New York Post columnist on NYC violence spike: People asking where is the mayor?
New York Post columnist Maureen Callahan says it's 'remarkable' for New Yorkers to see 'just how quickly decades of effort' that made New York City 'the safest big city in the world have completely unraveled.'
New Yorkers are asking where the mayor is as a violence spiked in New York City, New York Post columnist Maureen Callahan said as she described on “America’s Newsroom” what residents are seeing in their city during the coronavirus pandemic.
She stressed on Monday that it's “remarkable” for New Yorkers to see “just how quickly decades of effort” that made New York City “the safest big city in the world have completely unraveled.”
In a New York Post column published on Thursday, Callahan addressed the increase in violent crime in New York City, including subway attacks and shootings, in the startling reversal after years of record declines.
“Anyone who rides the subway these days has these dreadful thoughts: Will today be the day I’m attacked?" she wrote. "Will this be the day I’m shoved off the platform into an oncoming train? And: Where the hell is our mayor?”
On Thursday, a 40-year-old woman was shoved onto the subway tracks in Manhattan's Union Square station just before a train pulled in. She fell between the rails and a row bed, police said, escaping with minor injuries. A suspect was immediately arrested.
Hours earlier on Wednesday night, a man was shoved onto the tracks of the 42nd Street-Bryant Park station by a panhandler after refusing to give him money, authorities said. The victim was able to get back on the platform and wasn't seriously hurt. A suspect was arrested.
Alex Weisman, a member of the original cast of Broadway's "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," was attacked at an Upper West Side station Tuesday afternoon. He suffered fractures around his eye that required surgery.
“We have a crisis in this city, and it absolutely has to be addressed,” interim NYC Transit President Sarah Feinberg reportedly said last week. “It’s got to be addressed, and I’m desperate for this mayor or the next mayor to take it on because we’ve got a long way to go.”
'DEFUND THE POLICE' MOVEMENT TAKES TOLL ON NYC'S CRIME RATE
Callahan pointed to a video showing a man standing on top a city bus with a flamethrower while blasting flames into the air and street before a crowd of cheering onlookers. The incident took place in Brooklyn's Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood earlier this month, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority told Fox News.
“The lunatics are running the asylum,” Callahan said on Monday.
A spokesperson with Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment on Monday. De Blasio, however, has blamed the latest crime surge in part on business and school closures related to the coronavirus pandemic.
“A lot of things we depend on to keep people safe and stable weren’t there,” he said Tuesday.
The increase in violence has given rise to fears that the city could be returning to darker times, decades ago, when residents feared for their safety amid a crack epidemic. The new crime wave comes as the city also grapples with a faltering economy and pressure to enact police reforms championed by racial justice advocates.
Citywide, shootings have nearly doubled -- from 698 last year to 1,359 this year as of Nov. 15, according to NYPD figures.
Shooting victims have more than doubled, from 828 during all of 2019 to 1,667 this year through Nov. 15. There have been 405 homicide victims so far this year, compared to 295 last year.
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Callahan said she is hearing from “retired police officers, veterans with 20 plus years on the job” who “are just expressing their dismay and their sadness” regarding the current situation. She added that they are “crying” for “intervention.”
Fox News’ Louis Casiano contributed to this report.
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