Fighting crime doesn’t require new ideas or old ideas — but eternal ideas. New York City once understood this.

By Selwyn Duke

It’s a conversation I’ll never forget. My best friend and I were driving down to Manhattan to dine, in what had become a weekly ritual for us. We were discussing the crime in New York City, as many Big Apple residents no doubt did at that time, the mid-1990s. After all, as a result of the then-waning crack epidemic and turpitude-tolerant policies, criminality had been rampant and making headlines. I remember that we mentioned certain statistics, notably that the city had seen approximately 2,000 murders a year.

Our conversation would quickly become eerily and tragically ironic. As we drove along Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx’s Mott Haven section at about 8:40 p.m., we witnessed what turned out to be a high-profile murder, of a well-regarded Hispanic businessman and millionaire named Thomas Cuevas. We spent much of that night in a police station giving witness statements. In yet another irony, a week or two later my friend and I were driving the same route and his car broke down — within probably 30 feet of where the murder had occurred. While in the neighborhood subsequently getting his vehicle repaired, my friend heard grapevine information, which he later related to authorities, that might have aided their investigation. The perpetrators were eventually apprehended — it was at least partially an inside job.

What’s also partially an inside job — perpetrated by politicians peddling bad policy (and, in fairness, the voters enabling them) — is high crime.

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