George Stacy was fairly happy, though of course not because he had been promoted from lieutenant to captain and become the precinct commander of NYPD's 12th Precinct, nor because he had time today to have lunch with Gwen and Peter.
Rather, he genuinely believed that the second wave of superheroes, which had begun when Tony Stark announced he was Iron Man in 2010 and peaked with the Battle of New York, was more or less coming to an end. What followed should be a period of relative ease.
"New York City's crime rate got especially bad in the second half of last year. It looked like it was sprinting straight toward Baltimore, but it improved a lot in the first half of this year. By the second half, it should be back to pre-Battle of New York levels."
George Stacy spoke as he ate fried rice. Unlike what Peter had imagined, there was a standard American Chinese restaurant right outside the 12th Precinct. It served all kinds of American Chinese food—classic General Tso's chicken, orange chicken, and so on—loaded with oil, salt, and sugar. It felt like the sort of place that belonged outside a construction site, not here.
And, of course, there were the classic fortune cookies, a kind of Chinese food with absolutely nothing to do with Chinese cuisine.
"So, if I can keep pushing the crime rate down next year, I'll finally be able to use my annual leave instead of working myself to the bone all year."
Hearing her father, Gwen smiled helplessly. "That's assuming you don't get promoted again, Dad."
"...Probably not. I don't think so. After all, the layoffs are already done. More than ten thousand people."
The NYPD had more than fifty thousand employees in total, including around thirty-eight thousand officers and over