America’s biggest, mostly Democrat-run, cities fell over themselves to pander to the barking mad conspiracy theories of Black Lives Matter and defund their police forces. They’ve since reaped the whirlwind in the form of spiralling violent crime. Chicago is even more a bullet-ridden no-man’s-land than ever, Baltimore is recording record murder rates, and New York is returning to the “Mean Streets” days of the 1970s.
The Big Apple is belatedly realising that they need more coppers.
After months of delays and cancellations, the NYPD plans to re-open their police academy in November. Amid rising crime and lower ranks, the police department has struggled with manpower this year.
The new class of recruits will not graduate until May, the additional 900 officers will be a relief to a city with roughly 2,700 fewer officers than last year. The academy class scheduled for March was cancelled because of the pandemic.
Another class scheduled for July was cancelled because of a $1 billion dollar budget cut. The cut was the city council’s reaction to the Defund the Police movement sparked by George Floyd.
It looks like replacing cops with social workers just isn’t cutting the mustard.
New York has set itself a long, hard slog to overcome the inevitable results of woke pandering.
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea praised opening the academy:
“That’s a great shot in the arm, 900, but that’s six-plus months away, so we have a lot to still grapple with in terms of getting this violence down.”
NYPD has not received new officers since the 530 recruits graduated in January. The new officers did little to fill the openings left through September by officers retiring at a rate 86 percent higher than for all of 2019.
Commissioner Shea praised his officers struggling with increased violence and protests against police at a time when their budget was drastically cut by the predominately Democratic city council. The council has 46 Democrats as opposed to only three Republicans[…]
Police Benevolent Association President Patrick J. Lynch, was also looking forward to the additional officers. He placed the blame for the shortages directly on the council:
“Our department has never seen so much talent and experience walking off the job as we have these past few months. And thanks to the City Council and Mayor’s ‘Defund the Police’ lunacy, no help is coming any time soon.
Meanwhile, New York businesses are frantically boarding up their shopfronts in expectation of Democrat supporters acting out yet more “peaceful protests”, post-election.
New York is reaping the whirlwind of “Defund the Police”. The BFD. Photoshop by Lushington Brady.
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