Others see Kitty's slaying as the point from which the city began a long slide. One is Bruce O'Connor, who owns Bailey's Pub, beneath what was Kitty's apartment at 82-70 Austin Street. He has lived his whole life in Kew Gardens, long enough to see tree-lined streets become crack havens. And long enough to be making plans to move to Florida.

''There is no one death that has come since that can compare to it,'' Mr. O'Connnor said. ''It is the point we look back to and say, 'That's where things changed - the beginning of the end of decency.' ''

Yes, three times more people are murdered here now than in 1964. But the fact is that each generation of New Yorkers sees its time as the worst, probably correctly. ''An epidemic of crime,'' George Templeton Strong wrote in his diary in 1857. ''Most of my friends are investing in revolvers and carry them about at night.''

Moreover, there are enough recent examples of people coming to each other's aid to argue that New Yorkers are not hard as rocks. Hasidim in Brooklyn who twice ganged up on armed attackers, perhaps too enthusiastically. The unfortunate chap who fired his unlicensed revolver at two men mugging an elderly woman, only to be sent to jail on an earlier drug charge. And the many who get awards from the Police Department for chasing down purse snatchers and the like.

''People are more willing to come forward now,'' judged Frederick M. Lussen, the detective who ran the inquiry of Kitty's slaying.