(TotalConservative.com) – New York Gov. Kathy Hochul recently changed the tone of her blue state from one of condemnation of police and law enforcement to one that encourages the deployment of National Guard soldiers to secure its capital city amid rising transit crime. As those on the right call out the hypocrisy of Democrats, some on the left believe that a police state is forming in the Big Apple.
Hochul deployed the service members on Wednesday, March 6, to patrol and watch over the New York City subway system, a move that many conservative critics are pointing out as hypocritical after years of calling to “defund the police.”
At least 750 members of the National Guard were deployed alongside 250 additional police officers from around the state of New York in an effort to curb the spike in crimes recently seen on public transit. During the announcement, Hochul said that such “brazen, heinous attacks” on the subway system would “not be tolerated.”
On Tuesday, March 5, the day before the governor’s announcement, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that police patrolling subways would be allowed to conduct random bag searches. He said the city “must be proactive” to curb the “random acts of violence,” and was also adamant that the police would not be “profiling” but that all of the searches are “random.” Last month, he deployed nearly 1,000 additional New York Police Department (NYPD) officers to patrol the subway system and also installed cameras in many subway cars.
Crime in general saw a surge in the city following the pandemic lockdowns in 2020, as well as the protests and riots sparked by the death of George Floyd, which established a general attitude of mistrust and animosity toward policing that encouraged lay-offs from defunding efforts, mass retirement of officers, and a resulting recruitment crisis. Now, the economic fallout of that period and the spike in the illegal immigration crisis have exacerbated the problem of crime.
It seems ironic that those on the left are calling out the heavy-handed response as an overbearing police state when they advocated for the policies that drove crime rates up and incentivized the current pendulum swing back toward law and order.
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