What do you call it when a mayor does the right thing concerning policing, resulting in tangible results for his city’s most vulnerable? Well, this is New York City, and the mayor is an avowed socialist, so you have to call it “mounting frustration” from so-called reform advocates and the people who voted for him.
And you people wonder why I drink.
Anyway, there’s a fascinating — and perhaps unintentionally hilarious — report by Elizabeth Kim in today’s Gothamist describing a “surge of police officers into neighborhoods of color with high crime,” and the resulting hissy fit thrown by the city’s professional lefties.
There’s even been a “spike in subway arrests and summonses,” among other dreaded “broken windows”-style policing leading to “Courts so backlogged that officials had to temporarily reopen an emergency overnight shift.”
Harry Anderson, call your office.
Kim also mentioned that “at least three people… died in NYPD custody after being arrested for low-level offenses,” but since she didn’t go into any details, I’m forced to assume that these were George Floyd-type incidents where drug abusers expired due to drug abuse, not police action.
After the huge St.-George-Floyd/BLM/COVID crime spike, New Yorkers enjoyed an almost unparalleled reduction in crime — particularly murder, shootings, robberies, and so-called “lifestyle” offenses like turnstile jumping. And the last thing Mamdani supporters can tolerate is more of the Giuliani-era broken-windows policing that helped create it.
That Gothamist report lamented the “mounting frustration among some criminal justice reform advocates and people who voted for Mamdani could come to a head this summer as NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch plans to ‘flood the zone’ this summer with up to 3,800 officers in high-crime areas, including public housing complexes and subway stations.”
“Tisch has repeatedly said the city is not using broken windows policing,” according to Kim, but those “flood the zone” tactics say otherwise. Likewise, Mamdani spokesman Sam Raskin “disputed the notion that Mamdani campaigned on a promise to reduce policing of low-level offenses,” according to the paper.
And all I can say is: Good for him then. I suspect that New Yorkers will suffer enough under the Mamdani administration without having to deal with a return to Bill de Blasio-era policing methods. Or it could be, as the Gothamist hinted, that Mamdani is flooding the zone due to “the global spotlight for the World Cup,” coming in June.
In the meantime, however, enjoy the not getting shot at.
This might be my favorite line from the entire Gothamist report: “Criminal justice advocates like [Justice Committee deputy director Yul-san] Liem argue that crackdowns on low-level offenses lead to a revolving door of arrests by failing to address the root causes like mental illness, homelessness and substance abuse.”
Don’t you worry, gentle reader, the Justice Committee has a plan to address those root causes that involves paying themselves lots of other people’s money to help the mentally ill and/or drug addicted to continue pooping in the streets. Seriously, take a look at the group’s Staff page and tell me which one of these preferred-pronouns social champions has ever actually gotten anything done in the real world.
Liem, for their part, is listed as a “she/her they/them” who is “making art as part of New York City’s social and racial justice movements.”
So with apologies to Stanley Kubrick, “You can’t produce results here, gentlemen — this is the public sector!”
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That’s right: We’ll even tell you when the filthy commie does the right thing for once. And so much more.
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