Happy now?
It was only a couple of years ago that so-called progressives were out in the streets leading the charge to defund the police — a backwards effort to punish public safety amid increasing acts of police brutality.
Be careful what you wish for.
Mayor Adams announced last week that he is planning to freeze hiring of new police officers for the foreseeable future.
The budget plan would bring Police Academy classes to a halt at a time when the NYPD’s uniformed ranks remain well below pre-pandemic levels.
According to department data, there are currently about 33,500 NYPD officers — about 1,400 fewer than the department is budgeted for, and about 2,700 fewer than were on the beat in 2019.
Budget cuts would also mean a reduction in police overtime.
Adams, a former NYPD captain, is defunding the police.
Are you happy now?
Major felonies spiked in 2021 and 2022 — but mostly have been trending downward in 2023.
Murders and rapes are down year-to-date. Burglaries, robberies and shootings are also down so far in 2023 compared to the same period of 2022. But bias crimes recently have gone off the charts, particularly hate crimes against Jews in the weeks since the war in Hamas started.
Crime recently is soaring on the subways and in public housing.
“This is truly a disaster for every New Yorker who cares about safe streets,” Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry said in a statement.
“Cops are already stretched to our breaking point, and these cuts will return us to staffing levels we haven’t seen since the crime epidemic of the ‘80s and ‘90s. We cannot go back there.”
If you ask some New Yorkers, we’re already there.
Just last week, a Queens man was thrown to his death from the hood of a fleeing thief’s car.
A crazed landlord in Queens used a knife to butcher his girlfriend and two tenants he said owed him back rent.
An 82-year-old taxi driver was beaten unconscious on the Lower East Side during a fight over a fare.
Adams said the cuts and the threat to public safety are severe, but unavoidable.
“This is probably one of the most painful exercises I’ve gone through,” Adams said. “When you look at … what the numbers of police officers are going to be and how we’ve done so well in dropping crime in our city, when we look at the school safety agents, when we look at some of the other initiatives that we’re doing — it’s going to be painful for New Yorkers.”
It’ll be painful even for progressives. Their idea — rarely communicated well — was to remove funds from police departments, including the NYPD, and reallocate them to non-policing forms of public safety, such as social services, youth services, housing, education and healthcare.
But guess what? Those services are facing cuts, too.
Adams’ budget ax is targeting city schools, where universal pre-K would be eliminated; Sanitation, which would reduce sidewalk trash bins and street cleaning, and libraries, which would shut down on Sundays.
The mayor said he is trying to close a $12 billion budget gap created by the city’s migrant crisis.
The hope remains that the federal government will step in and help absorb the cost of New York City’s asylum seekers, or get other cities and states to share the migrant burden.
Until then, Adams said, New Yorkers must pay the price, sacrificing a degree of public safety in the process.
In other words, he has to defund the police — and the Fire Department, and the schools, and the libraries, and Sanitation.
That doesn’t seem progressive at all.
Progressives wanted Mayor Adams to defund the NYPD — but not like this: LEONARD GREENE
7
26
19.11.2023
Happy now?
It was only a couple of years ago that so-called progressives were out in the streets leading the charge to defund the police — a backwards effort to punish public safety amid increasing acts of police brutality.
Be careful what you wish for.
Mayor Adams announced last week that he is planning to freeze hiring of new police officers for the foreseeable future.
The budget plan would bring Police Academy classes to a halt at a time when the NYPD’s uniformed ranks remain well below pre-pandemic levels.
According to department data, there are currently about 33,500 NYPD officers — about 1,400 fewer than the department is budgeted for, and about 2,700 fewer than were on the beat in 2019.
Budget cuts would also mean a reduction in police overtime.
Adams, a former NYPD captain, is defunding the police.
Are you happy now?
Major felonies spiked in 2021 and........
© NY Daily News
visit website
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Nikkei Editorial
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
