Cop

These friendly cops let me take their picture in Times Square. It has been a long time since the counter revolution named them "pigs." Today the NYPD the largest metro police force in the US with 37,838 uniforms and another 10,500 auxiliary police, school safety agents and traffic enforcement wardens. This compares to Scotland Yard: At February 2010, London owned 33,258 sworn officers and 2,988 Special Constables, 14,332 civilian police staff, and 4,520 non-sworn Police Community Support Officers.

In 1989, the year I arrived in NY, the city surpassed 2,000 murders before peaking at 2,245 in 1990 (today the figure 500 or at historical lows). Back then, New York a sinister, exciting, place. One considered transportation between parties or clubs or wherever with safety in mind. The subway menacing. My girlfriend refused to leave my flat unaccompanied and who can blame her? While the chance of being mugged, let alone kilt, in a city of 7 million people fractional, the daily, gory, reportage made it feel out of control. Feeble Mayor Dinkins did not help.

London, by contrast, an odd far-away fairyland with its red phone booths and bobbies who walked their beat sans fire arms. How could a similar urban city, coming through a brutal economic transformation, be so much kinder? For starters, London did not have a crack problem (heroine, yes). Londoners not armed with Saturday Night Specials or other hand guns. The social services removed a desperate edge. In 1990, London's homicide rate 184 (1990 population: 6.7 million).

New York's murder decline well documented and a combination of Mayor Giuliani's focus on petty crime, jail-sentencing and data tracking+the easement of hard drugs and the return of the city's economy reversed the 1980s. Giuliani brought back the street cop, otherwise found behind the wheel, who became friendly with the neighborhood. Graffiti disappeared and crime

dropped dramatically - today's murder rate one quarter of 1990. Police respected and no longer considered the adversary (view: Serpico, The Bad Lieutenant). I do not spot a gum wrapper on the Upper West Side.

Yes, New York City glitters. Manhattan one giant Gap or Banana Republic or Starbucks - each on every corner. Gone is the violence, the grit, the fear - replaced by diners that serve $20 goat cheese omelettes. Nobody smokes. The Yankees have a billion-dollar ballpark. Minorities and artist leave Manhattan for cheaper rent; Greenwich Village no longer gay. Too expensive. Studio 54 long-disappeared and The Palladium now a NYU dormitory. While it may be easy to reminisce of New York's creative, hard, '70s, I was there for the end of that. Nobody wants to revisit 1990.

Sources: US Census, UK Office for National Statistics, London Metropolitan Police, office, NYPD

"When you confront a problem you begin to solve it."
--Rudy Giuliani