NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell discussed the challenges of dealing with crimes committed by migrants in New York City, emphasizing the difficulty in policing communities where the backgrounds of individuals are unknown.
Chell mentioned the increase in crimes like robberies and shootings involving migrants, highlighting the unfamiliarity with this trend and the efforts to address it.
Fox News’ Lawrence Jones asked, “How difficult has it been when you’re having to police communities now where you don’t know their records? You have no clue where they came from. Although the majority of them are law-abiding citizens, that small factor that [is] on mopeds, causing problems for you, how hard is it?”
Chell said, “It’s new for us. We’ve taken — the city’s taken in over 200,000 migrants in the last two years. And a lot of them are here for the American Dream. But a small portion [is] here to commit crimes against our city, robberies, chain snatchers, shooting two of our cops three weeks ago. shooting at us in Times Square, assaulting us in Times Square. It’s new for us. It’s difficult, because we don’t know who you are.”
Despite record enforcement and efforts to tackle crime, recidivism and repeat offenders remain challenges for law enforcement in the city.
“So, we’re kind of learning as we go. Every arrest we make we don’t say, is he a migrant? But the big events, we see it. I’ll give you a staggering stat, crimes committed on mopeds, fleeing on mopeds [have] increased about 200% in the last two years. It’s tremendous for us. We’ve never dealt with it. But our cops working are hard,” Chell said.
“We’ve taken about 41,000 of these mopeds off the streets. We’ve shut down some of these gang members doing robberies and chain snatches. The cops who got shot last week — a couple weeks of ago did a great job. But it’s new for the city, it’s new for us.”
He noted that there is “record enforcement” from police, but crime is not declining as fast as planned, which “speaks to recidivism, repeat offenders.”
