How dangerous was New York City in the 1970s and 1980s?

The crime rates were high because everyone ate soooo much junk. Processed food back then. They make you violent. Now that the millennial hipsters are bringing back organic food the crime rates are dropping!

It was pretty bad at points and in certain areas. The murder rate is often used as a proxy for general levels of violent crime. The current murder rate is less than 350 people per year (in a city of several million people). In the by 1972, the murder rate had soared past 1500 year and stayed kept climbing until it peaked in 1990 at over 2000 a year. The stereotypes in the media of crime everywhere were exaggerations, but crime really was rampant in the city.

I lived there in the 1970s. I had a rent-stabilized apartment so I was lucky. The city services were non-existent, the city went bankrupt and Pres. Ford refused a bail out. Even the elevators at my college stopped working. There was a lot of drug dealing out in the open, a lot of crime in the streets, everything was going on. We had the blackout, the garbage strike, the transit strike and Elvis died. It was pretty exciting. I was not from NY and was an adult when I went there in 1976.

It was a lot crappier back then. The crime rate was much higher back then. There That number didn't come down below 1000 until 1998. Most of the South Bronx consisted of burned out buildings back then. Times Square was mostly peep shows and nudie bars and was a mess. Every subway car was covered in graffiti (along with a lot of the city itself). The city was practically bankrupt in the '70s.