New York is sounding a lot like Seattle these days

Yesterday we saw the latest documentary on the descent of Seattle into anarchy, crime and urban decay.  It’s a sobering look at what’s happened to what was once one of America’s most beautiful and desirable cities.

It looks as if precisely the same decay is rampant in New York City – and for much the same reasons:  a leftist, quasi-socialist administration that doesn’t give a damn for the citizens it’s supposed to serve.  It’s all about ideology rather than people.

The New York Post reports:

Even the bad guys are dispensing advice on how to make the city safe.

“This could be avoided if you just get the drugs off the street,” Lawrence Downey, a career criminal accused of fatally knifing a WWE star’s brother, told cops as he was collared for the brazen killing in front of a Midtown pizzeria last month.

Downey, 59, whose rap sheet stretches back to 1995, even pointed out to the arresting officers from the Midtown South Precinct, “It’s so bad right now (it’s) on your own block.” 

The precinct, which covers Madison Square Garden, Grand Central Terminal, Port Authority Bus Terminal and Times Square, has become a microcosm of the city’s spiraling lawlessness, say frustrated law enforcement sources struggling to keep the heart of Manhattan safe amid slashed budgets and no-show city services.

. . .

Blatant drug use continues to plague the streets with junkies fueling an “eco-system” of crime just as the defund the police movement gains steam.

“You couldn’t have a worse set of circumstances in a sense that you have [people] released from jail and deinstitutionalized people in the middle of a pandemic with no aftercare or after-supervision. No thought even given to that,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a former NYPD officer and prosecutor who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

O’Donnell said the city has spent “uncounted amounts of money purportedly to make mental health better” but that “the evidence is all around that that’s a farce.”

. . .

“It’s easy to say that it’s just about one thing. Weed. Heroin. But there’s a cascade effect,” [a] law enforcement source said of the conditions they’re encountering on the street. “When we’re not able to take care of the little things, the big things start happening.”

. . .

Bail reform, with its revolving-door justice, and defund the police efforts have tied the hands of cops.

“There’s no deterrence, even if you get arrested, you’re not going to jail. … And why are politicians scratching their heads? Because they can’t point the finger at themselves for all these bad decisions, and this is the most popular vote-getting tool right now — the anti-police vote,” said Joseph Giacalone, a former NYPD detective sergeant who is a now a John Jay adjunct professor.

There’s more at the link.

I can’t help but recall New York City’s policy of paying for its indigent, homeless and addicted to relocate to other cities (without bothering to inform the latter or ask for their consent), thus exporting the same problems to many other locations.  Other cities are doing the same thing.  Is it any wonder that even small-town America is now seeing the rise of the same problem?  (Fortunately, small-town America usually has more common sense than New York, because they don’t tolerate the problem there.  Those who behave like good citizens, and work for their living, and don’t cause trouble, usually don’t have difficulties.  Those who don’t get put in jail or moved on.)

To see the ultimate effect of such policies, as I said earlier, look at Seattle.  It’s one of the worst examples, but left-wing and progressive administrations in many US cities are racing to catch up.  If you live in such a city, I think you’ll be very well advised to move out, even if you lose money on the deal – because if you don’t “bite the bullet” now, you may have to do so all too literally as crime and violence spiral out of control.

Peter