Welcome to the Bigger Apple Podcast. I'm Leanna Zagari, editor of the Bigger Apple at the Manhattan Institute.

And I'm Nicole Jeline, a senior fellow here at the Manhattan Institute. Each week, we'll dig into one big issue shaping life in New York City and what other cities can learn from it.

The show grew out of the conversations we've been having around the office and in the bigger Apple newsletter

about how to fix cities at a time when so much feels uncertain and so much is changing.

We'll sometimes be bringing on guests from among our Manhattan Institute colleagues and from across the city,

people who think deeply about housing, safety, education, transit, and everything that makes

urban life work or not work. And with the mayor's race just weeks away, we're starting with

one of the biggest topics of all, public safety. What's really driving the numbers, how people

feel on the ground, and what's working, and what isn't when it comes to making New York safer.

So perceptions and reality. Nicole, take it away. So yes, there's this issue of perception and

reality. And we've constantly heard over the past five years that people's perception is

different from the facts and different from the reality.

But that's not in fact true. The numbers back up people's perceptions of greater on safety and

in other surveys greater disorder, both on the streets and the subways. People feel less safe

and they perceive more disorder because there is, in fact,

less safety and less order. And, you know, I'll just give you a couple of quick numbers.

Total felonies, although they are down a little bit over the past year, are still 29% higher

than they were in New York City than in 2019.

Across your range of crimes from robbery to assault, you know, your seven major felonies,

things are much less safe than they were in the year going into the pandemic.

That is a big change for people to process. Smaller crimes,

petty larceny, you know, this is why all the stuff is locked up in the drugstore. These are

...