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To the editor:
On Aug. 21, 2022, Justin Williams hacked up his girlfriend and slept in her apartment with prostitutes while her rotten remains were in the bathroom. Nearly four years later, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun sentenced him to 26 years to life.
This monster can be free 26 years from now.
On Thursday, Sept. 10, a 44-year-old woman at a Brooklyn subway station was stabbed in the shoulder and thrown down a flight of stairs. Judge Masateru Marubashi released the alleged assailant, 26-year-old Jahlayah Blondell, without bail.
Then there's Zykil Adamson, who on March 18, 2024, stole an imitation pistol from Sidarius Davis. Davis demanded it back. Afterwards, in a Manhattan recording studio, Adamson shot Davis while he slept.
This left Davis paralyzed on his left side for life.
Adamson plea bargained to attempted murder and got a sentence of 17 years from Supreme Court Justice Cori Weston. Those who make and enforce laws don't seem to understand that some people should never be released.
Touted crime statistics show murders and shootings at record lows. But if you want people to give up driving and take mass transit, rising subway assaults won't encourage that.
Until recent years, being shoved onto subway tracks was almost unheard of. Hate crimes are also up and people who use race, religion or nationality as an excuse to assault people must be removed from society.
Finally, there's the nature of crime getting worse over time. When my parents were alive and now from a friend who's 18 years my senior, I've heard of a time when people could leave their door unlocked, safely ride the subways late at night and safely rent a spare room to a stranger.
This is certainly not the case during this time of "record low" crime.
Richard Warren
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reenjoe
Even one violent crime is one too many. However, there was never a time that was crime-free or safe to leave doors unlocked, etc.
I recall the tragic sexual assault and murder of Kitty Genovese near her Kew Gardens apartment in 1964. While news reports exaggerated the apathy of her neighbors, the papers didn't exaggerate the nature of the crime or that of the perpetrator Winston Moseley, who saw Genovese on her way home and followed her to the parking lot before killing her. He also confessed to murdering and sexually assaulting two other women and to committing between thirty and forty burglaries.
Two decades earlier in 1947, Elizabeth Short - "The Black Dahlia" - was taken in broad daylight a few blocks from the Biltmore Hotel in LA only to be found in a public area, nude and cut in two. Unfortunately, crime is as old as humanity itself, regardless of sentencing and enforcement practices.
Monday, October 5 Report this
namrogm
The number of guns on the street, ghost guns, military guns, the omnipresence of guns, make every confrontation more dangerous than in the past. As an 11-year old kid I took the bus and subway to Ebbets Field to watch the Dodgers, sat in the upper deck with some older fans drinking whiskey out of bottles. No problems then. Big difference now for kids and adults.
Wednesday, October 7 Report this
reenjoe
There's no question that the proliferation of guns has added to societal challenges around crime, particularly suicides and mass shootings. However... Today's crime rates are no where near the record levels seen in the 1980s during the crack Cocaine epidemic. Ironically, those record murder and violent crime rates corresponded with the harshest sentencing laws in US history.
Friday, October 9 Report this