New York’s Democrat former Governor David Paterson has called New York’s Democratic Party lawmakers to change course, warning that he no longer feels safe in NYC.
Paterson says he has never felt less safe in NYC and warned Democrats they may lose big in the next election if they don’t tackle crime.
“I never felt as unsafe as I do now just walking around,” Paterson said.
“For the first time in my life, even in the late ’80s and ’90s when the crime rate was killing 2,000 people a year, I never felt as unsafe as I do now just walking around.
“You’re hearing about an assault on the subway almost every other day,” he said.
Paterson served as the state’s first black governor from 2008 to 2010.
He slammed the Democrats for failing to stop “a rather small number of who seem to repeat these offenses and get arrested 20, 30, 50 times.”
“People start to think that power lasts forever, and people can start to think that they are immune from any kind of repercussions,” Paterson warned Democrat politicians.
“That could happen again unless some of these people who have not been speaking out start doing it,” he said of recent Democrat losses in Nassau County.
“I don’t want to be the one in November to say, ‘I told you so.’”
Paterson called on his fellow Democrats to reform the bail-reform laws that let the repeat violent offenders free to loot and pillage the streets of that great American city.
He said they must introduce a “dangerous’ standard” clause to the 2019 bail-reform laws so judges have more discretion and can keep the repeat, violent offenders where they belong, locked away so they can’t harm law-abiding citizens.
“There is a ‘dangerous standard’ in every state except New York.
“There should be a ‘dangerous standard’ in New York,” the former governor said.
Paterson’s comments come as New York City continues to suffer from soaring violent crime.
Police arrested a Bronx man over the weekend over a brutal fatal stabbing in NYC.
From ABC7NY:
Police have made an arrest in the deadly, unprovoked stabbing of a man in the subway on Thursday.
Police on Saturday arrested Saquan Lemons, 27, of the Bronx on charges of Murder, manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon, the authorities said.
The victim, a 38-year-old Bronx man, was getting off a northbound 4 train as it arrived at the 176th Street station just before 9 p.m. Thursday when he was stabbed multiple times in the back and chest by a suspect who came up behind him in what police said they believe was an unprovoked attack.
The victim collapsed on the platform, was rushed to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he later died, becoming the seventh person to be killed in the NYC transit system this year, and the second fatal subway stabbing in less than a week.
He was later identified as Charles Moore.
