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In light of the recent subway shooting in New York City, a 2019 letter from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and other progressives calling to defund the police has been put in the spotlight.
Multiple signatories to the letter continue to “stand by” the original letter urging then Gov. Andrew Cuomo to abandon a plan to put 500 more officers in the subway despite the many people who believe that more police in the subway system could have prevented the crisis.
“Punishing the poor does not create a safer environment. Instead it threatens the very foundation of our community. That is why my New York colleagues and I wrote a letter to @NYGovCuomo asking him to help put an end to MTA’s dangerous policing policy,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter along with a photo of the letter in Dec 2019.
Punishing the poor does not create a safer environment. Instead it threatens the very foundation of our community. That is why my New York colleagues and I wrote a letter to @NYGovCuomo asking him to help put an end to MTA’s dangerous policing policy. Check it out here: pic.twitter.com/g1AOWHA7Lh
— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@RepAOC) December 17, 2019
“In our view desperately needed resources would be better invested in subway, bus, maintenance and service improvements,” the leftists wrote. “We are urging the MTA to divest from this current model of criminalization.”
The plea was signed by Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Jerry Nadler, former Rep. Jose Serrano and State Sens. Alessandra Biaggi, Julia Salazar, Michael Gianaris, Luis Sepulveda and Jessica Ramos, among others.
“…we would like to remind you of the historic racial discrepancies in enforcement and the way communities of color, both MTA riders and workers, bear the brunt of over-policing,” the letter said.
Views seem unchanged even in the face of rising subway crimes, including this week’s mass shooting.
“Police budgets have never been higher, and Mayor Adams increased numbers of police in the weeks before the shooting,” Ramos said according to the New York Post. “If we’re going to look back years into the past, let’s look at the austerity that allowed so many people to fall through the cracks.”
Biaggi was also unmoved by the horrific shooting.
“I stand with MTA workers and want to focus police on violent crime against workers and riders, rather than on petty crime. That was the goal of the letter and I stand by it,” she explained.
The Chief Executive Officer for Guardian Angels, a nonprofit dedicated to unarmed crime prevention was on the other side of the fence, arguing that the subway system could use all the cops they can get.
“If you don’t control the method of entrance through the turnstile you lose control of the whole subway system and that’s what happened,” former NYC mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa said. “They need as many cops as they can get and they got to have them all throughout the system.”
There were many people throwing up their arms in despair over the progressive’s continued stance on crime prevention.
She’s literally the voice of the progressive wing of the DNC that lead to all this crime and violence around the country. People voted for this and it’s going to take years to correct.
— Tasty Media ❄️ (@mediachecker) April 16, 2022
We now know the names of the politicians who support this incredibly childish and naive approach to crime in NYC. Vote them out.
— Salvatore DiMaggio (@SalvatoreDiMag2) April 16, 2022
And why is this devil still in congress
— 🇺🇸 LET’S GO BRANDON! FJB! 🇺🇸 (@DJNES1980) April 16, 2022
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