A look back at Democrat calls for dismantling, defunding police
Following the death of George Floyd, crime rates spiked across Dem-controlled cities as politicians called for defunding the police.
This is the third part of a Fox News Digital series about "defund the police" politicians and crime in the areas they represent. Read the first two parts here and here.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., who has repeatedly called for defunding the police, has seen skyrocketing crime in the Northern Bronx part of his district.
Bowman, a self-proclaimed Democratic socialist who joined the far-left Squad with Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., upon their swearing-in last January, has been vocal about his support for dismantling the U.S. criminal justice system.
"A system this cruel and inhumane can't be reformed. Defund the police, and defund the system that's terrorizing our communities," Bowman tweeted the month after his election on Dec. 29, 2020.
"Republicans want to defund every government program except for those that actively terrorize Black and brown people," he tweeted April 19, 2021.
‘SQUAD’ MEMBER CALLS FOR DRAMATIC REDUCTION' IN POLICE IN ‘POOR COMMUNITIES’ AMID CRIME SPIKE
Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y. has repeatedly called for police to be defunded and said in 2019 that it was "time to disarm the police." (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)
"It's time to disarm the police," Bowman tweeted in October 2019.
Since taking office, Bowman has seen violent crime on the rise in the Northern Bronx region of his 16th congressional district, which includes the Spuyten Duyvil, Woodlawn, Eastchester Heights, and Co-op City neighborhoods of the New York City borough.
According to the New York City Police Department’s crime map, Bowman’s district encompasses all or part of precincts 45, 47, and 50 in the Bronx. Every week, the NYPD publishes statistics regarding the seven major crime categories in each precinct, which includes murder, rape, robbery, felonious assault, burglary, grand larceny, and grand larceny auto.
Fox News Digital took the total number of violent crimes reported in those three precincts so far this year (3,396) and compared it to the total number last year (2,609), according to the NYPD’s Aug. 1-Aug. 8 report.
The analysis found that violent crime is up roughly 30% overall in the Northern Bronx compared to last year, with the biggest uptick occurring in Precinct 50 with a 74% increase. That precinct, which includes the neighborhoods of Spuyten Duyvil, Fieldston and Riverdale, also recorded a 123.5% increase in robberies and a 153% increase in grand larceny auto since last year.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) speaks at a demonstration where MoveOn.org delivered over 1 million signatures calling for Congress to immediately investigate and impeach Clarence Thomas at the US Supreme Court on July 28, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for MoveOn)
Other parts of Bowman’s district are also experiencing an uptick in violent crime. The much less-populated city of Mount Vernon, for instance, has seen a 39.4% increase so far this year compared to 2021, with a 20.7% jump in robberies and 21.7% increase in burglaries.
Smaller cities in Bowman’s district, like New Rochelle and Rye, don’t report as up-to-date information as New York City, but reported a nominal decrease in some violent crimes between 2020 and 2021. In New Rochelle, violent crime was mostly down except for rape and burglary, which both increased. In Rye, burglaries were down, but assaults remained the same during that time.
Paul Mauro, a retired NYPD inspector, penned an op-ed for Fox News Digital on Aug. 8 that similarly examined the district of Ocasio-Cortez, which shares precinct 45 in the Bronx with Bowman.
(L-R) Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MN), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) have all repeatedly called for the defunding of police. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Mauro noted that during the George Floyd unrest of 2020, Ocasio-Cortez complained that a proposed budget cut of $1 billion to the NYPD’s annual budget didn’t go far enough, and that "Defunding police means defunding police."
Then-mayor Bill de Blasio wound up signing the fiscal year 2021 budget in July 2020, cutting about $382 million – or 6.8% – from the NYPD to $5.22 billion, City & State reported. The fiscal year 2022 budget saw a slight increase to $5.44 billion for the NYPD and another increase to $5.53 billion in the 2023 budget, which was adopted in June, the publication said.
"I stand with the movement demanding a real $1 billion cut to the NYPD and reallocating resources to public health and the social safety net. We don't need to hire more police," Bowman tweeted in July 2020. "Let's keep building power and organizing to transform our communities."
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Despite repeatedly calling for the defunding of police and calling the system "cruel and inhumane," Bowman requested police protection at his Yonkers home days after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
"About a week after the Jan. 6th incident at the Capitol, we received a request from the Congressman’s office for increased police presence at his residence," Yonkers Police Department Detective Lt. Dean Politopoulos told The New York Post. "In response, our Intelligence Unit was notified of the request and the local precinct instituted what is called a directed patrol at the Congressman’s home for the next two weeks."
Bowman's office did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.
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