“It makes my blood boil when I hear people say that the cops are slowing down”
The mayor almost daily lays blame for the sharp rise in crime — it hit a five-year high last month — on what he describes as America’s systemic racism. Whatever the merits of that argument, it led him to abandon a crackdown on those violating COVID restrictions — just days after threatening to begin arresting Jews — and declare his full support for tightly packed protests. Those demonstrations rapidly spun out of control and turned into mass looting, rampaging, and assaults on cops.
Since the riots began in May, Shea said at a Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition event last week, shootings have risen to levels not seen since de Blasio’s first year as mayor. But he mounted a strong defense of the men and women in uniform, saying that never have so few done so much for so many.
“It makes my blood boil when I hear people say that the cops are slowing down,” Shea declared. “The cops have had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at them, and they’re shrugging off the kitchen sink and they’re going forward. They’re going towards danger every day. They are wrestling with armed perpetrators every day. Not only are they not slowing down, but they are speeding up and they are doing everything that I ask them to do.”
Shea was set off by a question posed by Rabbi Yeruchim Silber, Agudath Israel’s New York governmental director, about his decision earlier this year to disband the plainclothes anti-crime unit. The crime rate spike has been widely blamed on that.
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