New York needs more cops and fewer illegal migrants, so it’s beyond ironic that Mayor Eric Adams last week OK’d a move to settle up to 500 newly arrived migrants in the unused gym at the old Police Academy building.
The space at Gramercy Park near 20th Street filled up immediately, as city officials instantly said they’re at maximum capacity for new arrivals.
“Yesterday alone, we received hundreds of additional asylum seekers, and we reached our limit of new shelters we could open. We currently have no other options but to temporarily house recent arrivals in gyms,” announced mayoral flack Fabien Levy on Friday.
Fine, the old academy isn’t hosting new cadet classes, though scores of cops assigned to the NYPD’s Force Investigation Division use lockers there, including to store their weapons.
Meanwhile, the buses keep coming. El Paso’s mayor is ready to resume busing migrants to the Big Apple, and neither Texas’ governor nor Catholic Charities and other nonprofits have ever stopped.
And the ranks of the NYPD keep shrinking even as crime remains stubbornly high.
And Adams, for all his complaints about Texas busing migrants here, has resorted to busing some to Rockland County.
Unless President Joe Biden finally gets real on the border, New York City’s eventually going to have to rethink its commitment to serving migrants’ needs and focus exclusively on getting the streets and subways safe for everyone.