The "leaders" of NYC love to talk about hate crimes, but they don't like to prosecute them. As anti-Semitism rises in New York, prosecutors fail to act.
In May 2018, Ibrahima Seck approached Arquelio Negrón-Rosa, asked for a cigarette and, when Negrón-Rosa declined, called him a “Puerto Rican motherfucker” and kicked the 69-year-old down a flight of stairs, permanently dislocating his shoulder. For this felony hate crime, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark sent Seck to an alcohol abuse programme. When he graduated, he received conditional release.
The numbers tell a story.
There were over 500 hate crimes reported to the NYPD last year, city data shows, marking a 99% increase over 2020’s historic low. Over 200 anti-Semitic offences, a long-standing problem in the city, were compounded by nearly 150 anti-Asian incidents, which reflects a nationwide trend.
New York City’s leaders like to talk tough on hate crimes. But the data shows otherwise. Between 2015 and 2020, New York’s DAs got hate crime convictions in just 15% of cases, including 1% from the Bronx office. These low rates are part of a broader failure: the NYPD made an arrest in just one in three hate crimes since 2019, including just one in five anti-Semitic hate crimes, the most common type.
I don't think that NYC has the kind of camera coverage you find in London, but still... That arrest rate is sad, and the conviction rate is also sad.
But laws don’t work if they are unenforced.
And the Progressives in charge of New York (State and City) don't like to hold people accountable for their actions. Or as I like to say, "Keeping violent offenders in jail is unfair." Or something.
If the powers-that-be in the city and the state were serious about ending hate crimes, they would take action. But they won't take action, because that would be like being Tough on Crime, and Progressives don't want to be tough on crime.
By talking about 'hate crime", you are playing their game. The entire concept of "hate crimes" should be tossed upon the dustbin of history. Crime is crime. A person suffers more injury if they are assaulted for the money in their pocket than if the criminal just "hated" them.
ReplyDeleteI'm old enough to remember when the worst thing you could do at the scene of a gay bashing - they happened outside the clubs regularly in my youth - was call the police. Police hated gays, and fair few thought if a lesbian just got raped she would realize the error of her ways.
Delete"Crime is crime" is a nice theory. But the practice in the 1980s did not support that. Which is how we got here.
I agree that in a perfect world every assault would be treated the same. But the Progressives in charge of the Criminal Justice System (so called) in NYC have decided to sing good songs about hate crimes. But when the perpetrators are NOT white MAGA-hat wearing folks, they tend to ignore the crime, even when a 69-year-old gets thrown down a flight of stairs.
And yes, we need to make the Progressives live up to their own promises.