New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio claimed the rising violent crime rate in the city is due to residents’ lack of finding anything to do and the dearth of jobs.
“So many people don’t have anything to do. They don’t have anywhere to go. They don’t have a job, they can’t go to school, they are dealing with so many challenges,” de Blasio told reporters during a press conference Monday when asked why the New York City Police Department could not get shootings under control at this point as opposed to previous years.
“The NYPD has been overloaded in so many ways, and it just keeps adding up. And most importantly, the criminal justice system is not functioning yet, and we need it to,” de Blasio said. “And we’re very, very hopeful that next month, we’re going to finally see that, but it really is a perfect storm.”
A 1-year-old boy was fatally shot during a family barbecue in Brooklyn on Sunday, and de Blasio was asked if he regretted the June decision, along with Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, to dismantle the New York City Police Department’s anti-crime unit, a team that focused on seizing illegal guns from off the city streets.
[Also read: AOC: New York City crime spike possibly due to people failing to pay rent or shoplifting out of hunger]
The mayor praised Shea’s efforts to remove the anti-crime unit from the New York City Police Department.
“He came to the decision that the anti-crime unit, that work could be done a different better way-a way that uses modern technology, a way that uses the skills of officers to achieve the same outcomes and get those guns off the street, but in ways that also don’t disrupt the relationship between police and community,” de Blasio said.
Shootings in New York City have skyrocketed over the past few weeks as local police say City Hall and Albany have tied their hands through new regulations and laws that restrict officers from making arrests without committing violations themselves.
