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NYPD Commissioner dares to suggest maybe we should lock up gun crime suspects

New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea certainly comes up with some wacky ideas, doesn’t he? This week the Commissioner rolled out yet another crazy proposal. Maybe… just maybe… the city should be locking up people who are found to be committing crimes with illegal guns or found to be in possession of them. I know. Totally nuts, right? After all, this is New York City we’re talking about here. Gotham is more focused on emptying the jails and defunding the police. Why would they want to start locking up gangbangers who are armed to the teeth? Let’s check in and see what led to this harebrained idea. (New York Post)

In a meeting Thursday with The Post’s Editorial Board, Shea pleaded for a tougher approach to getting illegal guns off the streets, whether through tweaks to current law or by bolstering the way the laws are carried out by prosecutors, judges, parole officers and the entire criminal-justice system.

“I’ll ask for one thing under the Christmas tree,” says Shea. “We need to get serious about guns.” The NYPD devotes “much” of its resources toward that, but “we need help.”

You bet they do: Violent crime is through the roof, with shootings running at twice last year’s rate and murders up almost 40 percent. Car thefts and burglaries are spiking, too.

Shae dared to engage in even more forbidden speech with the editorial board this week. He specifically said that the city’s biggest law enforcement problem is “gang members with guns, usually between the ages of 14 and 30. ” You’ll want to be careful Commissioner. Talk like that in Gotham will land you in hot water. If you bring up the city’s gang violence problem you are obviously a racist.

But he pressed his luck and went even further. Shea told the Post that the Big Apple’s legendarily tough gun laws are “effectively fake,” because “criminals caught with firearms are let off easy.” That’s not exactly a secret for anyone who’s been paying attention. The empty the jails movement combined with “bail reform” have turned the jails and the courts into revolving doors for most criminals. Shea described the new “supervised release” policy as also being a joke because the supervision is largely fictional. He also confirmed that there is no data whatsoever showing that these policies have been effective.

This has been the problem in New York City for years at this point. Decisions about law enforcement policies aren’t being made by the police. They’re being handed down from New York’s liberal City Council members and its even more liberal Mayor. They’ve taken the idea of criminal justice reform and converted it into an attack on the police and a free pass for criminals. And the city is paying a price for those decisions now. The number of shootings in 2020 was double the count for 2019 and murders are up by more than 40%.

Shea points out that prosecutors and judges are also a big part of the problem. When convicts on parole miss their meetings, they aren’t locked up again. Instead, they are given “endless second chances.” And not once have we seen the Mayor come out and address this situation or admit that New York has screwed up in terms of “police reform” and largely doing away with cash bail. The editorial tries to add a hopeful note about how things could change in the upcoming city-wide elections next year, but I’m not buying it. New Yorkers have decided to keep electing the same liberal Democrats over and over for a generation now. We should expect more of the same in 2021 and not have one bit of sympathy for them when things continue to circle the drain in New York City.

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