by Andrea Widburg
Zohran Mamdani just passed an emergency order that effectively prevents New Yorkers from gathering in Times Square just before midnight on July 3, when the famous ball is scheduled to drop, signaling that America’s grand 250th birthday celebration has begun. The problem is that New York City doesn’t have enough police officers because NYC is making policing impossible.
The reason for the emergency order is the threat of violence while the FIFA World Cup is in town:
Soccer mega-fan Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an emergency order that will block events including some concerts and food festivals from city parkland during the FIFA World Cup.
The city Parks Department adopted the rule at the request of the NYPD, denying new permits for special events on park property during the tournament, which runs from June 11 to July 19.
The directive could block any events with 20 or more people that require the special permits which could even include birthday celebrations at the Big Apple’s 100 featured parks.
What quickly became apparent, though, was that this order shutting down any celebrations on New York City property for over a month would slam right into the 250th birthday celebration.
Now, at this point, you’d think that Mamdani would make an exception for that Times Square event. I mean, it’s a big deal. Or as the leftist hero, John Biden, would say, an “effing big deal.”
But that’s not what’s happening. Instead of a joyful gathering of a patriotic crowd (and we know from Tea Party gatherings that patriots are law-abiding and pick up after themselves), they’re going to drop the ball before an empty square:
A planned Times Square ball drop for America’s 250th birthday is still on — but you’re not invited.
The New Year’s Eve-style event will continue as planned at midnight on July 3, organizers said Tuesday — in the wake of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new emergency order banning hundreds of public celebrations during the FIFA World Cup in the Big Apple.
But in a bizarre statement Tuesday, organizers said the show will go on anyway — without a crowd.
The whole thing will be played on TV. That’s it. A stunning moment celebrating one of the world's oldest continuous governments is being marginalized because the city fears soccer fans.
The real issue, of course, is that New York City is so dangerous for police that the force is a fraction of the size it needs. Thus, the same article says that New York City is 6,000 officers short of full staffing. That’s a staggering number.
That’s no surprise. In New York City, a black judge (and yes, I think his race matters) threw the book at a police officer who lobbed a cooler at a scooter-riding drug dealer who was on a dangerous collision course with the policeman’s fellow officers. The cooler didn’t kill the dealer. Instead, the dealer swerved on his scooter, fell off, and hit his head.
At most, it was manslaughter, and even that is a hard sell given that former Sgt. Erik Duran was acting to protect his men. Nevertheless, Judge Guy Mitchell sentenced Duran to 3-9 years in state prison, which will inevitably be in solitary confinement because Duran will be killed otherwise. The goal, said the judge, was to make an example of Duran as a “general deterrent,” presumably to all police officers trying to stop fleeing suspects and protect each other.
New York City was a player in the American Revolution. It was the site of some of the earliest battles and the location of George Washington’s almost magical retreat following the Battle of Brooklyn. Yes, it was a retreat, but it also saved the military to fight another day. Also, the British were headquartered there, so it had enormous symbolic importance. We won; they left.
But now, the Barbarians are inside the Gate. Leftists in City Hall and the judicial system have made being a policeman a job too dangerous for sane people to hold. The attrition rate will inevitably accelerate as police become more and more vulnerable with every drop in their numbers and every attack from their government.
I should add here that many believe that, while the police force staffing problem is real, the fact that Mamdani’s City Hall is doing nothing to dig up more staffing (including asking Gov. Hochul for help from the National Guard) suggests that the month-plus shutdown is a pretext to ensure that the anniversary is not honored. We don’t know who in the NYPD asked for the order, and it may well have been a political operative working with Mamdani. There’s a definite feeling of “pretext” here, with the ostensible reason for the shutdown having little to do with the real reason.
And the symbolic Ball Drop in Times Square will be just a flickering shadow on television, not a joyous celebration of an extraordinary moment in human history: The first revolution that didn’t trade one totalitarian government for another, but that was dedicated to individual liberty. And yes, it took a while to erase slavery, but it wouldn’t have happened at all without the stunning, new concept of a government “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
UPDATE: When I wrote this essay, I said that it mattered that the judge is black. He reeked of bias. That stench just got stronger:
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