The alarming lesson behind that video of vagrants attacking a cop
By Post Editorial Board
New York Post
December 26, 2018
New Yorkers just got a valuable lesson on why their streets and subways have become so chaotic — and may grow worse.
Asked why Manhattan DA Cy Vance initially declined to prosecute five drunken vagrants who attacked a cop, a spokesman gave two troubling excuses:
__ The DA hadn’t seen an online video of the attack and didn’t know about it.
__The men were arrested only for sleeping in the subway, and the city no longer enforces its ban on that.
Where to start? Officer Syed Ali was responding to complaints that the group had been menacing subway riders. He asked them to stop, but the video shows the group coming at him — and he swings a baton to hold them at bay.
Miraculously, Ali held his own and did so without seriously harming any of them. Kudos to him for his stellar handling of the situation.
But surely the men’s behavior needs to be prosecuted. As City Council Public Safety Committee Chairman Donovan Richards (D-Queens) said, “These [suspects] should have been arrested and charged with something higher” than sleeping in the subway.
Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association boss Patrick Lynch was even more blunt: “Had it gone the other way, we might have had a seriously injured or dead police officer.”
Vance flack Danny Frost told The Post that prosecutors didn’t know the men “were suspected of anything other than sleeping on the subway” when they appeared in court Monday. His office is now seeking charges against them. Two were arrested Wednesday.
Yet Vance already made it clear he’s going easy on “low-level” crimes, like fare-beating. And charges against the vagrants come only after a firestorm of criticism for their earlier release.
Then there’s the second excuse — that the city no longer enforces its ban on sleeping in the subway. Fact is, it’s been flashing green lights to homeless folks who take up residence not just in the subway, but throughout the city, for most of Mayor de Blasio’s time in office.
After the video went viral, former police commissioner (and transit police top cop) Bill Bratton tweeted a useful warning: The “situation is a reminder to New Yorkers & their political leaders that NYC’s decline in the 70s & 80s began in the subways. The quality-of-life declines & warning signs are all there for it to happen once again.”
No, cops don’t need a zero-tolerance policy for low-level crime. But de Blasio, Vance and others are letting the pendulum swing too far.
New Yorkers can hope Bratton has it wrong, but his own sterling record on fighting crime suggests otherwise.
1 comment:
"__ The DA hadn’t seen an online video of the attack and didn’t know about it."
__The men were arrested only for sleeping in the subway, and the city no longer enforces its ban on that."
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Would love to read Officer Ali's report. I mean...are we to believe that there was no mention of his being attacked by these men? Or did a supervisor or administrator make some "minor corrections" to it?
Inquiring minds want to know.
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