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CRISIS IN NEW YORK. What would the city’s leaders rather do? Solve the problems facing millions of residents in a time of soaring crime and stubborn coronavirus? Or try to score points against President Trump? Decide for yourself.
Start with Mayor Bill de Blasio. Hizzoner took great pleasure in helping paint a big yellow “Black Lives Matter” mural on 5th Avenue right in front of Trump Tower. “Whenever Trump comes back to his old state, he’ll get a message that he still doesn’t understand,” de Blasio tweeted before the mural was painted. “Maybe seeing outside his doorstep will help him get the point.”
Trump hated it, of course. He pointed out that New York was cutting its police budget — “NYC is cutting Police $’s by ONE BILLION DOLLARS,” he tweeted — yet de Blasio found money and time to paint.
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Now the president’s words look like a grim prediction as crime rages out of control in the city. “Shootings for the week went up 277 percent, 49 compared to 13 in 2019,” WCBS reported Monday. From the New York Times: “As of July 12, there had been 634 shootings in 2020, compared with 394 in 2019.”
Some officials are calling for the Police Department to reinstate its Anti-Crime Unit, disbanded under the pressure of Black Lives Matter protests. And then there is de Blasio’s decision to let out roughly half the inmates in the Rikers Island jail over coronavirus concerns. A significant number of those released have been re-arrested after committing new crimes. As crime goes up, de Blasio laments the violence but has not taken swift action to stop it.
But he did take swift action on Monday. In broad daylight, a vandal dumped red paint over part of de Blasio’s “Black Lives Matter” mural. Within hours, the mayor had workers from the city Department of Transportation cleaning up the mess and restoring the mural to its original condition.
It’s not just de Blasio. For years now, the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, has declined to prosecute a greater and greater number of low-level offenses, most recently saying he will not go after protesters for misconduct during demonstrations. He long ago stopped prosecuting fare-jumpers in the subway and pot smokers around town.
But what has really excited Vance, as New York crime skyrockets, is his pursuit of President Trump’s tax returns. Vance recently won a Supreme Court decision allowing him to keep up his legal campaign to force the president to turn over the records. “This is a tremendous victory for our nation’s system of justice,” Vance said.
On the other hand, it is not stopping the violent crime that is exploding all around Vance and de Blasio. Sure, it’s satisfying to chase the President of the United States. But the city’s safety matters, too, doesn’t it?
