New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who won’t use his city’s police force to effectively fight violent crime, has proposed that NYPD officers confront people for “hurtful” conduct that isn’t criminal.
Asked during a news briefing about an increase in attacks on Asian-Americans in the city, de Blasio said New Yorkers should report any such incidents and residents should be warned about the consequences of their behavior.
“We need to know everything we can to find those who did it and bring them to justice. Because I’m a believer that we, of course, need the bigger efforts, the education, the outreach, but we also need consequences,” de Blasio said at a news briefing Thursday.
The worst mayor in America declared that police in his city should confront people accused of committing what one would assume are perceived social infractions.
“I also think even if something is not a criminal case, a perpetrator being confronted by the city, whether it’s NYPD or another agency, and being told that what they’ve done was very hurtful to another person and could, if ever repeated, lead to criminal charges — that’s another important piece of the puzzle,” he said. “That’s why we need these reports.”
“One of the things officers are trained to do is to give warnings,” de Blasio added. “If someone has done something wrong but not rising to a criminal level, it’s perfectly appropriate for an NYPD officer to talk to them to say, ‘That was not appropriate, and if you did that on a higher level, that would be a crime.’ And I think that has an educating impact on people. I think it has a sobering impact that we need.”
He went on to say, “I assure you, if an NYPD officer calls you or shows up at your door to ask about something you did, that makes people think twice, and we need that.”
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This is all coming from a man who presides over a city where police officers were allowed to be run off by a mob last year as they attempted to serve a criminal warrant. That scene wasn’t very polite.
New York has also seen a rash of crimes in the last year in which citizens have been harmed in alarming and unprovoked broad daylight assaults.
Those incidents and many others, including murders, occurred after de Blasio and council members defunded the NYPD by $1.5 billion amid leftist anti-police demonstrations.
“We are reducing the size of our police force by not having the next recruit class. We are reducing our overtime levels. We’re shifting functions away from police to civilian agencies,” de Blasio bragged last July.
“We believe it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “It will take work. It will take effort. And we’re going to be reforming that work in the meantime.”
It didn’t work, as gun violence increased after a portion of that department that was axed was the legendary plainclothes anti-crime unit.
Now, the worst mayor in America wants his city’s residents to be confronted and reprimanded by officers as if they’re children — which is insane. It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to see what kinds of issues could arise from officers walking around telling people to be nicer to one another while criminals roam the streets.
While de Blasio’s comments might seem like they were written for an episode of “Seinfeld,” they most certainly were not. They do give us more insight into how inept the city’s leadership is — as if we needed any more of that after this past year.
To suggest that adults should be admonished by police over noncriminal behavior might be the most preposterous idea proposed in New York since “Seinfeld” character Elaine Benes suggested to an adviser in then-Mayor David Dinkins’ office that all New Yorkers wear name tags.
That idea, too, was inspired as a way for people to be more polite to one another.
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But that was a fictional TV show. Terrifyingly, de Blasio’s ideas are very real and very dangerous.
How has this man been elected not once but twice to lead the country’s largest city?
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.