(TJV NEWS) Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., claimed the increase in thefts and violent crimes in New York City is tied to the expiration of the child tax credit last year.
She said she has engaged with “hospitals, doctors, and social workers” who all told her the surge in violence has been driven by young men. Those young men turn to crime when they feel like they have no other choice, Ocasio-Cortez told the New Yorker.
“We run away from substantive discussions about this, we don’t want to say some of the things that are obvious, like, Gee, the child-tax credit just ran out, on December 31st, and now people are stealing baby formula,” she said.
Ocasio Cortez continued: “We don’t want to have that discussion. We want to say these people are criminals or we want to talk about ‘people who are violent,’ instead of ‘environments of violence,’ and what we’re doing to either contribute to that or dismantle that.”
Criminals aren’t “shady figures in the bush jumping out from a corner,” Ocasio-Cortez continued.
“These are young men. These are boys. We’re also not discussing the mental health crisis that we are experiencing as a country as a result of the pandemic,” she said.
On the day Ocasio-Cortez’s interview was published, an Asian-American woman in New York City’s Chinatown was stabbed to death in her apartment after being followed home by a homeless man, according to police.
