UPDATE 11.27.24: Your Survival Guy wrote to you in 2020, shortly after New York’s bail reform, and just after New York City disbanded its anti-crime units in a fit of “#DEFUNDTHEPOLICE” mania. The negative effects of the New York (state and city) retreat on crime are still being felt, and it’s getting worse, as Hannah E. Meyers explains in City Journal, because illegal immigrants have figured out how to manipulate the weak criminal justice system in the big blue blob city. She writes:
Migrants and gang members will continue to flock to the city to take advantage of lax bail, discovery, and “Raise the Age” laws, ideologically progressive judges, and an under-resourced system.
These factors have made the Big Apple a destination for migrants seeking to commit property theft, in particular. For instance, thieves are renting mopeds to ride around in pairs, ping-ponging across the boroughs, and snatching jewelry, phones, and purses. To combat this trend, police now scout for duos on bikes, making traffic stops in hopes of preventing the next spree. Police operations also seize mopeds without license plates; the vehicles can often be seen lined up outside migrant shelters.
NYPD aviation units try to spot getaway mopeds from helicopters (weather permitting), but identification and apprehension are often impossible. It’s also tough to stop migrants from fencing shoplifted property in shelters or shipping stolen cellphones overseas, where they can’t be traced.
Even when arrested, migrant criminals face few consequences, thanks to a decade of criminal-justice policies that have degraded the system’s ability to respond. Since migrants typically have no U.S. criminal history, it’s virtually impossible to detain them for their first non-fatal crime in New York. Statewide bail reform in 2020 made hundreds of infractions ineligible for bail setting, regardless of defendants’ dangerousness or likelihood to reoffend.
As of 2022, the law had been amended and clarified so that judges can detain defendants re-arrested for a felony or Class A misdemeanor involving “harm to an identifiable person or property,” but only if they have a pending case also involving such harm. This applies to theft—unless the theft is “negligible” and not “in furtherance of other criminal activity.” While the recent changes to the law have opened up some avenues for the courts to detain migrants who repeatedly rob people and businesses, the “harm-on-harm” provision is only as effective as judges’ willingness to use it. New York’s progressive-appointed criminal court judges frequently won’t.
New York’s 2020 discovery statute further hampers prosecutors, forcing them to downgrade cases to lesser charges in the hope of getting convictions. Under this pressure, the Manhattan district attorney’s office went from downgrading 24 percent of felony property crimes in 2019 to downgrading 46 percent in 2023. This near doubling has enormous implications for the “harm-on-harm” provision, as new offenses are often reduced below the threshold that makes them bail-eligible.
The discovery law has also helped make New York a city that dismissed 13,651 more misdemeanors in 2023 than in 2019. According to NYPD data, misdemeanor conviction rates dropped from over 13 percent in 2017 to just 4 percent last year. The felony conviction rate fell from 11 percent to 3 percent during that period.
Under pressure, prosecutors are also declining even to prosecute many more crimes. The Manhattan DA’s office declined twice as many theft cases, 243 percent more burglaries, and 189 percent more weapons arrests last year than in 2019.
It should come as no surprise that, in the midtown precincts straddling the large, migrant-filled Roosevelt Hotel, petit larcenies are up 36 percent year-to-date compared with 2019. In midtown south, grand larcenies have increased from 1,671 to 2,038 over equivalent time spans.
Teen migrants are contributing to this surge, as they can exploit the state’s 2017 shift in the age of criminal responsibility to 18. Under New York State’s Raise the Age law, essentially all misdemeanors committed by 16- and 17-year-olds go to family court, where there are generally no consequences, prosecutors and victims can’t learn case outcomes, and future judges are not allowed to know about past arrests. Further, 83 percent of felonies, and even 75 percent of violent felonies, now go to family court, too. No wonder youth arrests for major crimes have risen an astounding 42 percent since 2022.
Originally posted June 22, 2020.
In cities run by politicians who have sided against police, shootings are spiking, crime is rampant, and chaos has ensued. Chris Enloe reports for The Blaze, that shootings have surged in New York since the NYPD was forced to disband its “anti-crime units.” He writes:
The move was applauded by those who seek immediate police reform in the wake of the tragic killing of George Floyd.
“This is a seismic shift in the culture of how the NYPD polices this great city. It will be felt immediately in the communities that we protect,” New York Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea said.
Unfortunately for New Yorkers, the impact of the reform was immediate — but it was not positive.
According to the New York Post, shootings in the city surged after the NYPD disbanded the plainclothes units. In fact, between Monday, the day Shea made his announcement, and Saturday, there had been 28 shooting incidents with 38 victims. The shootings accumulated at least five deaths.
By comparison, there had only been 12 shootings over the entire week during the same time period last year, the Post noted.
Meanwhile in Minneapolis, reports Paul Sacca, where the city council voted to “disband” the police, 11 people were shot on Sunday morning alone.
There were multiple shooters, according to the Minneapolis Police Department. The shooting suspects all fled the murder scene.
“Police arrived and located several people suffering from gunshot wounds,” the Minneapolis Police Department said in a press release. “Multiple ambulances responded and transported victims to Hennepin County Medical Center. Others were transported to area hospitals in private vehicles.”
One adult male died at the hospital, and the other 11 are receiving medical treatment for their non-life-threatening injuries.
The MPD is investigating the shooting, and have not released a motive for the attack. No suspects are in custody.
This shooting spree comes only days after another mass shooting event. On Tuesday, nine people were shot in Minneapolis, including eight in a two-hour span.
As of June 17, a record 149 people have been shot in Minneapolis since the beginning of the year; nearly half of the victims were shot in the three weeks leading up to June 17, according to the Minneapolis Police Department. The first week after George Floyd’s death, there were a record 22 gunshot victims.
In Seattle, where Mayor Jenny Durkan ceded control of a portion of the city to radical Marxists, calling their occupation a “summer of love,” there were also shootings over the weekend. In the six-block “Capitol Hill Occupied Protest” zone the protesters created as a haven against imagined “police brutality,” two people were shot early Saturday morning. When police attempted to help the victims, the occupying protesters prevented their access. The Guardian reports:
According to a police blog, officers responding to the shooting said they “were met by a violent crowd that prevented officers safe access to the victims”.
Video released by police appeared to show officers arriving at the protest zone saying they wanted to get to the victim and entering as people yelled that the victim was already gone. Police mostly retreated from the zone after clashes with protesters, KIRO-TV reported.
Private vehicles took two males with gunshot wounds to Harborview Medical Center, where the 19-year-old died and the other was in critical condition in intensive care.
The King county medical examiner’s office had yet to release the identity of the dead man. Seattle city council member Kshama Sawant said he was black.
The suspect or suspects fled the scene. Police asked the public for information. An investigation was “active and ongoing”, detective Mark Jamieson said on Sunday.
Mike Solan, president of a police union representing more than 1,000 Seattle officers, told KIRO he feared for the safety of law enforcement and the community at large.
“The community is at grave risk and the men and the women that provide that public safety service, they’re at grave risk as well,” Solan said.
This is just a taste of what awaits Americans in cities where politicians “disband,” “defund,” or otherwise neuter their police departments. It’s a good time to get your gun and your training now and to escape the city.
