Former New York Governor David Paterson said Sunday that crimes committed by immigrants – including last week’s subway robbery involving an 11-year-old Venezuelan boy – and general unrest in New York City are “really getting out of hand.”
“I’m hearing all these situations that I’ve never heard before,” the former Democratic governor said. said “The Cats Roundtable” radio show on WABC, 770. “An 11-year-old boy robbed a woman on the No. 7 train last Tuesday.”
Police say the small-time suspect has also been linked to a string of robberies in Central Park.
“first [people] “What’s remarkable is that this is immigration. … This is a lot of people being sent here with no time for the city to adapt,” Patterson told host John Catsimatidis.
“It won’t work. There are too many of them. Not all immigrants are criminals,” the former governor said. “But there are a significant number of them who are engaging in this kind of countercultural behavior, and what it leads to is [immigrant] These are the citizens who live in the city and want to make the city as great as it is now.”
The city has spent about $5.5 billion to protect and care for the large number of migrants who arrive here from 2022 onward, The Washington Post reported last week.
Paterson also cited a recent rise in crime in Central Park and violent protests outside a rally in Harlem in support of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for the White House after President Biden leaves office.
He particularly slammed protesters who vandalized the Bird in Hand restaurant.
“This anti-social, completely violent mentality seems to be creeping more and more into our everyday lives. It’s really getting out of hand,” Patterson said.
Overall, crime may be down, and Patterson credits Mayor Eric Adams and Police Commissioner Edward Cabán for reducing violent incidents.
But Patterson said crimes involving immigrants, out-of-control protests and incidents in normally safe places like Central Park “are scaring everyone” and that law enforcement needs to do something about it.
“After a while, people start thinking about whether they want to live in a place where this kind of thing happens. It’s becoming a topic of conversation when people are eating, when they’re on the subway, talking to each other,” he said.
“It will require real changes in policy and deployment. [of more cops} to try to nip this before it gets to where it got back in the mid ‘70s and then repeated itself in the early ‘90s.”
In a separate WABC interview, Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said New York has President Biden and VP Kamala Harris to blame for its migrant crisis.
Cruz credited Democratic former President Barack Obama with enforcing the law and deporting illegal border-crosssers.
“On immigration, Obama, by and large, followed the law. He actually deported millions of people. … The left got very angry with Obama. They called him ‘the Deporter in Chief,’ ” Cruz said.
“What Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have done — and Harris was the border czar …that no other administration has ever done [is] “They just ignored the law. They just released millions of illegal immigrants. It’s completely unprecedented,” he said.
“They want this outcome. … They want this invasion to continue and get worse. New York City and every city in America is paying the price for this invasion.”
