Knife crime — slashings and stabbings — is up 20 percent this year over the same period in 2015. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton predicted weeks ago it would taper off — but so far, no such luck.
On Sunday, a plainclothes cop got slashed as she tried to bust up a fight. The accused slasher insists she was merely trying to fight off a psycho attacking with a sledgehammer — though that doesn’t explain how a boxcutter wound up on the scene.
Relax, says Mayor Bill de Blasio, and trust Bratton. “Slashings, of course, worry all of us, but there’s not a pattern here, as Commissioner Bratton has made clear,’’ he said Monday.
In fact, Bratton can only know that his brain trust hasn’t yet found any pattern.
We hope the commissioner proves correct, and the spike in knife crime turns out to be a passing statistical fluke.
But if the rise keeps up, more and more New Yorkers will start asking if the effective end of stop-and-frisk has prompted people to start carrying knives more often. And then to ask if more guns will come next.
Of course, Bratton has kept crime down. And he insists he would’ve ended mass stop-and-frisk even if the mayor had actually left him the choice. But what explains yet another retreat in enforcement — the drop in quality-of-life-crime summonses?
Sunday’s Post reported new figures showing drops of 20 percent in tickets for public urination, 34 percent for disorderly conduct, 10 percent for public boozing, 42 percent for spitting and 7 percent for loitering.
These are just the kinds of offenses that City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and other council members mean to decriminalize via bills now awaiting a vote. Is enforcement down because the brass don’t want to give the speaker more ammunition?
The mayor insists the city will be fine, with nearly 2,000 new cops joining the force this year. Even with reinforcements, though, there’s only so much Bratton and the NYPD can do if the politicians won’t let police officers do their jobs.