, we think of like the cases of innocence
who are tragically killed. But the reality is is that
if you were to look at the prior arrest history
(04:24):
the likelihood of gang membership and the demographics of you know,
both homicide victims and suspects which you're going to see
or you know, a relatively indistinguishable pair of groups. Right,
So homicide victims tend to have similar numbers of prior arrests,
similar likelihood of being in a gang. And what that
means is when you have a massive spike and homicides
over a short period that's multi year, you're taking a
(04:47):
lot of chess pieces off the board and that's going
to help reduce crime. And then of course you have
the policy stuff, which is where BONDI comes in. And look,
I think what the federal government has done is helped.
There's no question that the task for So can I.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Ask you specifically about some of this just because you know,
go no place by place like on radio. We have,
for example, station in Memphis, and we have a big
listenership in Memphis and they are saying that Trump started
his and now, to be fair, the mayor of Memphis,
we invite him on the show. He hasn't come on yet.
We're hoping he will. He's a Democrat, but he was
willing to say, you know what, let's work with the
(05:20):
federal resources here to bring down crime. People are saying
Memphis is in a different place. I mean callers are
telling us this, We're getting emails and is that one
reflected in the data? And what do you think the
changes are that caused it.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, you're seeing more than a forty percent decline in
crime since the launch of the Memphis Safe task for US.
I was just in Memphis a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Actually, oh you were there, Wow, okay, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I did some ride alongs with some of the task
Force members and it was eye opening. I mean, there
were a couple of things that were really surprising about
what I saw. One was just how much community support
these guys have. And we walked into a restaurant and
you know, it was like they were celebrities. I mean,
a very different reaction from the people on the ground,
from the public than what you were seeing in places
(06:04):
like Minneapolis and Chicago, where these guys were getting hounded
with cameras and yelled at and docksed. People are very
very happy to have these agents on the ground in Memphis,
and that's because that city has been living with insane
levels of crime. I mean, Memphis has consistently been one
of the most dangerous American cities in the top ten,
you know, for my entire lifetime. And so, you know,
(06:25):
flooding that zone with a massive amount of federal resources
that have also partnered with state and local So every
single team on this task force has either a local
Memphis Police officer or a Tennessee Highway patrolman riding with them.
And that's been important because not only does it allow
them to take an integrated approach there's intelligence sharing, but
(06:46):
also you know, it gets over some of the jurisdictional
limits on federal agents, right, Like, for example, if they
are looking for guns, and you know, there's a known
gang member that they've been tracking and he gets into
a car, they would really love to pull him over.
But the federal government doesn't have jurisdiction on traffic, right,
they can't make car stops for traffic offenses. But they
(07:07):
always have a THHP or a Memphis PD guy who
can pull them over for the broken tail light and
then that can lead to the gun arrest. And so
that kind of teamwork and that integration and that cooperation
I think has been central to a really super steep
crime decline that we've been seeing in that city, and
we saw the same thing in Washington, d C. With
that task force, you know, And so I think those
(07:30):
are two really positive models that tell a compelling story
about the federal government's capacity to help drive some of
this stuff down. Now, does that explain the national level decline, No,
but it has certainly helped, especially when you couple it
with the immigration enforcement and the focus on criminal aliens.
You know, and then just look at what states like
(07:50):
Tennessee and other states like Louisiana and Florida have been
doing on the policy front. You know, the last twenty
years have kind of been characterized by policies aimed almost
exclusively at decarceration in deep policing. But the last handful
of years you have seen some parts of the country
really turn it around. Tennessee, I think has been a
great example of that. You know, cam Sexton, the Speaker
(08:13):
of the House there is he's been leading and no.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Relation by the way, no relation accounts to ask.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
But he's done truth and sentencing. There's a three strikes
proposal making its way through. They just passed a constitutional
amendment that will allow judges to jail people of pre
trial if they're dangerous, right, So in Tennessee, you have
a constitutional right to have bail set in your case
as long as it's not a capital offense. Well, that's
going to change the blended juvenile sentencing a repeat offender
(08:41):
statute for misdemeans. I mean, Louisiana rolled back a bunch
of its twenty seventeen criminal justice reforms. So you're seeing
a lot of these trends. Same thing in Texas, Florida,
I mean, the country is changing its too, and even California.
I mean, you know Prop forty seven got partially reversed
by Prop thirty six in November twenty twenty four, which
(09:02):
was a year in which you had a lot of
progressive prosecutors lose their re election bids, get successfully recalled,
or you know, decide not to run for reelection. So,
you know, Chicago, Kim Fox is gone. You know, Baltimore,
Marilyn Moseby's gone. You got Ivan Bates now taking a
much more aggressive approach. George Gascon in La gone. You
got Nate Hockman now, Pamela Price in Oakland she's gone.
(09:25):
Chason Boudin and San Francisco he's gone. You know, Athens
Georgia where Lincoln Riley was killed. That DA is gone.
So you know, there's been a lot of change on
the policy side. Police departments are re asserting themselves. Arrests
are up, and for the last two years that we
have data, the prison population nationally is up, which you
know is a reversal of a more than decade long trend.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Very interesting stuff. We'll come back with Rafael Mangul here
from the Manhattan Institute in a second talk about the
New York City situation specifically on crime and on policy
in general, and Mayor Mundnnie. But our sponsor is pure Talk.
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All right, Raphael Kamimmdani in New York City, how is
it going there? Is there any chance that any of
these major cities you think, given what you you laid
(10:51):
out about the federal local partnership and how effective it
is in reducing serious crime, you know, the bad crime
that everyone really wants to, uh to get rid of
or lower as much as possible, I should say, is
there any chance of a more sane police approach in
New York City under the Mumdani administration? That was maybe thought?
(11:11):
Where do you stand on that?
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah? Look, I do think that there's absolutely a chance
of it, because we're seeing it happen right now. I
mean so far. Looks over on Mam. Donnie is not
a mystery, right. We understand what drives him politically. He
has a very long and clear record of being a
police antagonist. Right. He doesn't like cops, he doesn't like
the criminal justice system. He wanted to abolish them until
look about five up to about five minutes ago. Right,
(11:35):
So his change in tune is really just about political expediency.
And I don't really care what it's about as long
as he keeps his power to dry on some of
these more radical ideas. I'm a happy guy, and I
think New York City will be better off for it.
And so far, that's what we've seen in the first
one hundred days or so of his mayoralty. You know,
on the campaign trails over on, Mamdani took some pretty
(11:56):
radical positions, but he also backed off of some others. Right.
He backed off of defunding the police and dismantling the
police department and abolishing jails, but he did also take
radical positions like committing to abolishing the New York City
Police Department's gang database. He committed to taking disciplinary authority
away from the Police Commissioner and Executive command staff and
(12:18):
handing it to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which would
be a disaster in part because the CCRB is perceived
by the rank and file as being very anti cop
and not without reason. And you know, he wants to
get rid of the SRG. The Strategic Response Group, which
is part of the nypt's Critical Response Command and is
a unit that has counter terrorism capabilities and is meant
(12:38):
to respond to large gatherings and do crowd control and
respond to mass casualty events. So, you know, these are
some pretty big deals and so far he has not
pulled the trigger on any of them. And I think
the reason for that is one that he tied his
hands with Jessica Tish right. He on the campaign trail
committed to keeping her on board before the election, and
what that meant was that he had to keep her
(13:00):
around for at least some significant period of time after
the election so as not to look like he was
breaking a campaign promise. And my guess, although I have
no inside information on this, is that she has used
that leverage to keep the NYPD in the posture that
has allowed it to make progress on the crime front.
And that progress has been very real. New York City has,
(13:23):
you know, really seen tremendous declines and shootings and homicides
in particular, and that's gotten a lot of media attention,
as it should. But what hasn't gotten a lot of
media attention is that New York City is still very
much in a worse place when it comes to all
of the other crime measures. So if you look at robbery, rapes,
(13:44):
felony assaults, car the f's, I mean car thef's are
one hundred and fifty percent higher last year than they
were in twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah, So this is really interesting about therfl what you're
talking about, because I would used to be that everyone
assumed in the crime stat business, if you will, and
in the media side of it, at least, that murders,
because you can't hide a dead body and people pay attention.
That murder is the you know, that's the big thing,
and everything else will kind of move in tandem with that.
(14:10):
If it's going up, everything else is getting work. Like
nineteen ninety one New York twenty two hundred murders, give
or take. I mean, there were so many robberies and
everything else. It was totally right, totally like hundreds of
thousands of robberies. It was completely out of control. But
what you're telling me is that it is actually possible
to see a situation where shootings are going down, murders
are going down, which is a good thing, but everything
(14:32):
else is still actually really bad. What's going on like,
what's causing that dynamic in New York as you see it?
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah, So I think what's happened is that the MPD
understood that this was such a dire problem that has
redirected so many resources to controlling that problem. Right, So
the homicide in the shooting problem is a very discreete problem.
It affects a very narrow slice of the population, and
it happens in a very small slice of the city.
So what the MIPD has done really well is directed
(14:59):
and flooded those zones, those high crime zones with more resources,
with more patrol officers, and it has really dedicated its
resources to developing the intelligence on the gang front to
figure out who the gang are that are driving most
of the shootings, and then using that intelligence to do
these gang takedown prosecutions. So in twenty twenty five, I
think the NYPD did almost seventy gang takedown prosecutions, which
(15:21):
took over four hundred gang members off the street. Now
that doesn't sound like a lot. Four hundred in a
city of eight.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Min that's a lot.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
I mean, yeah, if you're talking about four hundred of
your real shooters, I mean that's a lot, especially when
you're talking about only about fifteen hundred shootings a year.
You know, during the spike, you know, you can make
real progress by getting people like that off the street.
And I think that the department has been incredibly effective
with that sort of precision and gang led policing strategy.
(15:51):
But on the other side of the coin, right, there
are other problems in the city that require a different
approach that you know, you need more resources to get
your arms round. And I don't think it's been a
secret that the MPD has been short officers.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Let me ask you, as a former New Yorker, Sorry,
I fled for Florida. Eventually you down here, Raphael, Eventually
it you'll love it down here. But you know, maybe
it'll be when you retire, but maybe sooner. Some people
are saying maybe sooner. But let me ask you, how
much of what we're seeing in New York is the
the decision by prosecutors And because I would assume this
(16:27):
is true in other cities as well, large cities that
are run entirely by Democrats that basically, unless you kill
somebody or do like a violent rape, you can get
arrested one hundred times, Like, how much of the other
stuff is that we're just actually refusing to is that
the main reason? Is it the mental health thing of
we have true wackos, And I mean that people who
are really just extreme mental health cases who keep committing
(16:51):
crimes short of throwing somebody in front of an oncoming
subway train, but they get arrested fifty times.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah. No, I think that's a big part of it.
And I do think that the prosecutors are playing a
role in that problem. But it's not just the prosecutors.
It's the criminal justice reforms. You know, New York has
not undone a lot of the reforms that it did
in the e up to these spikes that you had.
You know, raised the age in twenty seventeen, which went
into effect in twenty eighteen, which made it basically impossible
(17:18):
to send teenagers who commit even serious crimes to prison
in jail, and you know, not coincidentally, the one group
where you haven't really seen a reduction in the serious
violence has been in the juvenile sector. So juveniles have
kind of resisted the broader trend of declines in serious violence,
and I think that has a lot to do with
that reform package. There is still very much in effect,
(17:39):
bail reform discovery reform has made it, you know, significantly
more costly to carry a criminal prosecution from inception to
a case closure, and so a lot of cases are
getting dropped, they're getting dismissed at significantly higher rates, were
not being brought altogether, not just because of the ideological
commitments of the prosecutor, but just because of the structural
(18:00):
barriers to prosecuting cases you know that these reforms have erected.
And then, of course, bail reform makes it so that
even if you get arrested, the vast majority of crime
that you can get arrested for in New York City
are not bail eligible. So there's basically zero chance that
you're going to end up in pretrial detention, which means
that if you can get arrested over and over and
over and you're still going to go back out into
(18:21):
the street as long as it's not for one of
those really serious crimes that are bail eligible, which are
you know, rareer kinds of offenses. And so it's not
at all surprising to me that you see this sort
of disparity between you know, crimes like robberies and burglaries,
and felony assaults, and then crimes like homicide and shootings.
(18:42):
You know, you can pay really close attention to those
most serious problems. But in a world of limited resources,
which the NYPD is very much living in, you know,
you can't wrap your arms around the entire crime problem.
And now you're starting to see that divergence. And look,
I think what the NYPD has done is defensible, right,
I mean, like, if you have to pick and choose
where you're going to put your resources money, save lives.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, that's great soft Raphael, Thank you so much, Raphael
men Guelf of the Manhattan Institute. You know, gold makes
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ninety eight, Raphael, Great stuff, my friend, Thanks for being here, Thanks.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
For having me. Appreciate you
Host
Buck Sexton
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