New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is spending $105 on a new police precinct to help deal with a massive spike in violent crime – less than one year after he approved a $1 billion cut to the city’s police budget to appease Black Lives Matter protesters.
The new precinct is scheduled to be built in Southeast Queens, partly thanks to federal COVID relief money. De Blasio had originally nixed plans for the 116th precinct, pledging last year instead to build a community center in the face of massive social justice protests and activist calls to “defund the police.”
Politico reports that other promises meant to appease left-wing activists and rioters, such as scaling back the number of NYPD-provided school resource officers and limiting the amount of overtime for NYPD cops, haven’t actually happened.
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De Blasio also reportedly sent a number of “critical response” cops to Times Square last week after a 4-year-old girl and two others were shot after two men got into a heated argument and one opened fire.
New York City, which already boasts some of the toughest gun control laws in the country, has seen a record spike in shootings already in 2021, following a particularly violent 2020. So far, murders in the Big Apple are up 17 percent this year, after having already risen 47 percent in 2020. The city has also seen a 95 percent increase in shootings, a 60 percent spike in homicides, and a 54 percent increase in rapes, according to early April crime stats.
(Cover Photo: Gage Skidmore)