Crime in New York burns while Albany fiddles
New York’s crime crisis continues to burn as the state’s leaders fiddle — and contemplate putting more fuel on the fire.
Monday night in Manhattan, a brazen arsonist set two parked NYPD cars ablaze.
No one was injured, but the message still went out: Police are under siege; if they can’t protect their own vehicles, how safe are you?
More reason to fear: Monday’s two fatal Brooklyn shootings — one man killed in a public housing stairwell, another in front of a deli. And the shootings near Manhattan schools last week, with one victim hit four times.
Last year saw more than 170,000 felonies in the city, the most since 2006.
Don’t look to Albany for help: The Democrats who run the Legislature are resisting Gov. Kathy Hochul’s modest fix to the no-bail law, which would get rid of the “least restrictive conditions” rule and give judges some discretion to lock up repeat offenders.
And the left wants to make it worse: State Sen. Jabari Brisport (D-B’klyn.) is pushing a bill that would destroy (as opposed to seal) the records of all kids tried in Family Court. Under the 2018 “Raise the Age” law, that means basically every under-18 offender. So no cop, judge or prosecutor would have any way of knowing that the youthful gangbanger before them has a long criminal history.
Raise the Age has already seen teen shooting victim numbers triple since its passage. Just imagine what boosting it would do.
Meanwhile, cops are leaving the NYPD in droves — shrinking the force to the smallest it’s been since 2010, right after the post-2008 budget crisis. That’s left the brass piling on the overtime, which is on track to run double the budgeted amount for the year.
But, as Commissioner Keechant Sewell notes, the OT surge isn’t sustainable long-term. Cops need sleep, too.
Mayor Eric Adams has been reluctant to bolster the NYPD’s ranks, since the city’s facing multibillion-dollar out-year budget gaps. But it’s looking like the one thing he can do if he wants to continue his so-far-modest gains against crime.
After all, it’s nearly two years before the voters can send their own message to the majority of state lawmakers who refuse to lift a finger to reduce crime.
