Felony Assaults Against Women In New York Up 41% Over The Last Four Years

Felony assaults on women in New York City are up an alarming 41% over the last four years, according to NYPD data, a New York Post exclusive revealed this week. 

2,830 women this year have been victims of physical assaults excluding domestic violence, compared to 2,006 just four years ago, the report said. The attacks range from "random subway shoves" to "vicious beats", the Post said. The same report showed that misdemeanor assaults are up 8% over the same period, rising from 8,008 to 8,668. Assaults on both genders are up 6%. 

Weeks after a stranger sucker punched one 27 year old, she told The NY Post: “It seemed like a while ago, it was old Asian people, and now it’s young women. It feels like men just hate us.” 

“They’re not being careful about who they’re letting out,” she continued, critical of the city's soft-on-crime policies. “There’s nowhere safe for them to go, so they are on the streets and they’re drug-addicted and they’re desperate for a sense of control and women are an easy target.”

HR executive Gladys Chen was punched at 23rd Street station, knocking her contact out of her eye. She told The Post: "“You could see a lot more people with mental illness out and about — it’s never been this bad. Attacks are up because people who are committing the crimes are not getting the treatment they normally would need.”  

A 24 year old emergency room technician who was pushed to the ground and assaulted exiting the 90th St.-Elmhurst Avenue 7 train station in Queens in late September said that because no one tried to help her, she's going to be arming herself. 

“I felt pretty defenseless. Now I would probably carry a knife or pepper spray in my pocket or my hand, in case I needed it,” she told The Post. 

Jane Manning, director of Women’s Equal Justice Project has other theories, telling The Post that she believes the assaults are a result of “aggressive explicit misogyny” rising in public. 

“On the right, we have a leading presidential candidate who bragged about brutalizing women. On the political left, we have organizations that are exclusively calling for domestic violence to be decriminalized,” she said. “The two go hand in hand.”

Meanwhile, law enforcement says that predators are simply looking to prey on the most vulnerable. Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice told The Post: “Criminals are opportunists, and they’re cowards, and they’re going to seek out the easiest targets available. It’s as simple as that.”

He added: “There are plenty of people that are out, specifically in the subway and the streets, that shouldn’t be out among the public…and it results in more victimization.”