AOC and other Dems opposed 2019 proposal to add MTA cops in NYC subways

On Tuesday morning during rush hour, a man donned a gas mask, threw smoke canisters on the floor of a crowded subway train and began shooting. In all, 29 people were injured, 10 with gunshot wounds, others by smoke inhalation and by the panic that ensued. The gunman is still at large but police believe they have a person of interest and are in pursuit of Frank R. James, a 5-foot-5-inch, 61 year-old heavyset black man.

At the subsequent news briefing, Democratic politicians showed up to voice their concern about the shooting, saying things like how unacceptable it is for such a terrible thing to happen. It's as if we didn't know that and are hearing these words for the first time. 

But Democrats didn't always sing the same tune.

In 2019, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Socialist-NY) along with others in Congress from New York, loudly proclaimed their opposition to a proposal which would have added 500 additional Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) police officers in the city's subways.

AOC actually working

A letter was sent by lawmakers to disgraced then-Gov. Andrew "Handy Andy" Cuomo addressing the MTA's plan to hire the additional police. Rather than doing any such hiring, the Democrats said the money should be spent on "desperately needed resources" like "subway, bus, maintenance, and service improvements, as well as protecting riders and transit workers from assault rather than in the over-policing of our communities."

Democrats don't like the presence of police in the community because it reduces the opportunity for smash-and-grab equity by their constituents.

At the time, Democratic lawmakers who don't ride the subway to work said the plan was "not cost-effective" and cited statistics from the New York Police Department (NYPD) as they claimed "major felonies committed on the subway have decreased." 

"The subway system is now safer than before," they wrote, while riding Ubers or limos to work. In addition, the legislators said it was "imperative to reconsider the use of operating funds to pay for additional officers and to find alternate streams of revenue to avert a larger budget crisis."

Noting a "significant uptick in assaults on bus and subway workers," the Democratic lawmakers told the disgraced governor that the plan would impact those living in poverty and reminded him "of the historic racial discrepancies in enforcement and the way communities of color, both MTA riders and workers, bear the brunt of over-policing." 

Over-policing? They make this stuff up as they go along.

"Arresting hard-working people who cannot afford a $2.75 fare is, in effect, the criminalization of poverty," the lawmakers claimed in the letter. In other words, stop arresting people just because they broke the law--they can't afford to pay for things.

Meanwhile, after Tuesday's shooting, Alexandria Obviously-Comatose said that she was "devastated." She feared for her life in spite of her being in Washington, D.C. at the time. But she felt as if she heard the bullets wiz past her pretty head. "I felt as if the bullets wizzed past my pretty Latina head," she said.

"We’re devastated to see what happened in Brooklyn today," she wrote in a tweet. "Thinking of and praying for those injured and their loved ones." 

Who dresses this guy?

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) who had also signed the 2019 letter said that he was "horrified" and that his diet still isn't working and blames it all on his thyroid. Here is his tweet.

"I am horrified by the attack in Brooklyn," he wrote. "I am closely monitoring the situation and am in communication with the FBI. My thoughts are with the victims and first responders." 

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Other New York Democrats who signed the letter beside AOC and Nadler were: former Rep. José Serrano, and NY state Senators Michael Gianaris, Luis Sepulveda, Jessica Ramos, Julia Salazar, and Alessandra Biaggi.

I'm sure they're also "devastated" and "horrified" by the shooting, but at least the New York subway system isn't "over-policed."

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