‘WE WAS ROBBED’
New York City has been caught in a classic “Catch 22” situation. We have been penalized – robbed – for being good at keeping crime at bay and dealing with gigantic budget deficits.
Ridiculous, impossible and silly are words that come to mind as we try to fathom the Justice Department’s rational for cutting the city out of funding from the stimulus package.
The COPS – Community-Oriented Policing Services – a federal grant program to allow municipalities to hire more police offices — was begun in the early 1990’s.
New York City has been allocated different amounts every year – usually seven percent. However, just because New York City remains the safest big city in America, according the FBI’s preliminary Uniform Crime Report for 2008, the city was removed from the COPS funding list.
The city probably would have received $70 million that would have put as many as 600 cops on the streets. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly are both outraged by the lack of funding.
“To punish our police department because they have driven down crime with fewer resources shows the backwards incentive system that is sometimes at work in Washington . . . The attacks on New York City were attacks on the nation and we should be receiving strong federal support for the NYPD to fight terrorism in the nation’s largest city.”
We have to agree and ask you our readers to write, email, call your elected representatives in Washington and demand that New York City be added into the federal grants.
CONGRATULATIONS
We extend our congratulations to Judge Sonia Sotomayor for taking a giant step closer to becoming the first Hispanic woman on the highest court. On Tuesday, July 28, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to send Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination to the full Senate.
The strictly party line vote, 13-6, featured Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina as the only Republican voting with the 12 Democrats to push President Obama’s nominee along in the selection process.
The full Senate is expected to vote on Sotomayor the first week in August and the New York judge’s confirmation is virtually certain.
