Mayor de Blasio took 'heart and soul' out of NYPD: Ray Kelly
Former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly on rising crime in NYC under Mayor Bill de Blasio and the removal of federal agents from big cities.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio “cut out the heart and soul of the NYPD” since he was elected, former New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said on Thursday.
Kelly made the comment on Fox Business’ “Mornings with Maria” one day after de Blasio threatened to take the Trump administration to court should they send federal officers to the city amid violence and unrest in recent weeks.
“New York is in trouble,” Kelly said, adding that “certainly the short-term future does not look good.”
He pointed out that “crime is up, shootings are way up, homicides are up” and that “the police have been held back.”
Kelly also noted that NYPD “retirements are at sort of record rates so there’s not a good feeling in New York City, not a good feeling in the New York City Police Department for all the cops on the street.”
Kelly acknowledged that “the George Floyd murder was a horrible event, but it happened 1,000 miles away from New York City.”
Protests were sparked across the country following the death of Floyd, who died while in Minneapolis police custody.
Kelly said that “de Blasio took that terrible situation and used it to certainly hold back the police as far as the protests were concerned.”
He then pointed out that “one of the most important and significant things” that de Blasio did “as far as crime fighting was to remove the anti-crime units from the local precincts.”
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Last month, the NYPD announced it was disbanding its anti-crime unit and reassigning hundreds of plainclothes officers to other divisions amid widespread criticism over the department’s handling of protestors.
“This is the tool that precinct commanders have to fight violent crime and it was a sign of surrender, surrender internally to the cops on the street, but also to the criminal community,” Kelly said on Thursday, adding that is part of the reason why “crime went way up [and] shootings went way up.”
“The mayor is trying to do certain things through marches, through his own chestnuts of violence interrupters,” he went on to say, acknowledging that police officers are being deployed “in some key locations and that’s a good thing.”
“But these marches and that type of thing, they simply haven’t worked in the past and they’re not going to have a significant impact now,” Kelly said.
He added that he doesn’t “see any light at the end of the tunnel” and thinks that New York City is “going to be in this situation at least for the next 18 months, as long as this mayor is in office.”
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A spokesperson with de Blasio’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman and Bradford Betz contributed to this report.