Reunion Recalls Summer of Sam
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
It might seem odd that the summer of 1977, during which a serial killer stalked young couples and violence broke out during a day-long blackout, could bring smiles to the faces of New Yorkers who were there.
Today, though, politicians, police officers, and reporters are gathering together to remember that time and celebrate.
“There’s been a dramatic transformation of the city,” a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Eugene O’Donnell, said. “The city was sort of dying a slow death. Now, you drive through the city and everywhere you look — in some of those precincts that were no-go areas — there’s construction, there’s restaurants.”
Mr. O’Donnell has organized a conference at the college today to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the capture of David Berkowitz, a serial murderer first dubbed the “.44-caliber Killer” and now best known as “Son of Sam.”
The conference is also marking how far the city has come since then: In 1977, the city was in a financial crisis and the crime rate had jumped almost 75% in three years. It took police eight months to realize that a serial killer was behind a string of shootings, and another four months to catch him. A citywide power outage July 13-14 resulted in looting and vandalism visible in some neighborhoods to this day. More than 1,600 stores were damaged, 3,776 people were arrested, and a congressional study estimated the damages as more than $300 million.
“There were guns on every street corner,” a former homicide detective who worked on the Berkowitz case and went on to produce the television series “NYPD Blue,” Bill Clark, said. “It was really bad.”
Today, the city’s finances are in the black and the crime rate is down 75% since the early 1990s. During a citywide power outage in 2003, the most rebellious New Yorkers drank beer in the streets — a far cry from looting.
Still, not everything has changed, Mr. O’Donnell said.
In 1977, a pudgy, shy postal worker was disclosed to be the faceless enemy terrorizing the city. Today, Mr. O’Donnell said, New Yorkers are confronting new faceless enemy with the potential to do much more damage: terrorism.
“In a way, it was a more innocent time,” he said. “Never in our wildest dreams would we have imagined that killers would kill 3,000 of our friends and neighbors.”
