For two days in a row, the New York Post has warned that — with NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy in question — New York could soon become beset with an increase in violent crime rivaling that of Chicago.
On Wednesday, the paper’s front page screamed “CHI KIND OF TOWN” to accompany a story including interviews with the parents of Hadiya Pendleton and Heaven Sutton, two Chicago youths killed in shootings earlier this year.
“Can you sleep at night if someone gets shot because a cop couldn’t search someone they know has a gun?” Nathaniel Pendleton, father of 15-year-old Hadiya,who was gunned down in a Chicago park in January, told the Post.
The previous day, the Post ran the headline “Welcome to Chicago” atop a storyquoting an unidentified “veteran Bronx police officer” who warned that crime will go up as a result of federal Judge Shira Scheindlin’s ruling.
“It sounds like all that cops are going to do now if someone is robbed, mugged or shot is take a report, and that’s it,” the officer said.
Former New York Gov. George Pataki, too, took a jab at Chicago in his defense of the stop-and-frisk policy, which he said has been responsible for reducing crime and protecting minorities.
“If [Attorney General Eric] Holder and [President Barack] Obama want to investigate a police department, why don’t they look at Chicago, where the civil rights of young African-Americans are being not only taken away, but they’re being murdered in record rates in the South Side of Chicago?” Pataki commented on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday, Politico notes.
In response to the jabs, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, a former New York officer, noted that shootings, homicides and overall crime alike are all down in Chicago this year compared to 2012, when violence in the Windy City attracted national media attention.
“As you know, we have a 1965 murder rate in the City of Chicago right now and I think there are some unwarranted perceptions that exist out there,” McCarthy said in a Tuesday afternoon news conference, according to DNAinfo.
About Post Author
