The lawmaker mentioned that crime can truly be diminished by funding public applications that help communities.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) is talking out towards the New York Metropolis Police Division’s (NYPD) latest contract, which might push many cops to prime earnings brackets as town is within the means of defunding essential public items like training and well being care.
This week, Ocasio-Cortez brought the “The Each day Present” to Jacobi Hospital within the Bronx to promote a program that reduces gun violence via public well being interventions relatively than policing, which has failed to stop the U.S.’s latest improve in gun violence. She famous that police funding is at present being prioritized over almost each program serving the wants of the general public — a degree that right-wing retailers like Fox Information and The New York Put up have pushed again towards of their infinite quest to additional empower the U.S. police state.
Ocasio-Cortez shot back against the criticism on Twitter on Wednesday. “What they aren’t telling you is that below the brand new NYC contract, many rank and file officers will now be within the prime 10 p.c of earnings earners within the U.S. The catch? It’s being paid for with devastating funds cuts to public faculties, libraries, reasonably priced housing, healthcare, and extra,” she mentioned.
The lawmaker cited an article by The Indypendent discovering that, below the brand new $5.5 billion contract between the NYPD and New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams, police with 5 and a half years of their positions will obtain a base wage of $130,000, or a pay increase of about 50 p.c. Because of this many police can be making upwards of $200,000 with time beyond regulation pay — which NYPD officers have bragged about “milking” — inserting them firmly within the prime 10 p.c of earners within the U.S.
These large raises for cops come as Adams is slashing tens of millions of {dollars} from public faculties, libraries, and extra, bringing layoffs and main austerity measures to public items in what he claims are measures for “fiscal self-discipline.”
Ocasio-Cortez went on to say that conservatives body any funding of public items as left-wing extremism — and that, regardless of their worry mongering about crime, they repeatedly push measures, like elevated policing, that will leave communities less safe.
“[I]f you query this logic and consider defunding faculties, libraries, & housing drives crime, you’re labeled an ‘extremist’ or ‘far-left.’ It shouldn’t be thought of ‘excessive’ to prioritize funding faculties, healthcare, housing, libraries,” she mentioned. “However maybe in at the moment’s world, it’s.”
Certainly, research has shown that funding faculties and increasing state welfare programs decreases crime and will increase public security. This system at Jacobi Hospital, led partially by Ocasio-Cortez, is one instance of the efficacy of group alternate options to policing; in a research published earlier this year, researchers discovered that sending social staff and group members to intervene when gunshot victims are introduced into the emergency room decreased gun violence locally by 59 p.c over the previous 9 years of this system’s implementation.
In the meantime, police usually actively endanger the communities that they’re supposed to guard. Analysis has found that police commit a major proportion of homicides throughout the nation — and, as lawmakers have funneled cash to police within the backlash to the protests towards police brutality in 2020, police killings have hit a file excessive.
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