The head of Junior’s Restaurant delivers blunt truths on crime, migrants, and social decline
Alan Rosen, who owns legendary cheesecake empire Junior’s, has had enough: “We feel uneasy. We feel unsafe. We want our city back,” he thundered to The Post.
Rosen speaks for all New York here; a Citizens Budget Commission survey shows that only half of Gothamites plan to stay over the next five years – while just 30% said they’re happy living here.
And — tellingly — only 37% say safety in their nabe is excellent or good; only 50% say they feel safe riding the subway during the day, down from around 80% on 2017.
Not shockingly, the fear and dissatisfaction are concentrated among less-white, less-affluent groups.
And this is not the result of phantom “perceptions,” for all the yammering to the contrary by lefty media and City Hall.
Rosen’s right on target, right across the board.
He’s rightly skeptical of bail “reform”: “Give judges the discretion to put people back in jail,” he said, “we’re letting a few bad apples spoil the bunch.”
And he has zero time for obscenities like the How Many Stops Act: “Our police have been handcuffed. Hire more police! We need to refund the police, not defund the police.”
On the migrant crisis, he says “It can’t be a free-for-all. I don’t know what else you would call it” — showing far more wisdom than the vast majority of the officials whose actual job it is to set policy.
He’s a third-generation small-business owner whose cheesecake is synonymous with old New York.
If he feels this way, no wonder Gothamites are heading for Miami, Austin and destinations beyond.
The voice of an iconic New York institution is crying out in the wilderness for sanity on crime and public order.
City and state electeds need to listen; otherwise, they soon won’t have any constituents left.
