It’s a Christmas miracle. The edito♍rial board of the New 𒊎York Post and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez agree on something.
Former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton posted a photo to Twitter of an E-train car at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue occupied by presumably homeless people, covered in blankets, their possessions 🌌scattered across the seats and floor. “Imagine the co♈ps’ frustration with no support to deal with it!” Bratton wrote.
“Of course they’re frustrated,” AOC rightly responded. “It’s not policing’s job or purpose to address housing✃, provide healthcare or counseling, or solve the reasons people sleep on the subway.”
But even miracles have limits. AOC undermined her 🦩insight with the next line: “Maybe if we shifted some of that $11B/year spent on robo dogs to housing services we could get somewhere.”
Ah, yes, if only we defunded the police. Never mind that the city spends roughly $2 billion a year on homeless services, not counting the millions, millions more spent on other outreach services. The problem is not money. The problem is Mayor de Blasio took Steven Banks, a man who spent his career suing the city over people being forced to take shelter, and put him in charge.
The tragedy of Eudes Pierre
Ever witnessed the rare occasion when a homeless-outreach person talks to someone on the street? “I can take you some place warm and give you a meal,” the city employee says. The person sleeping on the sidewalk refuses. This is where they take their drugs. Overnight homeless shelters don’t let you drink alcohol. They are mentally illᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ. They think it’s 𒆙unsafe inside, because others there are mentally ill. The outreach coordinator nods understandingly . . . and leaves the person sleeping on the street.
Under Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg, there was a policy of “you can’t sleep here.” We spend millions on shelters, services, programs, but if you tell people they still have the option to live on the subway, or Penn Station, a good number — because they are🐻n’t in their right mind due to mental illness or drug dependency — will stay there. Whatever the advocates say, this isn’t compassion.
Which brings us to the tragic case of Eudes Pierre. In June of 2019, Pierre at𝐆tempted to jump out a window. Police responded and stopped him. In October 2020, he stabbed himself in the stomach. Police responded and saved him. The 26-year-old’s mental-health struggles were well known.
Then, on Monday, someone called the police saying Pierre had a knife and a gun. The NYPD responded. Pierre fled onto the subway, putting riders at risk. In one hand was a knife, the other was in his pocket — he didn’t have a gꦓun, but officers didn’t know that. The cops’ Tasers failed to penetrate Pierre’s wintꦚer coat. He lunged at officers with the knife and was killed.
T♔he case “underscores the need for alternatives to having the police respond to mental-health episodes,” The New York Times notes, and, hallelujah, we agree with them, too.
But𝐆 much like AOC, the Times leaves t✱he rest unspoken.
Bill de Blasio spent a whopping $850 million a year on his wife Chirlane’s mental-health program, ThriveNYC. What did they do here? Did they try to treat Pierre after his first attempt on his life? After his second? If Eudes Pierre was taken to a mental-health hospital and treated with medication, we can tell you what happened in other cas🙈es. People were sent home feeling better. They decided not to medicate, and no one stopped them. And the cyღcle continued.
Like the mentally ill person who “decides” to live on the𝓀 subway, the city takes their word for it. They accept the decisions of people whose illness means they𒁏 don’t know better.
The wrong response
We ဣask far too much of police officers, of that we all agree. They put their lives on the line. T𝄹hey face impossible situations. They try to make the city better. A merry Christmas to all of them.
Yet rather than rethink how we are handling the homeless and mentally ill, the liberal-adv𒆙ocate response is: Take more money from the cops!
It’s naive, and it’s wrong. All the money in the world (and, trust us, de Blasio had it and spent it) won’t make a damn difference if we aren’t more proactive, more forceful. Eric Adams, a former NYPD cop, knows this better than most. It is perhaps t𝓀he most important job he faces when he becomes mayor a week from today.
We live in a city run by a Democratic mayor and a Democratic City Council, overseen by a Democratic state government and Democratic governor, abetted by a network of liberal social service꧒s funded by liberal billionaires. If the system failed Eudes Pierre and the people on that subway train, and it did, liberals have no one to blame but themselves. Stop complaining about it and come up with a better way.
One last thing: The “robo dog” was a $94,000 pilot program; it in no way impacted the city’s spending on homelessness or anything else. You know what it was meant to do? Be a nonlethal, nonhuman tool to go into a dangerous situation — say, a dark apartment where a man was holding a gun — and figure out where things stand. In short: It aimed to prevent shootings of officers and suspects. When you reject such efforts, it makes us wonder if💝 you really want to make things better, or if you just want to hate.
