USA Cities new gang problem
If the idea of roving juvenile gangs in America’s metropoles seems far-fetched, you need to rethink as the New Year just got off to a bad start.
About 25 teens on bicycles carried out a brazen attack on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue in broad daylight attacking a luxury SUV with the driver and his terrified 74-year-old mother still inside.
Horrifying video footage shows the gang surrounding and leaping on the BMW, one even mounted the car on his bike in one video, before they stomped on the windshield and began to smash the vehicle.
A fifteen-year-old boy has been arrested and charged as a minor while another was identified and is still being sought by police.
The gang attacked and injured a yellow cab driver just minutes earlier, eight blocks to the north, although that incident was not captured on camera.
The teens tried to smash the man’s taxi, prompting him to get out of the vehicle and inspect the damage. At that point, one of the teens threw their bike at his back.
They then moved south down Fifth Avenue where they carried out the attack on Torgovnick and his mother.
Just recently, there have been various reports of teen bicycle gangs menacing and assaulting New Yorkers at random. Police are calling the practice ‘bike outs’.
Bike outs are often organized on social media and large groups of teen troublemakers block off streets and fill parks, harassing pedestrians.
Bike outs have typically been common in the summer, but with school closures still in effect, it appears the roving gangs are now out on the Big Apple streets more regularly.
On Thursday, Mayor Bill de Blasio told CBS the attack was ‘absolutely unacceptable’. However, he offered no plans as to how to ensure similar attacks do not occur again in the future.
Residents are shaken by the attacks regarding it further proof that Big Apple officials are failing to protect them against rising crime amid slashed police budgets due to passionate activism to defund the police in Democrat controlled cities.
This is something you would see on the streets of a war zone. I never thought New York would get this bad; the 36- year-old native-born Torgovnick told The New York Post.
Another witness said the attackers spat on the car and broke a handle as they tried to open the door and get inside and despite the vehicle being adorned with medical license plates as Torgovnick’s father is a neuro-surgeon, it did not deter the attackers.
NYPD Police Commissioner Dermot Shea told NY1 earlier this month that changes to bail laws and policies that encourage criminal justice reform make the city more dangerous, and unless the public appreciates this fact, nothing will change.
Shea’s boss, Mayor Bill de Blasio, pushed back on the commissioner’s comments.
The mayor told reporters at a City Hall meeting on December 8 that the surge in violent crime this year could be pinned on an ‘absolute perfect storm’ that hit New York this year.
‘You cannot combine a massive health crisis, tens of thousands of people dying, hospitals overwhelmed, economy is shut down, schools are shut down, houses of worship shut down, society not having its normal moorings all at once, a social justice crisis…’ the mayor said.
De Blasio acknowledged there had been an ‘uptick in violence’ though he added that it is ‘clearly being addressed because we’re regluing the situation together again.’
Crime stats for the four weeks from November 30 to December 27 2020 show violent crime levels far higher compared to last year.
