Lawmakers who are looking to defund the New York Police Department are not representing the interests of the majority of Democratic voters in New York City, according to a new poll.
The poll, conducted by McLaughlin & Associates, shows that more than 60% of likely Democratic city voters who lived in the Bronx were opposed to slashing the NYPD’s funding of $1 billion.
“It doesn’t surprise me that the politicians don’t know what the people of the city really want,” an unidentified Brooklyn police officer said about the poll results. “If people aren’t safe, nothing else matters. People want to make sure that they can safely go to work and go to sleep at night in their homes.”
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The poll, which posed questions to 1,000 likely Democratic voters, found that many people in New York ranked crime and safety as their No. 1 issue to affect their voting.
Of voters earning less than $20,000, 38.7% said that the issue of safety was the most important to them, while slightly fewer people who earn between $20,000 and $40,000 (36.4%) said crime was their top issue. A similar figure, 36.8%, of people who earn between $40,000 and $60,000 agreed.
The figure drops significantly for those who earn over $250,000 in their annual salary to just 22.1%.
When the participants were asked if they agreed with cutting the NYPD’s budget, 62.2% said they did not.
The survey comes amid rising crime rates across the state.
“Official statistics show that murders in The Bronx have increased 46.2 percent this year, while shootings are up 117.5 percent and the number of people shot is up 125 percent as of Sunday, compared with the same period during 2020,” the New York Post reported.
Rising crime and overwhelming voter disapproval in slashing police funding have some people scratching their heads as to why Democratic candidate Maya Wiley, who was endorsed by Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, continues to call for the police to be defunded.
Wiley announced on the campaign trail that she would reallocate some of the NYPD’s budget to city schools for “trauma-informed care.”
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“New Yorkers are very clear: They understand that unjust, unfair policing has harmed black and Latino communities wrongly, unconstitutionally,” she said last week.
Wiley added, “I’d rather stop the gun from being fired than I would make sure we have police stopping people in the streets.”
Wiley trails Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, 21.3% to her 16.5%.
