We finally know why crime is soaring in New York City.
No, it’s not because city leaders have derided the New York Police Department for months, prompting hundreds of early retirements. And it’s not the fact that top officials are talking about slashing the budget for police.
No, according to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic socialist from Brooklyn, the skyrocketing crime is caused by poor and hungry people shoplifting some bread to feed their children.
“So why is this uptick in crime happening?” Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday in a chat on Zoom. “Well, let’s think about it. Do we think this has to do with the fact there’s record unemployment in the United States right now? The fact that people are at a level of economic desperation that we have not seen since the Great Recession? 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.”
“Um, maybe it’s the fact that unemployment provisions have not been given to everyone,” Ocasio-Cortez claimed. “Maybe it’s because the fact that people haven’t — some people still haven’t gotten their stimulus checks yet.”
Apparently, in Ocasio-Cortez’s world, anyway, these hungry bread-stealers are heavily armed. Shootings in New York City have soared by 205% in the weeks since NYPD disbanded its anti-crime unit of plainclothes cops, which occurred on June 15.
During the final two weeks of June, three times as many shootings occurred in New York City as there were during the same period in 2019, according to the New York Post. Between June 15 and July 2, there were 116 shootings in the city, compared to just 38 during the same two-week period last year. A total of 157 New Yorkers were wounded in gunfire this year, compared to just 57 wounded in the period in 2019.
Ocasio-Cortez’s claim came after the recent $1 billion budgetary cut to the New York City Police Department.
“The approved budget includes nearly $484 million in cuts and will reallocate $354 million to other agencies “best positioned to carry out the duties that have been previously assigned to the New York Police Department, like the Department of Education, the Department of Health & Mental Hygiene and the Department of Homeless Services. Another $162 million was slashed through “associated costs,” the city council said in a statement.
The council also moved some $500 million of the department’s capital budget to other “badly needed infrastructure” and slashed overtime spending by $352 million.
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