Painting a dire portrait of crime and policing in America, former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton lamented he has "never seen it so bad in terms of the potential for continued disarray," pointing to a return to the dangers of the 70s and 80s.
"We are a country – in cities, all of our cities – whose social norms of behavior and criminal justice system are in extreme disarray, and it's getting worse, not better," Bratton, who has spent 50 years in policing, running police departments in New York City, Boston, and Los Angeles, told "The Cats Roundtable" on WABC 770 AM-N.Y.
Bratton noted to host John Catsimatidis disturbing trends in Democrat-run cities – "tilting incredibly fast to the far left" – working to reduce police forces while civil unrest burns.
"We are rapidly moving toward a repeat of the 70s and 80s that led to our worst crime year in our history in our country, 1990," Bratton said. "In city after city, shootings, murderers, violence, and other forms of crime are on the increase. And nobody's paying any attention to it. It's amazing. They will start paying attention to it farther into the summer because there's no sign that it's going to abate."
There had been progress in the past 30 years, Bratton noted, but it has been erased.
"It's an Etch-a-Sketch moment," Bratton said. "It's as if all of a sudden all of the good has been erased, and all we're focusing on is the bad."
Bratton does admit there are bad police officers who need to be dealt with, but vilifying the good people risking their lives to protect our cities is demoralizing them, too.
"It’s understandable that they are demoralized; unfortunately they're going to get even more demoralized if you look at what's going on in the criminal justice reform movement," he added.
"It's a great political hashtag, isn't it: 'Defund the police,'" Bratton lamented. "Well, as we get into the hot summer, and they defund the police, and reduce police ranks around the country, we'll see a repeat of the 70s.
"Now it's a matter of shifting the blame for things that have gone wrong, and giving no praise whatsoever for things that have gone right," Bratton concluded. "So, New York is heading into some very, very troubled waters. The country is."
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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