Crime and the Race for Mayor
By Dan Murphy
One of the major issues in the race for Yonkers Mayor is crime. Mayor Mike Spano has highlighted the good work of the Yonkers Police Department in making Yonkers one of the safest cities. Councilman Anthony Merante, the republican candidate for mayor, said in a recent debate that the crime statistic may not be telling the whole story.
With videos of many crimes recorded, we see many of the crimes that are occurring. But overall, crime in Yonkers is lower than in city’s smaller than Yonkers, like Mt. Vernon, Newburgh and Rochester.
The personal-finance website WalletHub released its report on 2023’s Safest Cities in America, and Yonkers was named the safest city in New York State and the 8th Safest City in the country. Safety in Yonkers (1=Safest, 91=Avg.):
Overall rank for Yonkers: 8th
25th – Traffic Fatalities per Capita
27th – Law-Enforcement Employees per Capita
39th – Assaults per Capita
80th – Unemployment Rate
44th – % of Uninsured Population
39th – Natural-Disaster Risk Level
For the full report, please visit:
https://wallethub.com/edu/safest-cities-in-america/41926.
Yonkers was the only comunity in Westchester named in the report, and Yonkers has consistently been in the top 100 safest city’s in America for the past 6 years.
In a related story, County Executive George Latimer highlighted the fact that countywide, Westchester crime rates are down. Read that story at Yonkerstimes.com.