On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “The Story,” NYPD Chief of Department John Chell placed the blame on sanctuary city policies for the shooting of an off-duty Border Patrol agent in the city over the weekend.
Host Martha MacCallum asked, “I want to start with what the DHS secretary said there, and she pointed the finger pretty squarely at Mayor Adams for the fact that this person’s been arrested so many times and was still out on the street, what do you say to that, Chief?”
Chell responded, “Well, first of all, sanctuary city laws have been in place for years before the Mayor got into office, he inherited this. That’s number one. Number two, he doesn’t have the power to change the law, that’s the City Council and he can’t wave a magic executive order circumventing the law, he cannot do that. He has been steadfast in the last couple of years advocating for the Council to change some of these laws as it relates to situations like this. He’s also had his Deputy Mayor, Randy Mastro, try to open up federal units in Rikers, all federal units to help out in this endeavor, and, immediately, they did that, they served a lawsuit on us. So, he’s trying to fix all that, and he’s not like any other mayor in this country, and we know this, he’s a crime-fighting mayor. He’s doing everything in his power in this situation, overall crime, safety to help. He’s dedicated more detectives to our federal task forces for criminal investigations than ever before. So, a little bit of an unfair criticism, but those are the facts.”
Later, Chell added that a judge could not detain one of the suspects due to the sanctuary law, and if he was detained, “this federal officer is not shot.” But “bail could have been set at a small amount” but was not.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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