A 56 percent decline in violent crime during Rudy Giuliani's mayoral tenure in New York City, against a 28 percent national decline over the same period, is the ratio Judge Adam Levy points to when arguing Los Angeles can be turned around quickly. Property crime fell 65 percent in New York City during Giuliani's term versus 26 percent nationally, per the National Bureau of Economic Research. Levy, a former Republican district attorney from a county in upstate New York and son of television judge Judy Sheindlin, told Fox News Digital he could fix Los Angeles "in a month."
Levy's criminal justice checklist
Levy's prescription centers on prosecutorial triage. As mayor, he said, he would direct the district attorney to concentrate resources on repeat and violent offenders while routing first-time offenders into community-service programs. Successful completion would clear the offense from the record. Failure to complete the program would trigger prosecution, leaving a permanent record that affects housing, benefits, and employment eligibility.
He argued that judicial appointments matter as much as DA direction. Mayors who appoint judges "that really want to be social workers," in Levy's framing, undermine the enforcement chain. As a Republican DA in upstate New York, he said he maintained bipartisan cooperation because both sides agreed on protecting families first.
The Giuliani model
Levy traced those New York City crime declines to the "broken windows" policing strategy, which directs enforcement at minor offenses to suppress broader criminal activity. His argument runs sequentially: Giuliani cleared panhandling and open-air disorder, which created the conditions for Michael Bloomberg to attract businesses back. "You couldn't have Bloomberg without Giuliani," Levy told Fox News Digital.
His new courtroom show, "Adam's Law," distributed by CBS Media Ventures and produced by Judy Sheindlin's Queen Bee Productions, premieres in national syndication on September 14.
Los Angeles by the numbers
The city's own data complicates the framing. The Los Angeles Police Department recorded a homicide rate of 5.9 per 100,000 residents in 2025, the lowest figure since 1959. Mayor Karen Bass cited two consecutive years of declining violent crime and described the city as "safer than it's been in decades."
Former reality television personality Spencer Pratt, who lost his home in the Palisades fires, challenged Bass in the June primary largely on her wildfire response and public-safety record. He surged in polls before failing to advance. Levy told Fox News Digital the election result was "obviously not" a reckoning for city leadership.