From Wikipedia:
Researchers have since uncovered major inaccuracies in the New York Times article. Police interviews revealed that some witnesses had attempted to call the police.
Reporters at a competing news organization discovered in 1964 that the Times article was inconsistent with the facts, but they were unwilling at the time to challenge Times editor Abe Rosenthal. In 2007, an article in the American Psychologist found "no evidence for the presence of 38 witnesses, or that witnesses observed the murder, or that witnesses remained inactive". In 2016, the Times called its own reporting "flawed", stating that the original story "grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived"
Regardless, I wasn't arguing that urban culture decayed in the past year...which is to say, I wasn't trying to make this political. As you know, that is not my style.