MANHATTAN, NY- The “mouth that roared,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, strikes again. Alexandria-Cortez, whom we’ll “affectionately” refer to as AOC doesn’t like the idea of the MTA in the Big Apple hiring 500 new police officers.

The MTA is planning on hiring an additional contingent of 500 officers to help combat so-called “quality of life” crimes throughout the city’s transportation network of subways and buses.

AOC wrote a letter to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo asking him to stop the MTA’s plan.

The letter was co-signed by state Sen. Michael Gianaris, Luis Sepulveda and Jessica Ramos, along with Congressmen Jose Serrano and Jerrold Nadler, who must have woken up long enough from the impeachment debacle to co-sign the letter.

The letter says that the hiring is a waste of taxpayer dollars that could be better spent on improving transit service.

“Recent reports show that this action is not only unnecessary but also not cost-effective. The subway system is now safer than before…the true concern for many taxpaying New Yorkers is the estimated cost that this will have on an already cash-strapped agency.”

Estimates are that the MTA will spend just under a quarter-million dollars over the next four years to hire the new officers. Officials with the MTA have stated that fare evasion, assaults on employees and terrorist threats justify the expense.

In a response to AOC’s letter, MTA Chairman Patrick Foye pointed out that hate crimes, robberies and aggravated harassment have increased in the subway system this year.

“We will not engage in politics when it comes to public safety. New Yorkers deserve to have reliable service and feel secure on our system—these priorities are one in the same.”

Cuomo’s spokesman Dani Lever seemed to agree with Foye.

“We agree with the chairman and refer all questions to the MTA.”

In June, Cuomo announced that 500 uniformed cops would be immediately assigned to subway stations and bus stops in an effort to curb fare evasion. It is estimated that this year alone, fare evasion could cost the MTA over $260 million dollars.

Of the officers being assigned to the MTA, 200 were taken from the NYPD and the MTA’s internal police forced supplied another 200. The rest of the officers came from MTA bridge and tunnel duty.

Based on this, it is clear why the MTA is seeking to hire the additional cops. Removing officers from bridge and tunnel duty would seem to leave those areas vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

In announcing the initiative, Cuomo said the locations where fare evasion is most prevalent correlates with assaults on transit workers. Additional officers would help to deter those types of attacks.

At the time, Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Tony Utano was happy about the decision to increase enforcement and visibility of officers.

“We want to go to work and do our jobs and go home to our families unharmed. We are sick and tired of the abuse.”

Apparently, other people besides AOC and her posse of politicians are not happy about the plan. According to a spokesman from “Riders Alliance,” the money the MTA plans to spend on the officers would be better used to increase subway and bus service during off-hours.

“Five hundred more police officers spread across 472 stations, more than 5,000 buses and a whole city will not transform the feel of public transit,” said Danny Pearlstein.

He’s the spokesman.

“They will, however, make it harder for the MTA to meet demand for transit service that 8.6 million New Yorkers depend on every day.”

Apparently, it does not matter if it is safe for those 8.6 million New Yorkers to ride on the system.

For her part, AOC and crew of course believe that any crackdown on fare evasion is racist and unfairly targets black and Latino fare evaders and punishes people living in poverty.

“Arresting hard-working people who cannot afford a $2.75 fare is, in effect, the criminalization of poverty.”

It is difficult to read anything AOC says and not feel dumber for the effort. Boston University must be so proud.

The letter continued:

“Desperately needed resources would be better invested in subway, bus, maintenance and service improvements, as well as protecting riders and transit workers from assault rather than in the over-policing of our communities.”

Think about that. She criticizes the MTA for hiring additional police officers on the one hand while saying the money would be better spend “protecting riders and transit workers from assault.” You literally cannot make this stuff up.

Statistics from the NYPD show that misdemeanors on the subway system are up 23 percent year-to-year, while felonies have dropped 3 percent.

AOC of course is famous for her “Green New Deal” money grab and for chasing Amazon and it’s 25,000 jobs out of her congressional district in Queens. They recently signed a deal to locate in Manhattan, although with far fewer jobs.

The former bartender acknowledged that assaults have increased but thinks a more targeted approach toward those crimes is a better use of resources. Also, it stops the police from, in her words, “criminalizing poverty.” That is the mindset of liberal politicians in 2019.

But let’s think about who we’re talking about here for a second.

Apparently this freshman representative also thinks we should close down prisons and let criminals back into the community.

We’re putting too many people in prison. So it’s time we talk about shutting down corrections facilities across the country.

At least… that’s what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thinks.

In a series of tweets recently, the freshman rep compared our system of so-called ‘mass incarceration’ to that of slavery, calling for an end to locking people up.

Mass incarceration is our American reality. It is a system whose logic evolved from the same lineage as Jim Crow, American apartheid, & slavery. To end it, we have to change. That means we need to have a real conversation about decarceration & prison abolition in this country. https://t.co/9E9NTAmBNi — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 7, 2019

“A cage is a cage is a cage. And people don’t belong in them,” she posted.

I know the term “prison abolition” is breaking some people’s brains. The right is already freaking out. Yet the US incarcerates more than anywhere in the world. We have more than enough room to close many of our prisons and explore just alternatives to incarceration. /1 — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 7, 2019

She went on to say that the United States “incarcerates more than anywhere in the world,” saying we had “more than enough room to close many of our prisons and explore just alternatives to incarceration.”

Ocasio-Cortez said that many prisons are currently being used for individuals who belong in “mental hospitals, homeless shelters, & detox centers,” and that federal funding for the facilities could be directed elsewhere for alternate methods of rehabilitation.

She inferred that taking people out of the cage would greatly decrease criminal activity.

“If we invested meaningfully, what do you think would happen to crime?” she questioned.

Secondly, our prison & jail system is so large bc we use them as de facto mental hospitals, homeless shelters, & detox centers instead of *actually* investing in… mental health, housing, edu, & rehab. If we invested meaningfully, what do you think would happen to crime? /3 — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 7, 2019

Seems she had our next question pinned, but didn’t exactly have an answer for it.

“People tend to say ‘what do you do with all the violent people?’ as a defense for incarcerating millions,” she tweeted as she skirted around an actual answer to the question. “Our lawmaking process means we come to solutions together, and either way we should work to an end where our prison system is dramatically smaller than it is today.”

She went on to say that no matter the reason, America needed to find a new way to handle crime, because many people in the system “don’t belong there at all.” First of all, many people in jailed or in prison don’t belong there at all. Whether it’s punitive sentencing for marijuana possession or jailing people for their poverty & letting the rich free through systems like cash bail, we wrongly incarcerate far, far too many people. /2 — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 7, 2019

To ‘prove’ her point, AOC cited a man her who been jailed for 10 days for oversleeping his jury duty as well as a woman who claimed to have been ‘tortured’ by being ‘force-fed pills’ and being placed in solitary confinement for months while in Rikers Island.

Yesterday morning I spoke with a woman who was thrown in Rikers as a teenager. Put in solitary confinement for MONTHS, aka torture. Force-fed pills. The conditions were so bad, she too had drank out of toilets. A cage is a cage is a cage. And humans don’t belong in them. — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 7, 2019

As we’re sure many people are aware, there are changes that could be made to the criminal justice system in our country to help it improve. The same could be said about anything that we’ve created as a society. Policies that could be changed to help decrease recidivism, steps we could work on to help rehabilitate instead of furthering a lifestyle.

But does that mean closing down prisons from coast to coast?

Not a chance.

Her comments come on the heels of a New York Times editorial that absolutely slammed police officers, blaming them for putting people in cages.

Instead of looking at the criminal actions that landed suspects behind bars, they straight up blame the cops for enforcing the law.

And now, officers are standing up to set the record straight.

The title of the op-ed piece was, “Police Can’t Solve the Problem. They Are the Problem.”

It was written by attorneys Derecka Purnell and Marbre Stahly-Butts and published in the New York Times at the end of September. The article largely focused on the 1994 crime bill signed by Bill Clinton, which provided funding for additional police officers as well as crime reduction programs.

The authors wasted no time at all using cops as a scapegoat for crime rates and civil unrest throughout the country.

“The reality is this: The police fill prisons,” the authors wrote. “We can’t repair the harm that the 1994 crime bill has done by promoting mass incarceration without reducing the size and scope of the police.”

So not only are police to blame for putting people in jail for…. you know, breaking the law… but in order to fix it, we should put less cops on the street.

Right.

They continued by saying that the criminal justice system was a ‘system of oppression’ and needed to be reduced and abolished. They say police are the problem.

“Systems of oppression, like slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration, must be reduced and abolished — not reimagined,” the article reads. “Police officers, who primarily put people in cages, are the enforcers of mass incarceration. We must reckon with the reality that the police are part of the problem and stop investing money, power and legitimacy in them.”

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Former Arizona police officer Brandon Tatum appeared on Fox & Friends to offer his feelings on the attitude toward police in the U.S.

He said that calling the police “the problem” is “absolutely ridiculous” and “damaging to the reputation of law enforcement.”

“I feel like, in this country, it has gone too far,” Tatum said.

The authors “proved” their point that cops were to blame by saying that an additional 100,000 officers being added to the force from a federal crime bill only helped reduce crime by 1.3 percent.

But when overall crime dropped by 26 percent between 1993 and 2000, police didn’t get the credit. The authors instead cited pre-school and job programs for the reduction.

So what should we do to change the system? They say less police and more free stuff for people.

“Free public transportation, living wages and quality housing would be better responses to these issues than increased policing,” the article argued.

The cops can’t win. If something bad happens, we blame the officers. But if their presence leads to positive change, we chalk the win up to other factors.

Give us a freaking break.

“When you’re having a problem, you call the police, when you are the problem, you blame the police and that’s exactly what they’re doing,” Tatum said. “Police officers have become the scapegoat of everybody’s problems.”

Instead of blaming the criminals for committing crimes, we’re blaming those who enforce the laws that were created by elected leaders.

What a ridiculous statement that is when you think about it… but it couldn’t be further from the truth. We task our police with upholding the law and keeping our streets safe. They don’t get to decide what’s illegal and what isn’t.

We elect the leaders. They create the laws. And we tell the cops to enforce them.

But sure… let’s blame the police for everything.

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