Bernie Kerik says surge in violence in American cities can be reversed with the right leadership
Major U.S. cities see increases in violent crime; reaction from former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik.
With crime rates rising and riots over police brutality escalating in recent months, former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik told “America’s News Headquarters” the real problem is leadership in America's biggest cities.
“I think the thugs, the real bad guys that go out and do bad things on a daily basis, they're emboldened by a lot of the behavior of the politicians,” he said. They're emboldened by the leadership in a lot of these cities.”
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Overall violent crime including shootings and robberies are up in big cities like New York and Chicago since authority is not implementing the correct resources to manage it, which Kerik said is “the biggest problem.”
A New York City police officer stands on a street at the scene of a shooting in the Brooklyn borough of New York. June 4, 2020. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)
When former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani took over in 1994, Kerik said, his policies helped drop violent crime by 65% and murder in Black communities by almost 80%.
“It can be done,” he said. “But you need the right leaders in place to do that.”
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Law enforcement in other major cities including Portland and Seattle are seeing drastic numbers of police officers retiring because they do not feel supported by local government, Kerik said.
“They're not going to put their lives and their families on the line and go out there and do a job when they're villainized by the leadership,” he said. “They have to support the men and women that work for them… If they don't give them the resources and then when there's a questionable incident, they throw them immediately under the bus without giving them the benefit of the doubt. Well, that creates a big problem for the police department.”
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