As New York City is seeing a steady rise in violence and crime after weeks of protests that led to Mayor de Blasio cutting police funding by $1B, AOC, who thinks the police should be completely defunded, said the crime surge was because of rent.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has made a reputation for herself with broad, often nonfactual statements, said that the increase in violence was because families are “stealing bread to feed their children."” She failed to note that she was one of the strongest advocates to defund the police, and criticized that a 1B cut to the budget was not nearly enough. The correlation between the budget cut and the increase in violence was immediate. Instead, she said it’s because people can’t afford to pay their rent.
Governor Andrew Cuomo at a press conference on Monday quickly shot down AOC’s theory, saying that the rise in crime due to the inability to pay rent it “factually impossible.” Cuomo stated the obvious, which is that New Yorkers cannot be evicted during the pandemic, which was a law passed at the beginning of COVID, and that the rise in crime is violent, not robberies.
Crime has increased so much in New York City that Mayor de Blasio, who cut the budget of the NYPD significantly, asked the NYPD to place more cops in key areas experiencing significant violence. Mayor de Blasio also had to introduce a new initiative to stop gun violence, called “Take Back the Block.”
NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea had harsh words for the mayor, saying how bowed to “mob rule.” The subsequent surge in violence, is therefore, “predictable.”
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