POLITICIANS HAVE USHERED IN THE DECADE OF THE CRIMINAL

The weekend’s wild gunplay shows — alarmingly — what a Mayor Adams would face 

 

Post Editorial Board

 

New York Post

August 1, 2021

 

 

 

Eric Adams may be Gotham’s best hope for stopping out-of-control gunplay, but this weekend’s madness raises a troubling question: Can even he restore sanity to the streets?

In a truly alarming development, police say 26-year-old gangbanger Jerome Roman — who’d been arrested previously 25 times — shot a cop specifically assigned to thwart gun violence. The lieutenant was lucky; struck in the ankle, he was able to leave the hospital just hours after surgery. It may well have been far worse if Roman’s Smith & Wesson hadn’t jammed.

Yet how could a thug like him be free to prowl the streets? His rap sheet lists eight felonies, 17 misdemeanors, including a sealed “gang-related” murder bust, as The Post reported. Just last November, he was nabbed for criminal possession of a pistol but freed on bail.

Pols “have ushered in the decade of the criminal. How many arrests are too many?” fumes John Jay College of Criminal Justice adjunct professor and ex-NYPD sergeant Joseph Giacalone. And “if this guy is willing to shoot a cop, what do you think he’ll do to an ordinary citizen?”

The strike on the lieutenant was only one of nearly 20 shootings that left at least three dead across the city, just through Sunday afternoon. That includes what police call a brazen “coordinated attack” in Queens, with gunmen squeezing off 37 rounds, injuring 10 people.

As Roman’s case shows, prosecutors and judges who refuse to lock up violent thugs, along with state laws that tie their hands, are clearly as much a part of the problem as lame law-enforcement policies, like those of Mayor Bill de Blasio. If Adams becomes mayor, he’ll surely have his hands full.