Are low-level crimes swept under the rug?
NEW YORK – Of all the statistics from the recent New Year’s Eve in Times Square – 1 million revelers, 2,000 pounds of confetti, thousands of police officers, dozens of surveillance cameras – there is one number that stands out: zero, as in zero tickets for low-level crimes.
No tickets for having an open container of alcohol, no tickets for public urination, no tickets for double parking, no tickets for furry, costumed characters hassling tourists to take their picture. Add in low-level arrests, and there was just one, for a subway-related offense.
And that wasn’t just on New Year’s Eve. That was for the entire week containing the holiday. During the Christmas week, when the neon-lit streets were every bit as jammed, the total for such infractions was 23 – compared with more than 650 summonses per week the previous year, according to police statistics.
Times Square is perhaps the most jarring example of a slowdown in low-level enforcement across New York City amid tension between rank-and-file police and Mayor Bill de Blasio, whom they accuse of encouraging violence against officers by siding with protesters after the chokehold death of Eric Garner. They particularly were incensed by comments in which the mayor warned his biracial son to be wary in dealing with officers.
In the two weeks after two NYPD officers were shot to death in their patrol car Dec. 20 by a fugitive who had ranted online about avenging police killings, low-level arrests citywide dropped 61 percent. Summonses were down more than 90 percent. Arraignment courts have been so slow they have sometimes closed early, and Rikers Island’s jails have about 2,000 fewer inmates.
Boehner throws an immigration curveball
WASHINGTON – Die-hard House conservatives bungled a coup against House Speaker John Boehner but now look like winners, pushing Republicans farther right.
Rather than punish and isolate those who opposed him as leader, Boehner surprised many Friday by embracing an immigration plan that’s tougher than lawmakers had expected. It would block President Barack Obama’s recent limits on deportations and undo protections for immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.
The House is heading toward a vote Wednesday.
As the rebellious hard-liners celebrated, mainstream Republicans said Boehner’s decision probably portends firmly conservative approaches to other issues. That would complicate life for some of the more moderate Senate Republicans and ensure fierce battles with the Democratic president.
Florida Rep. Richard Nugent, one of the 25 House Republicans who voted to oust Boehner, praised the Boehner-backed immigration plan.
Six years of debate ... what’ll it be, Obama?
WASHINGTON – Congressional Republicans and Nebraska’s Supreme Court have shipped the Keystone XL oil pipeline project right back to a reluctant President Barack Obama.
Obama is so loath to make the call that deliberations have entered their sixth year, nearly as long as he has held office. He has blamed the delays on bureaucratic formalities and parochial issues in Nebraska, even when skeptics claimed that the politics of Obama’s re-election race in 2012 were a more accurate explanation.
That campaign is past, the Nebraska issue is settled and a bipartisan bill forcing the pipeline’s approval may soon reach Obama. Those on opposite sides of the debate just want the president to decide.
“It’s time for the State Department and the president to make a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline – however they decide – because six years is beyond long enough,” said Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, among the Democrats supporting the pipeline.
Associated Press
