Amid the ongoing surge in crime rates across New York City, a concerning report from the New York Post found that at least 50 women have fallen victim to violent attacks in the lower half of Manhattan since the beginning of the year.
“The trend that I’m getting from the people that we’re arresting, the majority of them are homeless, the majority of them seem like they need some kind of help with mental illness,” said Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.
“This is no new phenomenon,” Kenny continued. “It’s just being reported at a higher rate and getting a lot more publicity than it normally does because of social media … we welcome that. We want to encourage reporting so that we can make these arrests.”
The attacks have predominantly occurred on the streets, with some incidents taking place within the New York City transit system. Despite the severity of some of these attacks, only 14 arrests have been made in connection with the 50 reported attacks.
One particularly notable incident involved TikTok influencer Halley McGookin, who shared a distressing video recounting her experience of being randomly punched in the face while walking in the city. McGookin’s emotional video garnered over five million likes.
“You guys, I was literally just walking and a man came up and punched me in the face,” she explained while crying. “It hurts so bad.”
In the midst of escalating crime levels, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has faced criticism for his attempts to downplay the severity of violence in his city. Crime levels in the Big Apple have spiked to levels unseen in almost two decades, according to the New York Post.
Data from the NYPD, which tracks major felonies including murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, grand larceny and car thefts, found that overall crime was on the rise for the second year in a row under Adams’ tenure as Mayor.
Despite these statistics, Mayor Adams has repeatedly attempted to tell his constituents that “crime is down.”
