FILE – In this May 1, 2018, file photo, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks during a news conference in Newark, N.J. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)

If you live in New York City, you know it already but if you don’t, you may not be aware that there has been a dramatic rise in crime rates since the beginning of the year, as shown in a recent report done by CBS New York:

Screen grab via CBS New York.

Fortunately, murder and rape are down by 20% and 18% respectively, but the alarming jump in the number of other crimes is causing city leaders including Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio to finally sound alarm bells about the state’s new criminal justice reforms, which went into effect at the beginning of the year:

Mayor Bill de Blasio linked a recent crime surge in the Big Apple to the state’s controversial overhaul of bail laws Friday, after spending a week dancing around the matter.

“We had, for six years, steady decreases in crime across the board. There’s not a whole lot of other environmental things that have changed recently,” Hizzoner told WNYC’s Brian Lehrer on new CompStat data that shows crime has soared since the new laws took effect at the start of 2020. “It sort of stands out like a sore thumb that this is the single biggest new thing in the equation and we saw an extraordinary jump.”

“Of course there’s always a possibility this is plain statistical variation, that happens sometimes,” he added. “But I think it’s pretty clear that there’s only one new major piece in the equation.”

Both de Blasio and Democratic leaders including Gov. Andrew Cuomo have been blasted by law enforcement officials and community leaders all over the state since the controversial criminal justice reforms went into effect in January, and with good reason.

There have been a number of disturbing incidents involving repeat offenders that have happened as a direct result of the bail reform part of the law, which judges began implementing in December 2018.

What wasn’t widely known about the criminal justice reform laws until recently, however, was what is now allowed during the discovery process:

Revisions in discovery procedure mean that defendants now free on no-bail will be told where key witnesses against them live; it takes little imagination to see where that will lead: Look for witness shortages, one way or another.

That is just … insane. Unfortunately, there may already be at least two victims that were injured or killed as a result of this new process.

Just last week, a witness in an upcoming MS-13 case was found murdered in New Cassel and a few days before that one was shot.

The Nassau police commissioner and the county district attorney initially blamed the criminal justice reforms Cuomo signed into law last year, but have backed down in the face of criticisms from “progressive” groups like the NYCLU, news reports disputing the claim, and law enforcement’s inability to conclusively prove the new reform laws had anything to do with the witnesses’ murder.

Watch a report from CBS New York on New York City’s crime problems and how de Blasio is responding to critics below:

Even Democratic officials at the state level have signaled they would be on board with reforming the original reforms, but how soon that happens and what the changes will actually be is anyone’s guess.

In the meantime, because these same Democrats didn’t listen when so many people were raising the roof about the proposed changes prior to their enactment, alleged criminals will still be let off the hook and free to commit crimes again, and the problems getting witnesses to testify will rise.

(Hat tip: Jazz Shaw at Hot Air)