Speaking during a virtual town hall last 9 July, the Democrat Congresswoman suggested that the rise in crime in the city is because 'desperate' people are 'stealing bread to feed their children'.
New York Police Department (NYPD) data shows that shootings in the city last month were up 130 per cent year on the year - from 89 shootings last year to 205 this year.
However, Cortez asked: "Do we think this has to do with the fact that there’s record unemployment in the United States right now? 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. So, you maybe have to — they're put in a position where they feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry that night," the progressive lawmaker added.
Shoplifting is not what is plaguing New York City right now, and she knows it, but chooses to ignore it. Petit larcenies are down 7.8 percent for the year so far. Murders are up 23 percent. The number of shooting victims is up 70.4 percent. These are not robberies by desperate people; they are gang-related, drug-related, gun-related.
When a man is shot dead in a drive-by, clutching the hand of his 6-year-old daughter in a crosswalk, it is not about going hungry.
On the 4 July weekend alone, 10 were killed — almost every one an African American male.
For this increase in bloodshed, AOC blames … the NYPD.
"Keep in mind that this uptick in crime that’s happening right now is with a US$ 6 billion New York City Police Department budget," she said. "We have shoved more and more and more money into the NYPD. It has not prevented this uptick in crime."
Which is exactly backward. In 1990, there were 2,245 murders in the city. Thanks to an increase in the number of cops, and proactive policing, that number dropped almost every year since, to 318 in 2019. Thousands of lives were saved over the decades.
The recent surge in shootings and deaths coincides with the City Council pushing to take US$ 1 billion out of the NYPD’s budget, and the department itself disbanding the plainclothes unit that looked for illegal guns.
To AOC, when crime is down, the NYPD is overly harsh. When crime is up, it's the department's fault.