Former Mayor Rudy Guiliani calls for more 9,000 more police on streets, De Blasio calls him “unhinged.”

 By Yehudit Garmaise

   This morning, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani held a news conference to outline the ways in which he would help to bring back the city. One of Giuliani’s many proposals was to put 9,000 more police officers on the city’s streets to address the unfortunate increases in crime and homelessness.

   In a simultaneous press conference, when a reporter asked Mayor Bill de Blasio what he thought of former Mayor Giuliani’s proposal for an increased police presence, de Blasio responded that Giuliani “has amnesia. He is out of touch with reality. I think we have seen more and more that Rudy Giuliani has become unhinged.”

   De Blasio continued to say, “I am not waiting around to hear what he thinks.”

  De Blasio might find Giuliani’s proposal unrealistic because he had just spoken about the city’s current budget constraints, cutbacks, and a week-long furlough for 500 workers in the mayor’s office.

   “We have the greatest police force in the country,” De Blasio said. “Up until this pandemic, this police force has driven down crime year after year after year.

   “[Of late, the NYC police] have been dealing with a perfect storm, and yet [the police] are fighting back, really valiantly.

  “But unlike in Giuliani’s time, this police force works with the people of New York City, works with the neighborhoods, listens to people, and tries to create unity and common cause with the people of the neighborhoods in this city.

  “And that is what is going to work in the long haul.”

   Yesterday, when asked about the New York’s recent increase in crime, Douglas M. Schneider, (D), Democratic District Leader for the 44th Assembly district in Brooklyn, asked whether the increase in muggings, shootings, beatings, and stabbings we see every day is a reality or a “just a narrative.”

  Schneider, a civil rights and criminal defense attorney, is running for City Council District 39.

 Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office