Zürcher Nachrichten - Felony assaults on older New Yorkers rise sharply, police data show

The total compares with 1,853 cases over the same period in 2025 and 870 in 2018. Nearly 80 per cent of the 2026 cases have produced an arrest, police said, while repeat offending has become a central concern. In 2025, 462 suspects were arrested for at least three felony assaults in a year, up from 158 people in 2018. A police source said the felony-assault reoffending rate, defined here as another crime within 30 days, was up 50 per cent this year.

Retired NYPD detective and John Jay College adjunct professor Michael Alcazar attributed part of the rise to repeat offenders cycling through the justice system and insufficient treatment for people with serious mental illness. Former NYPD crime-analysis supervisor Christopher Herrmann said the pattern was particularly concerning because major crime citywide was down 6 per cent. The city’s population aged 65 and above has grown by about 500,000, or 53 per cent, over two decades, but Herrmann said that increase did not explain the 143 per cent rise in assaults.

Recent cases include an 81-year-old woman punched in Jackson Heights on July 16; a 72-year-old man pushed onto subway tracks at the 47th-50th Streets-Rockefeller Center station on August 19, suffering a broken rib and dislocated shoulder; and an 85-year-old woman left unconscious with a brain bleed after being pushed near East 16th Street and Union Square on June 1. In the subway case, Francisco Garcia, 40, was arrested on assault charges and held at Rikers Island pending a hearing.

F.E.Ackermann--NZN