Seth Barron: NYC leaders reversing policies 'that have kept the city safe for 30 years'

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Man who punched NYPD officer released without bail

De Blasio's program gives freed inmates gift cards, metro cards; reaction from City Journal associate editor Seth Barron.

City Journal editor Seth Barron weighed in on the recent surge in violent crimes in New York after video of a man sucker-punching a police officer surfaced on Twitter.

"There's a problem in New York City where we've inverted the priorities that have kept the city safe for 30 years," Barron said Monday on "Tucker Carlson Tonight,"

The body camera video released by the New York City Sergeants’ Benevolent Association shows a man identified as Steven Haynes, 40, punch an NYPD officer and wrestle him to the ground, refusing to move from on top of him.

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Haynes was arrested but was later released days before a bail reform law takes effect in New York mandating that judges set free suspects in any non-sexual assault that doesn’t actually cause a physical injury.

"It used to be that we would focus on the law-abiding citizens, trying to keep their communities safe and prosecute the bad guys...but now, the priorities are reversed and we seem to be worrying about the bad guys and leaving the law-abiding citizens to their tender mercy," Barron said.

Warning against the controversial new policy in a recent article titled "New York’s Thickening Cloud of Violent Crime," Barron pointed to the case of Tiffany Harris, who was arrested for assault in Brooklyn Sunday a day after she was released following her arraignment on charges that she yelled anti-Semitic slurs and slapped three Jewish women in the face.

"Tucker" guest host Mark Steyn said the latest reforms seem to be "unwinding a quarter-century of effective policies since [former Mayor Rudolph] Giuliani," and warned of going back in time to the 1970s and 1980s where "the Democrats' sympathies were all with the criminal class."

"The city became a safe city because we focussed on keeping communities safe...and we are reversing this," Barron agreed.

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"We're not heading in a good direction," he added. "Things aren't looking good. The pendulum has yet to reach its climax and it's only at that point that I think they'll reverse things."