NYC Mayor Slashes Police Budget to Cope with Illegal Aliens Amid Rising Crime, Begs Wealthy Residents for Help
Editor’s Note: Our readers responded strongly to this story when it originally ran; we’re reposting it here in case you missed it.
New York City’s sanctuary chickens are coming home to roost.
Mayor Eric Adams unveiled “painful” budget cuts for 2024 across city agencies Nov. 16 in an effort to cover ballooning costs from New York’s ongoing illegal immigrant crisis.
Adams placed blame on the lack of federal and state aid to offset the city’s migrant expenses rather than the “sanctuary city” policies that created the crisis, the U.K.’s Daily Mail reported.
More than 118,000 migrants have flooded into New York since spring 2022, with many having been sent north by Republican governors in Texas and Florida, according to the outlet.
To close the $2.9 billion budget gap next year, Adams proposed cuts across all city agencies, including a $1 billion reduction to the Department of Education over two years, cuts to summer school and universal pre-kindergarten programs, reductions in trash pickups and the elimination of Sunday hours at public libraries.
The proposed cuts also included slashing the New York Police Department’s head-count by 4,000 officers over the next two years, according to WPIX-TV. This effectively defunds the police by 13.5 percent at a time when major crime continues climbing in the city.
With the next five police academy classes canceled, officer numbers will fall to 29,000 by mid-2025.
Meanwhile, felony crime reports in New York City reached nearly 127,000 over the last fiscal year, marking a 6.4 percent increase from the previous year and a 35.6 percent jump from pre-pandemic levels, according to the New York Post.
Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York — which represents over 50,000 active and retired officers — derided the cuts in a statement.
“This is truly a disaster for every New Yorker who cares about safe streets,” Hendry said.
.@NYCPBA STATEMENT ON NYPD BUDGET CUTS pic.twitter.com/ljeSulyPRI
— NYC PBA (@NYCPBA) November 16, 2023
The Democrat-led city is making all these cuts to pay for the migrants it is welcoming thanks to its “sanctuary” status.
New York is on track to spend approximately $4.7 billion just this fiscal year on services for migrants, including housing, food and health care, according to the Daily Mail.
Now, Adams is begging for help from some of the city’s wealthiest residents.
Adams addressed the budget cuts at an exclusive Police Athletic League luncheon with high-profile figures such as actor Tony Danza and billionaire John Catsimatidis.
The mayor described the cuts as “one of the most painful moments in his public service career,” according to the Post.
“I need your voice to reach out to Washington, D.C., and say this is your city,” Adams told them, adding, “New York City is the economic agent of this entire country, and we cannot continue to watch New York City carry a national crisis like we are witnessing now.”
While liberals are proud of the city’s sanctuary status, many of them are not happy about the cuts.
Lincoln Restler, chairman of the City Council’s progressive caucus, told The New York Times that Adams’ cuts are “unnecessary, dangerous and draconian” and will “only worsen New York’s affordability crisis and delay our city’s economic recovery by cutting funding for the schools, child care, food assistance and more that help New Yorkers live and raise families in this city.”
Rather than take accountability, the mayor continues to point his fingers at the lack of money from state and federal taxpayers. However, it is New York’s “sanctuary city” policies that directly attracted the migration wave and now threaten to bankrupt vital services.
The expectation that more and more illegal immigrants will arrive in New York courtesy of the Biden administration’s border policies foretells a vicious downward spiral for the city.
When will Adams admit that the sanctuary city experiment has failed miserably and try to stop the bleeding?
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