Remember those awful “vertical patrols”? This was the policing of public housing projects that local pols and activists called “intentionally discriminatory” in a lawsuit against the NYPD cops still pending before federal judge Shira Scheindlin.
The idea is that police patrols of housing projects are bad for residents because they are racist and unconstitutional.
We think about Judge Scheindlin — and the city politicians who egged her on in her fight against the police — in the wake of the latest criminal horror, a stabbing of two children who live in New York City Housing Authority buildings.
Six-year-old Joshua Avitto and his best friend, 7-year-old Mikayla Capers, went out for Icees just before 6 p.m. Sunday. The little boy was stabbed to death by a man with a butcher’s knife inside the building’s elevator. Mikayla staggered to the next building and is alive but in critical condition.
Two nights earlier, a nursing student was killed nearby, suggesting we might have a serial stabber on our hands.
Now the same people who just a year ago were egging on Judge Scheindlin are suddenly demanding more cops.
For example, City Councilman Jumaane Williams in 2012 was complaining about how “women and kids who live in public housing get tickets trespassing in their own homes.” Now he’s tweeting “Help @NYPDnews get him [off] our streets. Period.”
We believe that all city residents, including those in public housing, deserve to be secure in their own homes.
Maybe now our progressive class will recognize that, when it comes to protecting the poor and vulnerable, the cops aren’t the enemy. They’re the answer.