In 2022, New York City’s Democratic mayor Eric Adams wanted to talk about crime. To anyone who would listen, he repeated again and again that crime in the city was rampant, unchecked, out of control. “I have never in my professional career—I have never witnessed crime at this level,” he said last year, echoing his campaign trail refrain that crime had reverted to 1990s levels. “We”—he said on the stump, implying the Democrat-controlled local government, “are waving a big white flag of surrender.” That rhetoric may have helped Adams win a crowded, low-turnout Democratic mayoral primary in 2021, but there...