The number of murders in New York City dropped to a record low for The New York City of the s, however, looked very different from the safe and gentrified metropolis we know today.
The Bowery, now lined with luxury apartments, housed much of the city's illicit activities, while drug dealers and prostitutes worked openly from Park Slope to Times Square. Industrial decline, economic stagnation, and drug use led to the dramatic downturn for America's largest city.
A year-old runaway from Cambridge, Massachusetts, she resorted to prostitution to survive New York City until one of her customers choked her with a metal chain in The photo was taken five days after her murder. A poster advertises a peep show in Times Square, the epicenter of the sex industry in New York City in This photo from shows three vials of pure heroin.
By the '80s, Bryant Park became known as "Needle Park," because of the used syringes strewn across the ground. Heroin abuse didn't decline until the '90s. Source: Drugpolicy.
Source: National Institute of Drug Abuse. Source: New York Times. Stanley Patz β Etan's father β and his son Ari hold a photo of Etan on the fire escape of their home. Investigators began searching a basement near the Patz's home in , but they never found the boy's remains. In the first two months of , six murders occurred on the subway. Nine occurred that whole year. By September , the police recorded over felonies on the subway every week, the highest crime rate for any mass transit network in the world.
