By Michael Phillips | New York Bay News

New York City is ending 2025 with something many residents had almost given up hoping for: a genuine, measurable drop in crime. After years of headlines about chaos in the subways, brazen retail theft, revolving-door justice, and neighborhood disorder, the numbers finally moved in the right direction. Shootings are at historic lows. Retail theft is down 20%. Transit crime has plummeted, with July–November marking the safest stretch on record for the subways.

Credit goes largely to outgoing Mayor Eric Adams and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who—after a rocky first two years—executed the rarest thing in modern New York politics: a course correction.

But as the New York Post accurately warns, the work is nowhere near finished. And the gains New Yorkers are enjoying are fragile, at risk of reversal the moment City Hall or Albany loses its nerve.

This is the honest, right-of-center view: The crime drop is real. But so are the forces waiting to undo it.

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The Adams–Tisch Turnaround

Adams campaigned in 2021 on a single promise: restore order. For two years, that promise felt unfulfilled as progressives in the City Council, activist groups, and Albany lawmakers kept expanding bail leniency and narrowing police authority.

Then came 2024.

Jessica Tisch—Adams’ most consequential appointment—cleaned house. She replaced swaths of NYPD leadership, relaunched enforcement of basic quality-of-life laws, cracked down on transit disorder, and pushed back—publicly—against the “hands-off” policies that allowed repeat offenders to cycle endlessly through the system.

The results speak for themselves:

• Shootings: Lowest levels ever recorded for the first 11 months of any year on record.
• Murders: Down sharply, with November 2025 setting an all-time low.
• Retail Theft: Down 20% year-over-year.
• Transit Crime: Dramatically lower—creating the safest five-month stretch the system has ever recorded.

In a city where the public was losing faith, these are not small victories. They are major course corrections.

Adams may be leaving office under a cloud of unrelated controversy, but the plain reality is this: he delivered on his core promise during his final year.

And Tisch proved something else: crime is not a mystery. When leadership acts with clarity and conviction, chaos recedes.

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But New York Is Still Less Safe Than It Was a Decade Ago

Right-of-center New Yorkers don’t need to be told that the numbers still aren’t where they should be.

A decade ago, the city was markedly safer. Parents felt comfortable letting kids ride the 6 train alone. Workers didn’t think twice about walking home from the office. Small businesses weren’t budgeting for security guards and shrinkage losses.

Today, even with the improvements, far too many New Yorkers still confront:

• Chronic recidivism due to no-bail laws
• Emotionally disturbed individuals roaming the subways untreated
• Open-air marijuana clouds and public disorder normalized by overbroad decriminalization
• Serial offenders who rack up arrest after arrest with no meaningful consequence

The Post highlighted one harrowing example: James Rizzo, arrested 16 times, with a murder charge on his record, was free on the streets when he shoved and assaulted a 20-year-old NYU student. That wasn’t a “policing problem.” That was a policy failure—one created in Albany.

This is the central truth that the next mayor, Zohran Mamdani, cannot avoid: you cannot arrest your way out of broken laws. If the justice system refuses to hold offenders, public safety collapses no matter how effective the NYPD becomes.

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The Next Administration Will Decide Whether Crime Falls or Spikes Again

Tisch’s reforms worked because they were backed—sometimes grudgingly—by the mayor. But her authority is far from guaranteed in 2026.

Incoming Mayor Mamdani, a progressive Democrat supported by the Democratic Socialists of America, has not clarified whether he will keep Tisch or whether he will align with activist groups who have spent years undermining law-and-order strategies.

New Yorkers should be clear-eyed about what comes next.

• If Mamdani keeps Tisch and continues enforcement: The city’s turnaround can continue.
• If he weakens enforcement or yields to the anti-police left: Expect a return to 2020–2022 chaos faster than anyone wants to imagine.

The truth is simple: crime drops when politicians stop tying the hands of police. Crime surges when they don’t.

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What Albany Must Fix

Even the best policing can’t fix structural problems created by the state legislature.

There are three reforms right-of-center New Yorkers want addressed—immediately:

1. Fix the no-bail law

Violent and serial offenders should not walk free on their fifteenth arrest. This is common sense everywhere but Albany.

2. Mandatory treatment for severe mental illness

The homeless crisis and the mental-health crisis are now the same crisis. New York cannot keep releasing dangerously unstable individuals back into public spaces.

3. End blanket marijuana leniency

Legalization is not synonymous with public intoxication, smoke-filled subway platforms, and impaired drivers. New Yorkers wanted legal weed—not unchecked disorder.

These fixes would solidify Tisch’s progress and restore the safety levels New Yorkers enjoyed in the 2010s.

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New Yorkers Should Applaud Progress—But Demand More

The New York Post Editorial Board is right about one thing: Adams, despite flaws and controversies, deserves credit. So does Tisch, who has quickly become one of the most effective commissioners New York has seen in decades.

They stopped the bleeding.

But stopping the bleeding is not healing the patient.

New Yorkers must demand the next administration:

• Backs the NYPD, not activists
• Protects commuters and small businesses
• Puts mentally ill violent offenders into treatment, not back onto the A train
• Works with—not against—police leadership

This city has come too far, lost too much, and learned too many hard lessons to gamble safety away again.

New York can continue the turnaround.
Or New York can slide back into fear.

The choice is now in the hands of the people—and the leaders they’ve just elected.