Could NYC's police situation get any more ridiculous?

I have a few college friends who ended up moving to New York City and I even visited one of them one time. This is long before covid and the media-driven racial chaos that the country is seeing right now but even then, after spending about 4 days hanging out in Brooklyn I could determine that while it was nice to visit my pal, this was not the place for me. I don't look down on him for wanting to live there, it just isn't for me. I am more of a guy who likes open spaces and some nature that doesn't have a million other people in it.

But there was one thing that did kind of surprise me when I was visiting and that is that this famed city seemed surprisingly safe. I was on my guard a lot due largely in part to movies that I had seen or untrue rumors about needing to be on the lookout for armed robbery constantly. I was definitely on the defensive, only to discover that there was no time that I ever felt as though I was potentially in danger.

That has all changed now, and even my devoted NYC friend agrees.

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I don't remember the exact rates on the rising violent crime in New York City but it was substantial. It comes at the heels of the mayor bending to the will of the mobs and "defunding" (which isn't even a word according to all of my spell-checkers) the police to the tune of a billion dollars. This also resulted in 1000 police officers losing their jobs (by virtue of not being hired in most cases) and also record numbers of cops who are filing for early retirement.

The worst thing that happened was that the mayor disbanded the plain-clothes undercover police force entirely. I don't know who would be shocked by the fact that after this happened crime in the city skyrocketed in just a couple of weeks. I don't think you have to have watched too many police movies and shows to understand that it is far more difficult to evade a police officer who is in a regular car, wearing regular clothes, than it is to avoid one that is in a clearly marked cop car and wearing a very identifiable uniform. You don't need a degree in construction management from a mid-table state school to figure this one out.

A lot of people got on the case of Rudy Giuliani when he took a rather (what was viewed at the time) extreme approach to fighting crime, but there was no denying how effective it was.

These policies remained in place even after Giuliani was gone and except for minor upticks here and there New York City suddenly found itself as being the very safe place that I remember visiting in 2014. Now, and I think it is pretty easy to say it is directly related to, the choices that De Blasio has made has resulted in a horrible return to the reputation that NYC had years ago.

As much as De Blasio tries to blame this on other things including ludicrous claims of "coronavirus stress did it," nobody is falling for this tired song and dance. It is quite obvious that the result of fewer police and especially the police that are not easily identified via uniforms, is directly responsible for the increase in crime. Well this and the fact that the police force is probably afraid to do their jobs for fear of getting thrown under the bus by their own mayor.

The mayor, not willing to admit that this new plan of defunding can't possibly work is moving officers from traffic control and homelessness outreach programs over to the crime division. It seems to me that it would be a lot easier, if he was actually interested in protecting the people of the city, to simply reinstate the plain-clothes officers that were so effective in the first place and admit that it was a mistake to remove them. But I suppose that would go against the politician code of ethics.

De Blasio is up for re-election, should he seek it in 2021. I hope the people of NYC can realize that their leaders are not doing a very good job and seek new ones. I, for one, have no intention of ever setting foot in that city again and my college pal (who is extremely liberal, by the way) is considering leaving for the first time in his life.