Thank God the feds have come to clean up – Latest News
New York City shouldn’t need the feds to help clear Washington Square Park of the pushers who’ve turned it into an open-air drug market — nevertheless it did.
With the keen cooperation of the NYPD, federal brokers on Thursday nabbed 19 heavy-duty, profession drug sellers with at the very least 80 arrests amongst them
Per court docket paperwork, medicine dealt by the crew that calls itself WSP Enterprise led to at the very least two deaths final yr: an 18-year-old from Aspen, Colo. who’d simply graduated high college and a 43-year-old homeless park dweller.
The busts observe years of Albany “decriminalizing” most crime, in order that few of these sellers might really be jailed — with an help from shoulder-shrugging native authorities, notably feckless Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
The suspects have been driving a native criminal-justice merry-go-round: arrested, booked into jail, arraigned after which instantly launched by tag groups of pliant assistant DAs and mawkish turn-‘em-loose judges.
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It’s not like DA Bragg — whose notorious “Day One” memo demanded a “presumption of pre-trial non-incarceration” for nearly each crime short of homicide — didn’t know what was occurring in one-time jewel-box city oasis.
But his reply to the gross dysfunction in Washington Square was — await it — watercolors.
That’s proper. Bragg sponsored an “art of healing workshop” in the drug-infested northwest nook of the park final July, explaining, “It’s very intentional to pick that part of the park which has had some challenges.”
Challenges.
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As the Post reported, Bragg meditatively painted a image of a tree on a tiny canvas whereas drug addicts nodded off on close by park benches.
Federal intervention, coming after years of reporting, neighborhood conferences and police patrols, is healthier late than by no means — and a sturdy proof-of-concept for President Donald Trump’s vow to ship law enforcement into cities the place the native authorities both can’t or gained’t implement the law.
The scene in Washington Square Park has been a vile hellscape for years, with addicts overtly taking pictures up or smoking crack or meth, sellers overtly soliciting potential clients and telling non-buyers to get misplaced.
A functioning, healthy metropolis would’ve fixed this drawback long in the past: Its prosecutors would have labored with the police to develop sturdy instances towards the degenerate distributors of venom, and its judges would have handed out some severe time, even regardless of Albany’s meddling.
Here’s hoping the feds have their eyes on East Harlem, the Hub in The Bronx and different neighborhoods the place the drug scourge has been allowed to fester — and that the metropolis continues to have a mayor and police commissioner who’ll welcome the help.
