Biden's New York visit a counter-punch to Republican crime jabs
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[February 03, 2022]
By James Oliphant and Trevor Hunnicutt
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe
Biden's meeting with New York Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday to discuss
combating escalating gun crime signals Democrats want to send a message
that they will not cede the issue of public safety to Republicans this
election year.
Republicans contend that a pandemic-era spike in homicides and gun
crimes in urban areas across the nation is tied to Democratic backing
for the “defund the police” movement that arose out of the racial
justice protests of 2020 – even though many Democrats, including Biden,
have never supported slashing police funds.
The sharp rise in gun deaths over the last two years has put pressure on
Democratic mayors of large cities to instead boost police funding and
hire more officers, moves sometimes at odds with the progressive arm of
the party's push for policing reforms.
With U.S. voters ranking crime among their top concerns and support for
Biden eroding in the suburbs, a Biden adviser and several Democratic
strategists said the president's decision to visit the New York Police
Department headquarters with Adams offers a chance for Biden to
refashion the political narrative around Democrats and crime ahead of
November's midterm congressional elections.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Feb/03/images/ads/current/ldn_sda_062409.png)
“Democrats at large and the president are frustrated that we continue to
get tagged on this ‘defund the police' nonsense that the large part of
the Democratic Party does not agree with,” said Mark Riddle, executive
director of Future Majority, a moderate Democratic research firm.
The Biden political adviser, who asked not to be named, said the Biden
administration will argue that lax gun laws and enforcement favored by
Republicans are helping drive the rise in crime and making policing more
dangerous.
Will O’Grady, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee,
said, "Biden and Democrats have failed on crime," pointing to spikes in
homicides in cities such as Chicago, Atlanta and Oakland. "Biden's visit
to New York is too little too late."
Biden arrives in New York as a rash of violence has shaken America's
most populous city, where memories of rampant crime through the 1970s to
1990s remain strong.
The city has been roiled in recent weeks by shootings of police
officers. Homicides in 2021 rose 3% over 2020 and a massive 53% from
pre-pandemic levels in 2019, though the numbers remain lower than in the
early 1990s.
Adams, a former New York police captain, was elected as mayor last year
over more left-leaning Democrats with a promise to reform the police
department and get tough on crime.
Since taking office in January, Adams has riled progressives by pledging
to roll back some criminal justice reforms enacted by his predecessor
Bill de Blasio. He seeks to give judges more power to detain suspects
before trial, increase the use of solitary confinement in jails and
re-activate a special anti-crime NYPD unit that was disbanded after
being accused of overly aggressive tactics.
He also has pledged to add more cops to the streets to combat rising gun
violence. He has asked for the federal government for help in stemming
the flow of weapons into the city and for Congress to pass measures
banning assault weapons and making gun trafficking a federal offense.
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![](../images/020322pics/news_a35.jpg)
President Joe Biden holds a bilateral meeting with Qatar's Emir
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani in the Oval Office at the White
House in Washington, U.S., January 31, 2022. REUTERS/Leah Millis
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Feb/03/images/ads/current/humanesociety_sda022411.png) NERVOUS PROGRESSIVES
Some progressives view Biden’s embrace of Adams with alarm.
“It’s a little bit disappointing,” said Stanley Fritz, political
director for Citizen Action of New York, a liberal advocacy group.
“I’m worried about the message.”
Fritz said he hopes Biden presses Adams for a more wide-ranging
approach to combating crime by attacking poverty and homelessness
and increasing mental health services.
“Hiring more cops and giving them more money is not going to solve
the problem,” Fritz said. “I want to believe they are going to do
the right thing, but I am not very confident.”
In the 2020 election, Biden explicitly rejected calls by
progressives to divert funding for police departments to social
services, while assuring them that he supported police-reform
measures.
In office, he has advocated for more spending on both police and
preventative measures. “We shouldn’t be cutting funding for police
departments," Biden told the U.S. Conference of Mayors last month.
"I proposed increasing funding."
Experts have attributed the surge in homicides over the last two
years to the COVID-19 pandemic, which emptied downtowns, shredded
the economy and disrupted social services, along with easy access to
illicit firearms and a shift in policing strategies following the
2020 racial justice protests.
In the most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted Jan. 26-27, both
Democrats and Republicans listed crime fourth among their top issues
of concern, behind the economy, public health and healthcare.
Republican Glenn Youngkin made rising crime an issue during his
successful campaign against Democrat Terry McAuliffe last November
in the Virginia governor’s race, and it became one of a host of
concerns that led some suburban voters who had backed Biden to swing
to Youngkin.
More suburban voters have disapproved of Biden's performance since
last summer than approved, with the recent Reuters/Ipsos poll
showing his support with the key voting bloc at 48%.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Feb/03/images/ads/current/fricke_sda_LUAL_2021.png)
“Democrats are admittedly very concerned about the suburbs getting
away from them,” said Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist who worked
for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “It’s not surprising that the
president is going to start signaling issues he knows are going to
play well in those communities.”
Biden likely would not have done such an event during his
presidential campaign, Payne said, given that he was trying appease
both moderates and liberals in the party in the run-up to the
election. “It shows how the politics have changed.”
(Reporting by James Oliphant and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by
Colleen Jenkins and Alistair Bell)
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