New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio promises to “flood the zone” with police in Times Square after a shooting injured a tourist.
De Blasio and the City Council slashed $1 billion from the NYPD in the budget they passed in July 2020.
We’ve documented the rise in crime in New York City since then. Victims started questioning if the city should defund the police.
De Blasio wants New York City to open after a yearlong COVID shutdown, but I guess cutting the police will not work in one of the most popular tourist spots in the country.
Chief of Department Rodney Harrison and de Blasio announced the Times Square Safety Action Plan this morning. It includes 50 additional police officers in the area and undercover officers as well:
“Bottom line is, we are going to flood the zone in Times Square with additional officers,” de Blasio said during his daily virtual press briefing.“We have more and more tourists coming back, they have to be safe and feel safe.”He called the terrifying incident Sunday — when a Marine from upstate New York was struck by a stray bullet as two groups of men argued outside the Marriott Hotel — “unacceptable” and that New York “will not tolerate it.”“It has to be safe,” de Blasio said of the tourism hub. “We’re going to be adding additional officers to make it safer.”“We cannot let it have a negative effect” on tourism, the mayor added. “That’s the bottom line. It’s mission critical to get this right.”“The recovery we’re seeing now is very, very strong, and it’s going to keep happening, and we’re going to do a lot to make sure it happens.”
The shooting occurred supposedly between CD peddlers, but the NYPD does not have a motive yet.
Harrison said: “After this shooting and the shooting that we had a couple of weeks ago, it’s important that we put a lot more of a police presence over there, trying to engage some of the issues we’re seeing with these soliciting or aggressive panhandling of CDs.”
The NYPD released a video of the shooting on June 27 and a photo of the suspect.
The suspect allegedly shot Marine Samuel Poulin, who was with his wife and brother-in-law, outside of a hotel. The ricocheted bullet struck him in the back. Thankfully, Poulin is recovering in a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Poulin graduated from The Citadel with honors.
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