Gotham Gone Bonkers
‘IS it just me, or is it getting crazier out there?” So asks Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker while meeting his social worker, motioning to Gotham outside the window. It isn’t just you or the stuff of superhero thrillers. Gotham — the real Gotham — is in chaos, and disrespect for authority, and not just police authority, is sinking it deeper.
New York is suffering a serious slide in livability. Those who can have already fled the city, and it’s a big question mark whether they are coming back. Each day brings a new barrage of online-messageboard pleas, from people wondering if they can get out.
For many, it’s the radiating disorder. We watched the New York Police Department stand down as riots smashed neighborhoods in June. We watched our elected officials cower in the face of violent radicals; many stores remain boarded up.
Mayor de Blasio continues to pretend everything is OK. Instead of calming a worried city, he trolls President Trump by painting street murals. Only his enormous ego surpasses Hizzoner’s incompetence.
Last week, The Post reported that the NYPD is experiencing a 411 percent spike in early retirements. So many officers tried to retire early that the department had to limit the number of permitted daily applications. This is a crisis.
The #DefundPolice fools don’t get it: It isn’t just the police that will suffer as they push the city to the brink.
There have been more than 400 incidents since mid-April “in which transit workers have been battered, spit on or threatened by riders,” according to The City news site, citing Metropolitan Transportation Authority figures. These “unruly person” reports are telling a story of mass lawlessness.
The line between “unruly” and “violent” is razor-thin. In March, a subway operator was punched after asking a man not to ride between the cars. In May, another operator was stabbed by a woman who got into his cab. Last week, a bus driver was hit in the head from behind and woke up in the hospital.
An MTA subway operator told me he has noticed a lot more graffiti — and a curious shift in the people who give him trouble. He said these aren’t “the usual nuisance drunks,” but increasingly people fired up by rage, ideological or otherwise. “The cops are slowing down [enforcement], and certain people on the edge are noticing,” he says.
One veteran bus driver told me he recently faced a threatening and confrontational rider, who refused to get off at the end of the line. The incident had rattled the driver so badly, he took time off to recuperate.
All the civil servants I spoke with told me they were proud of their roles and felt that part of their job was to handle incidents with the public to the best of their ability. No one wanted to tell me a “sob story.” All were concerned about the increasing chaos and tense atmosphere.
One firefighter told me he’s seen an uptick in aggressive behavior that “crosses the line” but said that firefighters generally brush off risks as part of the job. “This is stuff we should be able to handle and mitigate,” he said, “and we have enjoyed a comfortable relationship with the public for many years.”
He noted that he senses “a pushback against institutional authority right now,” and it’s disrupting relationships firefighters have formed in communities. He added that the anti-authority attitude “puts people at odds with us, where normally we would have no problems.”
If our mayor is done with his coloring project, perhaps he can notice that the city is falling apart and the people who keep things running are in danger.
I’m a lifelong New Yorker, and I remember our bad old days. Disrespect for anyone in any kind of authority — MTA employees, teachers, police and firefighters — was the standard. Crime went hand-inhand with that disrespect. We desperately need new leadership to bring us together and pull us back from this moral precipice.
If we love New York, we have to fight for it, starting by choosing leaders who encourage respect for our civil servants. The ones we have now do not.