16% Of NYers Say They've Been Physically Assaulted In Past Year: Poll

NEW YORK CITY — A staggering 16 percent of New York City dwellers say they've been physically assaulted in the past year, according to a new poll.

Widespread fear of crime, despite ongoing drops in major felonies, loomed large in a Siena College poll released Wednesday.

The pervasive angst was perhaps best encapsulated in one statistic: 41 percent of all New Yorkers told pollsters that they've never been this worried for their personal safety.

"Is this the worst it’s ever been?" said Don Levy, the director of the Siena College Research Institute, in a statement.

The answer to Levy's question, at least according to NYPD data, is a firm "no."

Crime in New York City has been on a steady decline in 2023, NYPD stats show.

And while major arrests are at a 25-year-high, crime overall is much lower than those days when Rudy Giuliani was mayor, police officials have pointed out.

Mayor Eric Adams, when asked about the poll Thursday on Fox5, blamed "the morning papers" for presenting New Yorkers with a daily dose of horrific crimes that have happened in the city.

"It plays on your psyche," he said.

But Adams, a former NYPD cop, himself has arguably been guilty of overstating how bad crime is within the city.

"In my professional career, I have never witnessed crime at this level, and the willingness to carry guns and the willingness to use a gun," he said in May 2022.

Back in 1990 when Adams was a few years into his career as a cop, there were 2,262 murders across the city, according to NYPD crime statistics. Last year, there were 438 murders.

But while New York City's crime rates are far below the highs seen in the 1980s and 1990s, many city dwellers told Siena's pollsters they've still been directly affected by crime.

Besides the 16 percent of New York City dwellers who said they've been assaulted in the past year, the same percentage also told pollsters they were the victim of a burglary during the same span, according to the Siena poll.

More than 40 percent of city dwellers said they have felt threatened by a stranger's behavior in a public place, the poll found.

"As sobering as the percentages are for having been actually victimized, or having witnessed threatening events, perhaps due to those numbers, even greater percentages are concerned that something may happen to them," Levy said in a statement.

Read the full Siena poll here.