Franklin Zimring quoted in The Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2013 (registration required)
“This is unprecedented in modern urban American history,” he says. While there is no easy answer for why the numbers are going down in New York and other urban areas, he says the murder decline in 2012 and the continuing drop in 2013 were distinct from the period from 1990 through 2009 when a study of his concluded that the NYPD’s policing policies “are the only obvious candidate to take credit for the crime drop.” He adds, “What we have now is good news without a ready explanation.”