New York’s Cop Out
July 3 | Posted by mrossol | American Thought, Policing, Ruling Class, The LeftWhat a sorry state of liberal politicians. Yes, people (?) continue to vote them into office. As my father often says: “People get what they deserve.” mrossol
WSJ 7/2/2020.
For those wondering where the Defund the Police movement is going, look no further than New York City. On Tuesday the City Council endorsed Mayor Bill de Blasio’s bid to cut $1 billion from the police—roughly 17% of the department’s budget.
New York isn’t the only city moving to defund its police, but it bears particular significance as America’s commercial capital. And its funding cuts are especially striking because it comes in a place that implemented the policing revolution that transformed the Big Apple from a crime-ridden metropolis in the early 1990s into what it was in 2014 when Mr. de Blasio was sworn in: America’s safest big city. Thousands of New Yorkers are alive today because of this policing revolution’s success at reducing the murder rate.
No doubt the City Council was mindful of the protesters gathered outside their building who clashed with police. Far from being happy with the cut, the protesters complained the $1 billion wasn’t nearly enough. It never is.
When Mr. de Blasio first ran for mayor, he campaigned against the police and vowed to end a tactic called stop and frisk. Liberals claimed it wasn’t responsible for the reduction in crime, which they attributed to demographics. In 2013 federal Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that stop and frisk was unconstitutional, and eventually the city abandoned it.
Now the antipolicing efforts are accelerating. The City Council has eased the laws against such quality-of-life offenses as vagrancy and public urination, and Manhattan’s district attorney is no longer prosecuting them. Governor Andrew Cuomo’s bail reform this year lets even repeat offenders back on the streets immediately. In recent weeks the police department dismantled its plainclothes anti-crime units under political pressure. The head of the police captains association has called for ending the highly successful CompStat system that tracks crimes across the city and helps police focus on high-crime neighborhoods. The union says it encourages too many police interactions with minorities that result in police being blamed.
The result is already more crime. For the first half of 2020, murders in New York City rose 21% over the same period a year ago, shootings are up 46% and shooting victims are up 53%. The victims include a 17-year-old high school basketball star, Brandon Hendricks, who was gunned down Sunday night in the Bronx while attending a barbecue.
“You have a criminal justice system that is imploding,” NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea told reporters last week. “Imploding. That’s the kindest way to put it.” The New York Post reports that since the George Floyd protests began police retirements are spiking, with 272 cops choosing to leave the force—compared with 183 over the same period last year. They won’t be replaced as the city’s budget cuts will forgo two of the next four classes of NYPD recruits, reducing the headcount by 1,163 uniformed officers (out of some 36,000).
As police retreat from the anti-crime lessons of the last three decades, and even from active policing lest cops be put in the dock, the crime rate in New York will bear close watching. If violence and disorder continue to rise, the fault will lie with the rich liberals who empower criminals and then leave the consequences to be suffered by the most vulnerable.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yorks-cop-out-11593731047?mod=opinion_lead_pos3
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