January 7, 2020
Dear Mayor de Blasio,
We took these liberties for granted- to live, work, worship and safely walk the streets of our neighborhoods. Freedom used to be a hallmark of this great democracy we call home. Now no place is sacred, no place is safe; Houses of worship, schools, grocery stores, subways and city buses, parks, populated city streets, the list goes on and on. Now, men, women and children live in fear of daily violence and the next act of terror. They have a choice: stay locked in their homes or take a grave risk.
We are in the throes of a surging wave of hate crime, encompassing acts of murder, assault, intimidation, vandalism and property damage. According to the NYPD, compared to 2018, anti-Semitic hate crimes in New York City are up 63% and crime within the confines of our local 66 Precinct, long prized as the safest precinct in the city, has doubled. The victims, with rising regularity, are visibly Orthodox Jewish people – the ones often disparagingly referred to as the ultra-orthodox.
I understand the desire for Jews to come together and support each other in a time of fear. I understand why many felt uplifted by the experience. However, outreach to include the Ultra-Orthodox community currently under attack, who are heavily represented in my district, appeared to be an afterthought. And as an unfortunate side effect, the march presented a golden opportunity to legitimize many of the usual suspects who are happy to pay little more than lip service to their commitment to protecting the rights and lives of Orthodox Jews.
Mr. Mayor, your dismal failure in responding to this crisis is stunning, even for a mayoralty marked by dereliction of duty and severe mismanagement. Open your eyes. Hate has taken full advantage of your negligence and the dangerous, irrational policies heaved upon this city by your administration. On your watch, hate has come home to roost and despite your assertions, hate has found a very comfortable home here.
Why are villains and hoodlums suddenly emboldened to take up their guns and knives and hunt people down? Beat them and intimidate them with bricks and fists?
For years, I’ve been beating a drum to deaf ears, warning that the ill effects of your policies will endanger us all. Broken windows policing worked, but you abolished it. With the rise of quality of life issues like graffiti, vagrancy, public filth and petty crime, I warned that it would not end there. I raised a red flag when your administration completely abolished stop and frisk, when instead they should have modified it and improved upon it. Kowtowing to the police abolitionists, you stripped the NYPD of their authority that once acted as an effective crime deterrent and then stood by as anarchy ensued.
The day after innocent Jewish victims were bludgeoned with a machete in Monsey, you stood up to reassure the Jewish community that they were not alone. Why did I not stand by your side? Because your current plan clearly says the opposite.
Instead of improved security for victims, you continue to cater to the aggressors. You offered hate-crime awareness classes to reach “the young people who don’t understand the meaning of their actions” (i.e. miscreants, violent criminals and villains) and created an interfaith coalition to “identify and address the issues that drive hate-based crime” (i.e. blame the victim). Who authored this plan? Al Sharpton? Louis Farrakhan? The usual meaningless platitudes would have been less insulting!
Educate the young; certainly, you can do a better job of that. But, the only way to immediately and reliably protect a community under attack is for the NYPD to maintain a constant, visible presence throughout the neighborhood, with more cops on the beat, on foot and on bikes, and stationed as decoys. Your offer to rotate 4-6 additional cops demonstrates alarming indifference at best and the insidious nature of anti-Semitism at worst.
I asked for a permanent increase of police officers assigned to the 66 Precinct, who simply don’t have the manpower to cover the heightened needs of the district. Instead, you proposed security cameras. The critical, obvious difference is that a cop witnesses a crime and stops it, while a camera bears silent witness – its help comes too late. The statements that closely follow every incident now ring hollow.
We don’t need an administration that kicks up more fuss over the mistreatment of turtles and geese than human beings. This city is in a death spin and you, Mayor de Blasio, are at the helm and completely incapable of righting its course. The only thing you can do to protect the people now is resign.
G-d help us all.
Simcha Felder
Senator, 17th S.D.
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
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11 Responses
All I can say is, Wow!
Reb Simcha:
Additional police would be nice. But that will not accomplish much. Let’s think.
* Response time for police to reach a crime scene is notoriously slow. Same goes for EMS. That’s why there are volunteer groups like Shomrim, Shmira, Hatzoloh, etc. When first responders are needed, it is the exception that any of the government based organizations score well.
* NYPD exists in all city boros. This has not decreased crime. Presence and visibility have some merit, but do not limit criminals who wish to violate. To flood streets with hundreds of officers, as often happens by New Year’s events in Time Square might make it challenging to a criminal, and might lower numbers. But that is not going to be done in Boro Park or any other residential area.
* The passing NYPD patrol can prevent something from being committed at that moment. The criminal who wishes to offend will simply wait for that vehicle to turn the corner. The attack will not last that long that the next rotation down that street will occur while the criminal is still there. Crime can succeed, despite roving NYPD officers and vehicles. The lights on several blocks in BP accomplish nothing besides blocking a few more parking spaces.
* There is nothing better than having consequences as the deterrent. Check with criminologists if you question this. And our current system, now emboldened with one of the silliest reforms in history, has made crime a virtue that gets rewarded. We need serious and immediate consequences for violent crime. You surely remember the chaptzem era, where those committing hate crimes in our community were subjected to street justice. Our mayor would take such a criminal out for pizza, and imprison those exacting justice. Can we have some option to send criminals to the hospital? That might actually have an impact. And the numbers will go down. Not a feather in the mayor’s cap, though.
Well written letter by the NYS Senator…
However….it seems your editors missed the mark again…
Usually you sensationalize the headline as a tease where
the headline has very little to do with the article that follows…
Here you completely missed it….
Why not include in the headline an open letter to the Mayor
by NYS Senator asking him to RESIGN…..which is exactly
what Simcha Felder concludes in his open letter
so now you change the headline and leave my comment in….
brilliantly done…
the problem is FELDER voted for all these non sense laws that is catch and release, in order to get into the good graces of the liberals.
Bravo Senator Felder!!
simcha , dont get sucked into this – the mayor has nothing to do w jersey city or monsey no one really knows why the so many stories lately we can speculate and there is place for constructive solutions BUT BLAME THE MAYOR , no reason for that
overall the city is safer than ever , do u remember when every yeshiva would go home early on Halloween , the chaptzems ,…
If you go down in Brooklyn AA community you’ll find police officers on every corner
Why not by us when we are being attacked for months
Don’t we pay enough in taxes that we need to rely on volunteers?
Maybe we need to tax more bags & more meter tickets ( thats the only enough officers the city can effort)
Deblasio it’s time for you to go You have been here for too long and too much trouble
Good work Simcha
I fully agree with Mr. Felder, and feel that De Blasio should have been replaced a while ago.
But it will take a miracle to undo the damage he’s done.
I’ve been wondering if New Yorkers are asleep. Why have they allowed our lives to be made miserable.
Why should senior citizens be required to walk up and down blocks in extreme heat, cold, wind, ice, etc. to find an operational munimeter or be ticketed? The baby-boomer generation is now the senior citizen generation, and we are being trampled upon, with DeBlasio at the head of the trampler’s parade.
I am not a fan of our mayor and think he is making the city worse, but that reform everyone is talking about comes from Cuomo, State level, not city so why Simcha is not asking Cuomo to resign?
YWN just posted this to their WhatsApp status push feed. Today is April 29th. Mayor Big Bird de Blasio stuck his foot in his mouth again.