AOC: Violent NYC Crime Surge 'Maybe' Because People Too 'Scared to Pay Their Rent'
Progressive Rep deflects blame away from NYC Mayor
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New York has seen soaring violent crime in the last few months amid Black Lives Matter protests, the coronavirus, and most notably cutting $1 billion to the NYPD amid calls to 'defund the police.'
But progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had other ideas on the reasons behind the surge in crime rates.
The New York Democrat argues that the violence in NYC is happening because people are “scared to pay their rent” due to high unemployment.
During a virtual town hall meeting on Thursday, the congresswoman made the misleading remarks which were later posted to Twitter by The Hill.
“Do we think this has to do with the fact that there’s record unemployment in the United States right now?" she responded.
"The fact that people are at a level of economic desperation that we have not seen since the Great Recession?"
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Ocasio-Cortez then claimed the massive $1 billion budgetary cut by the New York City Police Department wasn’t “really real.”
"Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren't paying their rent and are scared to pay their rent, and so they go out, and they need to feed their child and they don't have money," Ocasio-Cortez continued,
"So they feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry.”
WATCH:
AOC on increased NYC crime: "Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren't paying their rent & are scared to pay their rent & so they go out & they need to feed their child & they don't have money so... they feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry." pic.twitter.com/oHSTWWJZ6a
— The Hill (@thehill) July 12, 2020
But one person AOC failed to mention was Democratic New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Last month de Blasio had announced the cuts from the $6 billion budget and, instead, diverting the money to social services.
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In the same month, shootings spanning just over 90 minutes in the city included an 11-year-old boy who was shot while playing outside of his home in Flatbush.
According to The New York Post, citing police statistics, there were three times as many shootings in the Big Apple during the last two weeks of June as during the same period in 2019.
Earlier in July, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea slammed de Blasio over the rising violent crime in the city.
Shea said the violence was "predictable," considering police budgets have been slashed, and 2,500 inmates have been released from Rikers Island prison.
New York saw 63 people shot, at least 11 fatally, in 44 separate shootings over the holiday weekend.
One of the shootings was captured on video and showed a 29-year-old father getting shot dead as he crossed a street, hand-in-hand with his six-year-old daughter, in the Bronx on Sunday.
Ocasio-Cortez later claimed the NYPD budget cuts don't go far enough to defund the department entirely
"When people ask me 'What does a world where we defund the police look like?', I tell them it looks like a suburb."
