One year ago, while rioters smashed windows, ransacked small businesses, and attacked innocent bystanders, the New York City Council slashed $1 billion from the city’s police department budget.
At a time when New Yorkers needed more law and order, the heavily Democratic NYC council did the exact opposite and cut its budget.
To the average person, this made no sense. But to Democrats and left-wing politicians, it made all the sense in the world. They encouraged and facilitated the ''abolish the police'' movement, which encouraged crime and violence. As if a different outcome could’ve been expected.
One year later, how has the defund the police movement made life safer for New Yorkers? It hasn’t.
The city’s official crime tracker showed that rapes, murders and felony assaults are up from 2020. Shootings have also surged across New York City, as gun violence has resulted in 767 shootings and 885 victims through July 5.
But even worse than the data are the tragic stories of the victims of this violence.
A 32-year-old woman was struck in the face by a stray bullet inside her apartment; an Indiana college student, fulfilling a childhood dream to visit New York, was shot dead; and a 10-year-old boy was murdered in a drive-by shooting.
They are all victims in a New York that resembles the Wild West and not the iconic Big Apple lure it prides itself in. NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea compared the level of gun violence in the Bronx to 1996 ... more than 25 years ago.
In less than one year, the amazing achievements of Mayors Rudy Guiliani and Mike Bloomberg over the last 20 years — making New York safer, turning the streets into a mecca for tourists and families — was dismantled by progressives.
Criminals have become so brazen that an off-duty Marine was hit with a stray bullet in Times Square, in broad daylight.
As New York flashes back to being the ''Fear City'' of the 1970s, and other cities seem to be following suit, those that were calling for less law enforcement are quickly backpedaling.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., claimed that no Democrat had actually run on a radical-left or anti-police message — even though she called for a billion dollars in police cuts. So did Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, apparently forgetting that Ocasio-Cortez herself had explicitly called for defunding the police.
Believe that and I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you.
When two leading Democratic progressives back away from what they were so proudly shouting from the rooftops last year ... you know it was a terrible idea.
Unfortunately, the left-wing media is doing its best to push these wrong ideas. The website Vox recently tried to explain away a study showing a 10 percent increase in murders in areas with significant Black Lives Matter protests. ''The reasons for this rise in murders are not fully known.''
It doesn’t take a genius to see that anti-police behavior and actions — plus months of looting, arson, and random violence — increase senseless killings.
Now, as New Yorkers are witnessing and living through the predictable result, they are wisening up. Democratic voters went from supporting Mayor Bill de Blasio while he undermined his own police department, to backing the very antithesis of de Blasio in the party’s mayoral primary race.
Eric Adams, an African American retired police captain, ran on a platform of cracking down on crime and won the election, beating out the progressive candidates.
It appears that New York voters, despite their liberal leanings, have the same common-sense beliefs as most Americans. Laws should be enforced, and criminals should face consequences.
Progressive Democrats have a lot of ideas but they don’t work in the real world. When it comes to actually running the country and improving people’s lives, leftists haven’t been able to deliver.
They need to realize their actions and ill-thought words have consequences.
What sounds good at rallies, stirs up mobs, and gets them in front the media ends up costing lives.
Progressives demand their ideas be implemented, chaos then ensues, they backpedal and make excuses, while we the people suffer the consequences of their idiotic proposals.
New Yorkers, and Americans as a whole, are a pragmatic people. They are abandoning the progressives ideas because they are seeing the results. When you defund the police you get more crime, more victims, and more tragedy — not less.
Americans need to be the adults in the room whenever progressives try to push their worthless theories and ideas.
Waiting to see how it turns out, ends up tragically — especially for a 10-year-old boy, an innocent woman, and a college student from Indiana.
Charles Mizrahi is Editor of Alpha Investor and Host of "The Charles Mizrahi Show." Read His Reports — Here.
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