One of our favorite stories about politics and policy concerns the United States Gold Commission. After a decade of inflation, it was set up early in the Reagan years to study the idea of returning to a gold standard of some kind. And there were a lot of us who loved the idea. The only problem was that President Carter had already installed Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and by the early 1980s, when the commission sat, he had already managed to put inflation into rapid retreat. So the idea of a gold standard fell by the wayside, abandoned even by its supporters. Why bring in the heavyweight if the battle was being won by other means?

Which is sort of where Albany came out in respect of capital punishment, which – we kind of like the way the Daily News phrased it in an obituary editorial – died Tuesday at the age of 10. “Survivors,” the News said, “include four murderers on Death Row.” We’re all for the death penalty and would urge a vote to repair New York’s law so it could withstand the Court of Appeals. But it’s hard to get into too much of a swivet over the question at a time when, without a death penalty, the statistics for what would be capital crimes are falling so precipitously.

In the case of New York City, the achievement has been astounding. Mayor Bloomberg’s critics are trying to make hay – as our Dina Temple-Raston reported yesterday – with the latest figures from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that show that the murder rate in New York fell by only 9.7% in the period while it fell 25.2% in, say, Chicago. But, as Bloomberg administration officials note, the New York figures reflect a lower crime base. The fact is that more murders took place in Chicago, a crossroads that is little more than a third the size of New York. In comparison it’s a bloody crossroads indeed.

A lot of people deserve credit for the fact that Mr. Bloomberg has been able to improve on the record of the crime-busting mayor who came before him. The city has had a series of strong police commissioners, capped by our own Raymond Kelly. It also has a lot of terrific officers and prosecutors. And we tend to think it has a citizenry that is discovering how much it likes the quality of life that comes with good policing and a crime rate that makes the city the safest major city in the country – and New York a state where the crime statistics seem to put the death penalty debate on the back burner.

That isn’t to say that even one crime deserving of the death penalty – and we think here of the March 10, 2003, murders on Staten Island of the two New York City police detectives, James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews – isn’t one too many. Fortunately, in that particular case, federal prosecutors have taken up the banner so that a capital punishment is still available. Pursuing the case as capital sends the message that the people of the United States value the risks our police officers take for us. As Commissioner Kelly himself said when federal indictments were brought against the alleged killers in that case: “Anyone who murders a police officer should himself forfeit his life. We hope it also gives some measure of justice to the families of these heroic officers.”