Is the Democratic Party Now Crying to “Fund the Police”?

By Yehudit Garmaise

      Maybe it is the probable victory of Eric Adams, a 22-year NYPD veteran, who is strong on public safety, as the next mayor of New York City, or maybe recent crime statistics have pushed even liberals to their wits’ ends, but Democrats’ attitudes toward how to ensure public safety seem to be reversing course toward rallying cries of “Fund the Police.”

     While just two weeks ago, Mayor Bill de Blasio told BoroPark24 that he would never revisit any of the crime-fighting tactics, especially “stop and frisk,” of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whom many saw as a mayor who brought law, order, and safety to New York City, just yesterday, the mayor surprisingly said, “I believe very fundamentally that there is an appropriate and limited way to use stop-and-frisk, if you do it constitutionally, if you do it for very specific reasons, of course, it's still a tool to be used, but used sparingly and correctly.

    “That's what I've said plenty of times publicly too.”

      In fact, Mayor de Blasio, who calls himself “a proud progressive,” also surprised many reporters by saying that of all the Democrat candidates for mayor, some of whom he appointed to work for his own administration, he felt that that Adams, who is seen as the toughest on crime, as the one who most inherited the coalition that the mayor first built in 2013, when he also “emphasized the outer boroughs and came of out Brooklyn.”

      What is unusual in the last couple of days is that Mayor de Blasio, who infamously shifted $1 billion away from the NYPD last summer and disbanded the plain-clothes anti-crime unit, which Adams has said many times that he would like to reinstate as an anti-gun unit, now seems to align himself with Adams’ emphasis on public safety.

     In addition, yesterday, President Joe Biden announced a crime-fighting agenda called the America Rescue Plan, which includes a nationwide crackdown on illegal gun sales and a newfound encouragement to cities to use hundreds of billions of dollars in pandemic relief money for increased law-enforcement measures.

     The New York Times, which yesterday described “ a shift within the Democratic Party toward themes of public safety, “ described Biden’s speech “as the most muscular response so far from his administration to a rise in crime that has stricken the country’s major cities.”

    “This is not a time to turn our backs on law enforcement or our communities,” Mr. Biden said in his speech.

Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office.