Migrant crime flourishes as NYPD struggles.

0:00 Speaker 1 What is this Sunday morning, is Governor David Patterson and so many things are happening. Governor, what’s on the front page today.

0:09 Speaker 2 Well, on Friday there was extensive coverage of Mayor Adams comments about these vehicles that people are driving in where they don’t have licenses. And often there are now gangs who all ride on these mopeds. So whether it’s you know, the electric bikes or the mopeds or the motorcycles, the atvvs, these vehicles that now when they used to tell you

0:41 when you can’t across at the corner, across of the green, but not in between, that kind of thing, there’s no way to try to prevent very serious accidents. And unfortunately, one of New York’s finest citizens, he was the head of the Jewish Community Relations Council for thirty five years.

1:01 Michael Miller was hit at seventy seventh Street and Third Avenue where he had the light and the an e bike coming the other way hit him and he had to have a titanium bar put it in his leg to replace his shinbone. And he is still recovering in a center and he is plenty mad about this. And

1:25 you don’t have to have gone through what he’s going through to have this ceiling. But it was great to hear that Eric Adams says that they have destroyed forty one thousand of these vehicles in the time he’s been office.

1:40 Speaker 1 And well, we both we both talked to Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday night, and I think he is clear that all these bicycles and mopeads going the wrong way up and down the streets is wrong. And I wasn’t advitating you weren’t everything too of putting these people in jail, but take away the damn bite.

2:05 Speaker 2 Yeah, well, for some of the things that they’re doing on the bikes, they should go to jail. There’ve been you know, we had the smash and grab and the drug stores. Now we have it on the streets where a group of these cyclists or operating these motorbikes or whatever they are depend on a person take all their

2:28 valuables and leave them there. And so that those types of crimes where the electronic vehicles are involved are up by over the last year, so it’s it’s really getting out of control. The other thing is that many of these perpetrators are wearing masks, so the victims can identify them to the police, and Mayor Adams suggested, and a

3:00 Hoco followed up by supporting it, that we reverse the law that was that you could wear masks going back a long time. The original law was from nineteen twenty nine. But sometimes you have to govern to what is happening around you and not always some vague principle that isn’t going to help. So the New York Civil Liberties Union

3:25 has come out and opposed the masks because they feel that it’s a impingement upon freedom of speech and of course freedom of activity. All of these are guaranteed by the Constitution. But at the same time, unless you have a better suggestion for how to cut the number of offenses that are arising from this source, you really should

3:47 just step back and let the people who are charged to deal with it find their own way, and let the legislature that they want to pass a law. Then that law should supersede your.

3:58 Speaker 1 Interests understood the mopets. We understand that we did not talk about the safety in the trains in the buses. And when I spoke to a couple of days before that, I spoke to the Deputy Mayor Phil Banks Uh and Uh I said that nobody really believes some of those numbers on the rest because a lot of the police

4:32 officers are not making arrests. What is your pulse of what’s going on in the streets.

4:38 Speaker 2 My pulse is I think that the statistics that they are citing are accurate. I think they are. However, it is kind of a new day in that when these crimes occur, they’re often, you know, well publicized, as they should be. But it even with myself, I never really even in the late eighties when we had two thousand

5:05 murders a year in New York City, I didn’t really feel unsafe when I was using the subway, and it’s the only method of transportation I could effectively use at that particular time. But what I would say is that I think that the mayor and the police commissioner have demonstrated that they will respond to not just crime, but

5:29 fear of crime. And I think that most people these days do not feel as safe as they may have felt five or six years ago.

5:41 Speaker 1 I still feel uncomfortable walking around at night.

5:46 Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean absolutely, it’s really I mean, you know, there were times decades ago there’s certain neighborhoods you don’t go into you don’t walk, you know, around at night after a certain hour unaccompanied, and that kind of thing.

6:04 And I think that that tendency, that pulse that existed thirty forty years ago is back. In other words, people are being far more careful than they’ve been in a long time. You know, just getting out of a car is an invitation to an attack. So I hope that the police keep plugging away. They seem to be making

6:29 some progress, and I think when they make significant enough progress that will feel it understood.

6:37 Speaker 1 Now I praised Governor Hokeel on halting on halting the congestion pricing. Now I hope she’s halted for a few years, not just right after election day.

6:56 Speaker 2 Any gut feeling, I think if she was to attempt to reinstate it right after election day, it would be it would ignite from rumors that she actually delayed until after election day. So Democrats have better chances than the congressional races, So I’d be shocked if that were to happen.

7:24 I did feel that she sincerely, as the deadline approach, became uncomfortable with the whole process and will now attempt to do something different or the state is good, as you know, as running up a debt over congestion pricing when it doesn’t when it hasn’t even been implemented yet, And so I think that it would be in her

7:52 best interest to find a different way, because I think the opponents of congestion pricing have made some headway and the polls are showing that it’s not as popular as I think. Those who originally were for it, which would be Mayor Bloomberg, former Governor Cuomo and some others, now see that perhaps this was not the best decision.

8:20 Speaker 1 I agree with you one hundred percent. Well, Governor Patterson, thank you so much for the update, and we’ll catch up again real soon.

8:29 Speaker 2 Talk to you next Sunday.