Two men stabbed in broad daylight on Manhattan's Upper West Side

On a Thursday afternoon in one of Manhattan's most familiar neighborhoods, two men were stabbed within blocks of each other near Central Park West, their wounds serious but not fatal. A suspect was taken into custody as the city absorbed yet another reminder that violence does not confine itself to the margins of urban life. The proximity of the attacks — in time, in place, in the ordinariness of the hour — raises the quiet question that follows such events: what breaks, and where, before a person reaches for a blade in broad daylight?