Stabbing Surge Stumps NYC Police, Sows Fear Among Residents

New York City has seen a 20 percent increase in stabbings this year compared with last, and police say they don’t understand why it’s happening or what to do about it.

While most of the attacks are part of domestic disputes in homes, random assaults without apparent motives are on the rise. As of March 13, police recorded 809 incidents, up from 673 last year. So far there have been 20 attacks in the subways -- nine more than last year -- including a fatal encounter Wednesday in an East Harlem station.

Kitchen knives, screw drivers, box cutters and machetes are among the weapons used. The stabbings have overshadowed a promising crime trend showing a 30 percent decline in homicides so far this year from last and a 19 percent drop in shootings. Tabloid headlines reporting a stabbing almost every day in the most populous U.S. city have heightened the police department’s concern about their impact on the public.

“The numbers are relatively very small, but stabbings are occurring all over the city,” Robert Boyce, the department’s chief of detectives, said in a telephone interview. “The random nature of some of these crimes affect everyone because it’s disturbing when it happens to just regular folks.”

No Warning

In January, a surveillance camera captured video of a man striding beside a 24-year-old woman on a sidewalk in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood and, without warning, slicing her face twice. In another attack that month, a 71-year-old woman required 30 stitches after a man with a razor opened a four-inch gash on her left cheek as she sat on a subway train in lower Manhattan. On March 10, a man rushed up from behind and slashed a 53-year-old woman’s neck on a residential street in Brooklyn.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-18/stabbing-surge-stumps-nyc-police-sows-fear-among-residents