If you’re a New Yorker, and you don’t like the way Mayor Adams is handling the city’s migrant crisis, consider that it could be worse.
You could have gotten Curtis Sliwa.
That’s right, Curtis Sliwa. He was the other guy on the ballot when Eric Adams was elected in 2021.
And, you can be certain that if Sliwa, by some miracle of miracles, had been given the keys to City Hall, the migrant crisis would have been even more of a calamity.
For one thing, Sliwa would have labeled a lot of longtime New Yorkers as migrants because his definition would have included everyone who speaks Spanish.
As Sliwa’s Goonian Angels roughed up a Hispanic man on live TV in Times Square last week, Sliwa misidentified the victim as a “migrant.”
He later explained his mistake by saying he had believed the man was a migrant because he was “speaking Spanish,” according to The Associated Press.
That only made it worse.
The bizarre episode unfolded during a prime-time Fox News segment featuring Sliwa and members of the Guardian Angels, the anti-crime patrol group he founded in 1979, talking about disorder and crime Sliwa said was caused by the city’s newest arrivals.
Sliwa was in Times Square speaking with Fox News host Sean Hannity when Sliwa’s squad — in their signature red berets and bomber jackets — broke away to tend to an off-screen disturbance.
At Sliwa’s direction, the camera panned to show them confronting an unidentified man, pushing him to the sidewalk and placing him in a headlock.
Sliwa gave the play-by-play as if he were sitting on the sideline during a Knicks game at the Garden.
“In fact, our guys have just taken down one of the migrant guys on the corner of 42nd and Seventh where all of this has taken place,” Sliwa told Hannity, as he threw his hands in the air.
“They’ve taken over!”
Sliwa also called the man a shoplifter, an allegation cops could not substantiate.
“Let’s just say we gave him a little pain compliance,” Sliwa, the 2021 GOP mayoral candidate, continued during the broadcast. “His mother back in Venezuela felt the vibrations. He’s sucking concrete.”
As it turned out, the accosted man was neither a migrant nor a shoplifter, just a 22-year-old man from the Bronx trying to get by a bunch of people on a busy, crowded sidewalk.
The 22-year-old eventually received a summons for disorderly conduct.
Days later, the strange ordeal took another twist when one of the Guardian Angels, Kimberly Torres, filed a harassment complaint against the Bronx man.
Meanwhile, Sliwa, a conservative talk radio host, kinda sorta apologized for taking advantage of the city’s migrant hysteria to score a few cheap political points.
“I apologize for mischaracterizing the man’s citizenship status, misunderstanding what had caused Guardian Angels to step in,” Sliwa said on social media Friday. “The organization and its members would not stand by when someone has hurt a woman, while creating an unsafe situation for all.”
Can we all just get a grip? Can we all just take it down a notch?
Yes, it was a group of migrants who viciously attacked a pair of police officers last month who were trying to make an arrest.
And, yes, it was a migrant who was arrested and charged with shooting a tourist and firing at a police officer in Times Square last week.
But that is no reason to stoke fears of a “migrant crime wave,” when the same police department whose officers were attacked says the city’s crime rate remains largely unchanged since the arrival of tens of thousands of asylum seekers.
Unless speaking Spanish is now a crime.
.
Guardian Angels prove New York dodged bullet by keeping Curtis Sliwa out of City Hall — LEONARD GREENE
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11.02.2024
If you’re a New Yorker, and you don’t like the way Mayor Adams is handling the city’s migrant crisis, consider that it could be worse.
You could have gotten Curtis Sliwa.
That’s right, Curtis Sliwa. He was the other guy on the ballot when Eric Adams was elected in 2021.
And, you can be certain that if Sliwa, by some miracle of miracles, had been given the keys to City Hall, the migrant crisis would have been even more of a calamity.
For one thing, Sliwa would have labeled a lot of longtime New Yorkers as migrants because his definition would have included everyone who speaks Spanish.
As Sliwa’s Goonian Angels roughed up a Hispanic man on live TV in Times Square last week, Sliwa misidentified the victim as a “migrant.”
He later explained his mistake by saying he had believed the man was a migrant because he was “speaking Spanish,” according to The........
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