A recently released ex-con attacked 5 people in a violent spree through the Upper East Side and East Harlem.

A former convict released from prison a little over a month ago has been arrested after attacking 5 people with a knife and bottle Monday morning. Lavon Davis, 32, attacked 5 individuals while high on meth, according to police. 

Davis stabbed one person in the back with a knife, beat two men with his fists, and smashed bottles on two people. Davis, dressed in a black hoodie, jeans, and with a tattooed face, did not say anything to his victims, according to police.

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David reportedly knocked out Evans Bouchand, 65, causing him to collapse and strike his head. Bouchand, a panhandler, was well known in the area. Police reported that Bouchand suffered serious head injuries from the attack.

A New York City police officer stands behind a police line at the entrance of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City on March 12, 2022. - Two people were stabbed at New York's prestigious Museum of Modern Art on Saturday, police said, causing the museum to be evacuated. (Photo by Kena Betancur / AFP) (Photo by KENA BETANCUR/AFP via Getty Images)

New York City is grappling with skyrocketing crime. Murders went up 52% from 2019 to 2021, while shootings were up 104% and car theft 91%. In 2020, Black New Yorkers were victims in 65% of murders and 74% of shootings, the authors of the NYT essay wrote. 

In New York, policing and incarceration policies have been at the forefront of debate and such policies took effect as Black Lives Matter protests and the defund the police movement hit a fever pitch in 2020. 

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Progressive leaders have ushered in criminal justice reforms theoretically intended to rectify the imbalance of Black Americans who are arrested, convicted and incarcerated. But in practice, in cities like New York, these reforms have backfired, resulting in a spike in crime, with more Black Americans victimized and incarcerated, according to experts.

"A lot of these policies were designed explicitly around the idea that Blacks are so disproportionately represented in the people who are arrested and the people who are prosecuted and convicted and incarcerated — and trying to design criminal justice policy to back-engineer that number to be more on par with the racial demographics of everybody of society," Hannah E. Meyers, director of the policing and public safety initiative at the Manhattan Institute, told Fox News Digital in a phone interview in February. "That in itself has created a bigger problem." 

Fox News' Emma Colton contributed to this report.