The descent of New York

When Will Smith strode to the stage and slapped Chris Rock, I was surprised by how many of my friends thought the violence had been staged to rescue the Academy Awards from its years-long ratings decline. I instantly recognised it as authentic rage, not because I know anything about Hollywood or Will Smith, but because I witness similar ugliness so frequently on the New York City subway. For me, Smith’s outburst was shockingly familiar – emblematic of a simmering, pre-volcanic atmosphere in the country that no one seems to be examining or attempting to explain.

As New York emerges from its third wave of Covid, an exceptionally creepy atmosphere has developed on the streets and in the subways, where at times conditions appear to have fallen somewhere between post-modern anarchy and medieval misery. In such a setting, statistics seem almost pointless, although it’s impossible not to be aware of the rising murder and assault rates. According to the NYPD, crime in the city in February was 59 per cent higher than February last year. Car theft doubled. Rape was up by 35 per cent. A Quinnipiac University poll found that New Yorkers are more worried about crime now than any time since 1999.

Two murders have especially shocked the city. First was the killing of Michelle Go, 40, who on 15 January was shoved by a mentally ill homeless man, an ex-convict, on to the tracks in front of an arriving subway train in the Times Square station. A month later, Christina Lee, 35, was followed into her building in Chinatown by another homeless man, where he stabbed her to death inside her apartment.

That both victims were Asian-American might have been a coincidence, but the fact that both assailants lived on the street and had criminal records was almost certainly not.