Governor Andrew Cuomo just gave his favorite punching bag another heavy workout, taking Mayor Bill de Blasio on task for anti-police graffiti that disfigures public buildings across Lower Manhattan.
Too bad he didn’t have much to say about the anti-police politicians who ruined New York’s public square. Or the spent bullet casings that litter the city streets on a given morning. There is a connection between the two, you know.
“I say to the mayor: cleaning the city is important. Now you have a lot of negativity in the air. Positive progress, advance, ”Cuomo ordered during a press conference in Manhattan on Thursday.
It was another moment through the mirror for New York, New York, where the shootings increased, the arrests decreased, and all the cops live with their heads on the ground.
It is no secret that gun crime has broken out in New York: that the city suffered its bloodiest June in 25 years, that a 1-year-old boy was killed on July 13 at a barbecue in Brooklyn, and that while Gotham It’s not Chicago, Baltimore or Philly yet, the trend line is terrifying.
But then there is this, which has not received enough attention: between mid-June and mid-July, a period when the city was rocked by gunshots, a double-digit increase in crime and a violent civic disorder, the arrests were 62 percent mind-blowing compared to 2019.
Specifically, gun arrests fell by 67 percent. Normally this would indicate fewer weapons on the street, but the municipal casualty count clearly shows that something else is happening.
Perhaps it is that the police, without fools, fully recognize the empowering emergence of a political movement dedicated to isolating criminals from the consequences of their crimes. And that they are reluctant to be victims of it.
This appears to have completely omitted the attention of Cuomo and the city’s mayor. It was also as predictable as sunrise.
Albany’s “reform” of bail and impediments to reasonable prosecution imposed on district attorneys last year got things going.
Official enthusiasm for the #DefundThePolice movement, including Cuomo’s exaggerated executive order imposing structural changes on local police departments across the state, did not help.
And then came the City Council’s truly ignorant criminalization of reasonable and proven arrest protocols to resist suspects, legislation that Smilin ‘Bill de Blasio staged a road show to The Bronx to sign.
The bill horrifies law professionals everywhere: Westchester County and the state police, for example, have warned their officers not to get involved with criminal suspects in the city. Westchester police officers regularly pass the city, and Cuomo has stationed thousands of soldiers in Manhattan, so this is a big problem.
And while the surprising decline in arrests in New York began weeks ago, it is equally true that the bill guarantees even fewer arrests in the future. This is fine if your goal is to effectively help criminals avoid jail, but perhaps not so hot if your child has just been hit by a stray bullet at a family cookout.
As for the police themselves, these are options:
- They may be at risk of criminal prosecution for a wandering trial during a street confrontation or for an out-of-place knee or elbow while restraining a violently resisting suspect.
- Or they can sit on their patrols and look away, reasonably confident that the problem will simply go away.
Get on that patrol. Make that decision: knowing full well that the problem won’t really go away, you will simply move down a bit.
But it won’t be your problem. It makes a big difference, doesn’t it?
None of this is unknown territory. John Lindsay, arguably the worst city mayor of the 20th century, instituted low-impact police in the late 1960s, setting in motion a criminal explosion that took a generation to contain.
De Blasio, a big morning line favorite for the worst of the current century, is following suit. That’s the message in shooting statistics and with the dramatic drop in arrests.
But while the warning is not always foreboding, Cuomo cannot credibly plead ignorance. And there hasn’t been De Blasio nit too small for the governor to choose for the past seven years, so it’s not that he’s shy or anything.
No, not speaking clearly here would be a manifest act of cowardice. Graffiti cleanup is important, but lives matter more, and Andrew Cuomo needs to say it.
Twitter: @ rlmac2
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