Violent crime continues to rise in the Big Apple as police are now investigating the death of a man who was found fatally stabbed in broad daylight inside a subway station.
According to reports, NYC police say the man was killed just before 3 p.m. on Sunday afternoon inside the Chambers Street station in Lower Manhattan. Police found the victim, a male in his 20s, dead on the J and Z subway platform with multiple stab wounds to his legs.
Police now say they’re looking for their suspect, who they say is a 5’5, light-complected man in his 30s with long black hair.
Violent crime has skyrocketed in the city in 2020 amid the one-two punch of coronavirus shutdown and violent leftwing protests that led to a reactionary decrease in funding for the New York City Police Department. Following a city council vote to slash $1 billion from the NYPD’s budget, the number of September shooting incidents in the city increased 127% year-over-year from 67 shootings in 2019 to 152 shootings in 2020. Murders spiked 40 percent last month, according to New York Police Department data released Friday.
The numbers come as no surprise, coming at the tail end of a particularly violent summer. During the month of June alone, the NYPD reported a 130 percent uptick in the number of shootings, a 30 percent increase in murders, a 118 percent surge in the number of burglaries, and a 51 percent increase in the number of car thefts -- all while arrests dropped by 40,000.
Year-to-date, police report a 91 percent spike in shootings and a 42 percent increase in burglaries.