To see what I mean, consider an example of someone well known who claims to be feeling terrified. The other day, in a segment about border security, Maria Bartiromo, a Fox News host, declared, “I don’t walk anywhere anymore in New York City.” Maybe that’s really how she feels, in which case I feel sorry for her and all the experiences she’s missing. Contrary to what many people apparently believe, New York is not, in fact, an urban hellscape; I walk around the city all the time — including in neighborhoods that are home to large immigrant communities — and it’s a fairly cheerful place these days, whose sidewalks are full of other people doing the same.
But don’t take my word for it. Cell phone data lets researchers track foot traffic in urban downtowns. As of last year, weekday traffic was still well below prepandemic levels, presumably reflecting fewer people commuting into downtown offices given the rise in remote and hybrid work. But weekend foot traffic, driven by people choosing to take advantage of urban amenities, had almost fully recovered — which wouldn’t be happening if shoppers, tourists and so on were terrified of crime. In fact, around this time last year, weekend foot traffic in Midtown Manhattan, where Fox News has its headquarters, was higher than it was before the pandemic.
Trump might not concoct his own crime stats, but my guess is that in this campaign, he’ll never concede that violent crime has come way down, and he’ll continue to focus on a few widely publicized stories, examples of terrible crimes committed by migrants.
Responding to such stories is delicate; nobody wants to minimize the horror of even one violent crime, whoever commits it. But if we’re going to smear whole groups of people for crimes committed by a few members of those groups, where do we stop? For what it’s worth, a new study by the right-leaning Cato Institute finds that in Texas, undocumented immigrants are less likely to be convicted of murder than the native-born. (It’s even less likely for legal immigrants.)
The important thing to remember is that the decline in the violent crime rate is in fact a huge Biden-era success story. And the president probably deserves some credit for that success — among other things, the American Rescue Plan included a lot of aid to state and local governments, which may have encouraged additional spending on law enforcement. But no matter how you cut it, crime should be considered one of Biden’s strengths, not a weak point.
