Dishonest, Callous & Naive
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s reaction to the surge of violence in the city she represents is dishonest, callous and naive. Dishonest. “Do we think this has to do with the fact that there’s record unemployment in the United States right now?” the progressive said in a town hall Thursday. “Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren’t paying their rent and are scared to pay their rent. And so they go out and they need to feed their child and they don’t have money. So, you maybe have to — they’re put in a position where they feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry that night.”
Shoplifting is not what is plaguing New York City right now, and she knows it. Petit larcenies are down 7.8 percent for the year so far. Murders are up 23 percent. The number of shooting victims is up 70.4 percent. These are not robberies by desperate people; they are gang-related, drug-related, gun-related.
When a man is shot dead in a drive-by, clutching the hand of his 6-year-old daughter in a crosswalk, it is not about going hungry.
Callous. On the July 4 weekend alone, 10 were killed — almost every one an African-American male. For this increase in bloodshed, AOC blames . . . the NYPD.
“Keep in mind that this uptick in crime that’s happening right now is with a $6 billion New York City Police Department budget,” she said on Thursday. “We have shoved more and more and more money into the NYPD. It has not prevented this uptick in crime.”
Which is exactly backward. In 1990, there were 2,245 murders in the city. Thanks to an
increase in the number of cops, and pro-active policing, that number dropped almost every year since, to 318 in 2019. Thousands of lives were saved over the decades.
The recent surge in shootings and deaths coincides with the City Council pushing to take $1 billion out of the NYPD’s budget, and the department itself disbanding the plainclothes unit that looked for illegal guns.
To AOC, when crime is down, the NYPD is overly harsh. When crime is up, it’s the department’s fault.
Naive. AOC is furious that the NYPD’s budget hasn’t been cut more. “Defunding police means defunding police,” she said in June.
A 1-year-old is dead. Davell Gardner was sitting near his stroller when two gunmen hopped out of an SUV on Sunday night and opened fire into a crowd at a barbecue, killing the poor toddler.
What is AOC’s answer to this? Who will bring to justice the men who murdered Davell? More important, who will investigate the gangs, confiscate the guns, do whatever it takes to prevent the death of the next child?
AOC imagines that we’ll magically erase crime with an army of social workers and more money for schools, even though we spend more for education and welfare than almost anywhere in the nation.
She lives in a “Les Misérables” fantasy, where a department of Inspector Javerts hound men for stealing bread. We don’t know what world this is, but it certainly isn’t New York City.