Violent Crime Continues to Surge in New York City

BY JACK CROWE

July 13, 2020

Violent crime continued to surge in New York City last week as a combination of unrelenting heat and holiday revelry drove people out of their apartments and into streets that are suddenly seeing less-aggressive police enforcement.

Forty-three people were shot over the course of a week that began with eleven shootings on July Fourth alone. That's a 300 percent increase from the previous year. The week ended with a day of violence unseen in a generation: 64 people were shot across the city in 48 incidents during a 24-hour period on Sunday, and ten of them died. Michael LiPetri, the NYPD's top crime strategist, told the Daily News he hasn't seen anything like it since 1993 or '94.

The surge comes just as the NYPD appears to be pulling back on gun enforcement: According to NYPD data, cops arrested 29 people for illegal gun possession during the week ending on July 5, compared to 70 during the same week in 2019 — a 62 percent decline.

So what does New York's most popular politician believe is driving the cataclysm of violence racking her city? Bread.

"They feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry," Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said during a virtual townhall last week when asked about the surging violence.

"Do we think this has to do with the fact that ... people are at a level of economic desperation that we have not seen?" she asked, apparently unaware that property and other types of crime in the city have actually declined from the previous year as shootings and murders continue to climb.

The decidedly less popular Bill de Blasio managed to present a more plausible explanation for the explosion of violence, chalking it up to "the fact that the court system is not working, the economy's not working, people have been pent up for months and months, so many issues underlying this challenge."

You can't blame de Blasio for the pandemic and much of the resulting economic fallout, but you would hope that he might find time to begin reforming the city's judicial pipeline so that people arrested for gun possession are actually arraigned instead of being released back onto the street in droves, which is the current state of affairs.

Spike in Shootings Continues over the Weekend in Chicago, NYC

A spike in shootings during the past month and a half continued with 64 shooting victims in Chicago and 28 in New York City over the weekend.

While overall crime is down in both cities, there has been an uptick in gun violence in June and July as compared to the same period in 2019. That uptick comes in the midst of massive protests against police kindled by the death of George Floyd, an African American man killed during his arrest by officers in Minneapolis.

Of the shooting victims in Chicago this weekend, 13 were killed including two children. The same weekend in 2019 saw 41 shooting victims with nine dead. Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown has announced the creation of "mobile patrol" units to increase police presence in various neighborhoods, in an attempt to clamp down on the violence. (ABC7)

China Bans Cruz, Rubio and Other Politicians over Xinjiang Criticism

China said Monday it will ban three U.S. lawmakers and one ambassador from entering the country over their criticism of the ruling Communist Party's policies toward minority groups and people of faith. The ban comes one week after U.S. officials announced sanctions on four Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses against Muslims in the Xinjiang region.

S "Xinjiang affairs are China's internal affairs and the U.S. has no right to interfere in them," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters, per the Washington Post.

S "We urge the United States to immediately withdraw its wrong decision."

SHua did not spell out the sanctions against Senators Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Ted Cruz (R., Texas), Rep. Chris Smith (R., NJ) and Ambassador for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, but said they would correspond to the American ones. China also targeted the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. (WaPo)

Washington Redskins to Change Team amid Corporate Pressure

The Washington Redskins football team will announce the retirement of its name on Monday, following a review begun after corporate pressure.

Dan Snyder, the team's owner, has previously insisted that the name would never change. A 2016 poll by the Washington Post found that nine in ten Native Americans were not offended by the name, although some consider the name to be a racial slur.

However, on July 2 of this year, Redskins sponsor FedEx publicly requested that the team change its name and threatened to remove company signage from the team's stadium if the change was not carried out. The move would cost the team $45 million in revenue. That same day, Nike stopped marketing Redskins merchandise, and Pepsi and Bank of America also gave their support to a name change. (WaPo)

ESPN Anchor Suspended after Cursing Josh Hawley

Sports network ESPN has suspended anchor Adrian Wojnarowski after cursing Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) in an email message.

Hawley had sent a letter to the National Basketball Association questioning if players would be allowed to display political messages in praise of police or against the Chinese government on their jerseys. Wojnarowski then wrote "F*** you" in an email to Hawley, which the senator then posted on Twitter in a screenshot.

ESPN has suspended the anchor without pay for two weeks, the New York Post reported on Sunday. It is not clear when the suspension began, but Wojnarowski is expected to return to work sometime around July 25. The NBA is planning to begin its season on July 30, in games without fans due to the spread of coronavirus. (NYPost)

Graham to Call Robert Mueller to Testify after Op-Ed Defending Roger Stone Prosecution

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said Sunday that he will grant Democrats' request to have former special counsel Robert Mueller testify about his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election before the committee.

Graham's surprising statement came a day after Mueller broke his silence to defend his office's prosecution of President Trump's longtime friend Roger Stone in an op-ed published by the Washington Post.

Stone was convicted of crimes that included lying to Congress, prosecutors alleged, to protect the president, but had his sentence commuted by the president just days before he was set to report to federal prison. Mueller wrote in his op-ed that Stone is still a convicted felon and "rightly so." (WaPo)