When it comes to fighting rising crime in New York State, Governor Kathy Hochul has been awful. She has been a captive of her far-left flank that ushered in the horrific criminal justice reforms of 2019 which led to a historic spike in violent crime in New York.
It started with the law that removed discretion from judges to keep violent people off the streets.
It also included actions taken while she was lieutenant governor, which dramatically reduced penalties on those 16 to 18 years old who commit violent felonies.
Yet another measure supported by Hochul burdened district attorneys with unreasonable discovery requests to be handed over within 20 days or have the case against violent subjects be dropped.
The consequences of these awful reforms led to a dramatic spike in crime that began even before the pandemic.
While there might’ve been slight drops in some of these statistics over the past year, the net increases since 2019 remain quite substantial.
Moreover, the average straphangers in the New York City subways are fearful not only by the actual statistics, but the general atmosphere of chaos and disorder in the transit system. Delusional people roaming the subway cars. Nut jobs prepared to throw you onto the tracks. Homeless individuals urinating in the subway cars. Marijuana being smoked everywhere. Menacing crazy people accosting innocent commuters just trying to get to work. Hundreds of people jumping the turnstiles, skirting over half a billion in transit fares.
And, heretofore, Hochul has done nothing.
Oh, wait! I do remember her having a press conference two weeks before her election as cops flooded the subways. Those cops were gone a few weeks after the election. If they hadn’t been jettisoned, would there still be the need to deploy the Guard?
Calls for the governor to fire defiantly ineffective rogue prosecutors like Alvin Bragg in Manhattan fell on deaf ears. By the way, she can take a cue from Florida’s governor, who indeed acted on that authority and has a much lower crime rate in New York.
She also ignored calls from victims’ advocates, who pleaded with her to use the weight of her office to reverse the most onerous provisions of the bail reform laws — the one that took away a judge’s discretion in detaining an alleged criminal if there is the belief that he or she is a danger to society.
New York remains the only state in the nation that does not provide such discretion for its judges.
So, Kathy Hochul has been AWOL on all these crime-fighting measures. But, now, she’s trying to look tough by sending in the National Guard.
Frankly, we don’t have a problem with the use of the Guard. Their presence can create a needed deterrent.
But why was it that, when U.S. Senator Tom Cotton called for the use of the National Guard to suppress the riots in 2020 after the George Floyd murder, The New York Times exploded and refused to allow his op-ed to go public? The Times’ leftist editorialist, Myra Gay, bashed Cotton’s proposal as an attack on Black people. But Gay is now calling the Democrat governor’s call for the National Guard a logical, correct step.
The more guards in the subway, the better is how we see it. But why did it have to get this far? How can Hochul be calling for the placement of the National Guard in the subway if she won’t push for our New York City cops to have the authority to make necessary arrests? She won’t stand up to her radical left wing by putting in measures that would eviscerate the need for the National Guard.
I guess, this way, she has it both ways.
Keep the criminal-friendly laws on the books in New York to placate her socialist friends while creating a photo op with National Guardsmen to make it appear she really cares.
Here’s something the governor can do that would really work. Look back on what Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg did and simply mirror it.
Crisis averted.