I get why it's tough, when this sub has long been a target of brigading by people who have no connection to NYC but have tied the validity of their political views to shitting on us. The mods seem to be outnumbered, particularly around election season. I agree, it sucks, but I'm not sure I blame the mods, I blame the bad-faith commenters.

Also worth noting, this particular thread probably should have been deleted regardless. It was a single person's personal complaint, which is explicitly against the sub rules. If those were allowed, and every time a person wanted to vent about crime, or rent prices, or whatever else it would stay up, this sub would be utterly unusable. There should be a higher burden for the removal of threads about specific news articles or things like that, but personal complaint threads really don't do much to improve the conversation here.