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The recent spate of crimes in Central Park traces back to one root cause according to NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell: migrants. Chell offered his take on the uptick in crime soon after an 11-year-old migrant was arrested after a robbery on a Manhattan subway. But Chell’s comments struck a nerve with many New Yorkers, who were surprised to hear a high-ranking member of the NYPD offer a blunt assessment of the situation. Former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton isn’t surprised by what Chell said; what surprised him, as Bratton described on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program, is how nobody in charge in the Big Apple seems to want to tackle the issues stemming from the surge of migrants into the ill-prepared city.
“Well, back in my day, we fortunately didn’t have the migrant problem that they have today,” Bratton told Berman and Riedel. “It’s not a problem, it’s a crisis. Actually, I describe it as a Rubik’s Cube of crises that, in terms of the issues around the migrants, the illegal migrants and others that are flooding New York, over 200,000, I think, is the figure they use, with an annualized figure of $5 billion a year. I saw an article in the Post this morning that the city spent $308 million just since the month of July. Once again, we’re throwing up our hands on a very critical aspect of trying to get our arms around this problem. It’s a Rubik’s Cube--every time you think you’ve got it solved, there’s a new aspect of the crises popping up.”
What the cops find truly bothersome, as Bratton suggests, is the revolving door mentality the courts bring to the situation, as a suspect who is arrested in the evening is back on the streets by the next morning. “The reality is that this growing population is creating significant problems for the police department, coupled with another aspect of the Rubik’s Cube...as much as I criticize the district attorneys, we have as many crazy judges in this city and state. And so, they’re arrested, they let them out on bail when they should not, after seven or eight arrests; imagine somebody in the country illegally, who gets arrested seven or eight times, and the judge keeps letting them out to do more crime. It’s an extraordinarily frustrating situation for police, so you’re seeing that they’re being more outspoken about their frustration.”