Ortt slams NYC Council’s $1 billion cut to the NYPD

The newly ascendant Republican Leader in the State Senate is slamming the New York City Council’s $1 billion budget cut to the New York Police Department last week and is taking steps to prevent its implementation.

Senator Rob Ortt (R – Niagara County) released this statement last week:

Last night’s decision by the New York City Council to kowtow to the Defund Police movement and cut $1 billion from the NYPD budget endangers every resident of New York.

By design, this movement wants to hamper the NYPD’s ability to keep communities safe. Democrats’ anti-police rhetoric and policies have already led to a major increase in violent crime that has generated victim after victim. Chillingly, most Democrats in New York City vow that this is only the beginning of what they intend to do to the police because their defunding did not go far enough. Defunding police will only amplify this problem in what was once “the safest big city.”

This move follows Governor Cuomo’s call to “reimagine” police and their budgets, which is just another way of saying: Defund Police. It is something that Senate Republicans have heard from Senate Democrats who want to “defund and dismantle” police and certainly, these dangerous, disingenuous ideas will spread if not stopped.

One Party Rule in the New York has produced pro-criminal, anti-police policy like bail reform, letting violent criminals — the latest examples being looters and arsonists — right back on the street, pushing for COVID-19 releases for criminals who simply went on to reoffend, and now they back the latest move to defund, reimagine, or even abolish police.

It is unconscionable to support any policy that puts the public and those who protect us all in danger and Republicans will continue to oppose these dangerous and destructive Democrat ideas.

Senate Republican Leader Ortt represents the 62nd Senate District. He enlisted in the New York Army National Guard in October 2001 in direct response to 9/11. He is a combat veteran, who served in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.