New York Mayor Bill de Blasio
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Previous Post
Next Post

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is moving forward with his disastrous plan to pay convicted criminals $1,000 a month not to commit more violent crimes. The initiative is known as “Advance Peace” and is being sold as a “transformational opportunit[y]” to pay “young men ­involved in lethal firearm ­offenses.”

Yes, the Mayor’s plan to address the root causes of firearms-related crime and violence is to pay off those who have committed it.

And just in case criminals in the program haven’t already learned enough about their craft on the streets, offenders will get mentorship from other ex-criminals as a key part of the program. The scheme seems to be part of de Blasio’s goal of achieving “real redistribution” of the city’s tax dollars he announced when he cut the NYPD’s budget by $1 billion last year.

According to the Advance Peace website, the goal is to end “the cycle of gun hostilities.”

By working with and supporting a targeted group of individuals at the core of gun hostilities, Advance Peace bridges the gap between anti-violence programming and a hard-to-reach population at the center of violence in urban areas, thus breaking the cycle of gun hostilities and altering the trajectory of these men’s lives.

Apparently, this program is somehow supposed to offset the effects of the shutdown of the NYPD’s anti-crime unit, which was dissolved last July after the nationwide George Floyd riots.

The most amazing part is Mayor de Blasio really thinks paying criminals not to commit crimes will work, even though it’s already been a colossal failure in other cities, something the New York Post noted:

In Sacramento, three neighborhoods were targeted for an 18-month Advance Peace intervention, which really only covered 2019. Those districts did see a decline in “gun homicides and gun assaults,” compared to the mean of the previous 36 months, though the comparison period is skewed by the sharp rise in the national murder rate caused by the “Ferguson Effect” in 2015. Murders across all of California, for example, rose steeply in 2015 and 2016, and then returned to pre-Ferguson levels. 

The Advance Peace program in Stockton, Calif., on the other hand, was a disaster. Murders rose from 28 in 2019 to 45 in 2020, up 60 percent, much higher than the 37 percent ­increase nationwide. 

The summary fact sheet for the Stockton program announces proudly that 71 percent of its 34 participants “are not a suspect in a new firearm-related crime.” Similarly, the Sacramento program boasts that 44 percent of its 50 members “had no new arrests.” Of course, that doesn’t account for the 17 original participants who dropped out or were arrested in the first six months. 

Perhaps, like socialism, paying criminals not to commit crimes just hasn’t really been tried yet.

De Blasio’s plan is the most nonsensical thing I’ve heard in a really long time. Defund the police and disband the anti-crime unit – the very people tasked with protecting the public – and bribe criminals not to be the thugs they are is mindblowing. Not only is this plan stupid, but it’s wildly irresponsible. It’s rewarding dangerous behavior, especially when most of the offenders committed their heinous acts with firearms, instead of incentivizing being a productive member of society.

What this does is tell young men and women that they can commit a crime, join the program, and get $12,000 a year to “follow the law.” This incentivizes those in the poverty cycle to rob someone at gunpoint and then join this program.

Most Americans favor some sort of rehabilitation for convicts. We want to see them get an education and technical training so they can break the poverty cycle and the need to break the law. That doesn’t mean we want to turn over our hard-earned dollars so these people can be paid to sit and home and not stick up the corner bodega. Most of us would consider following the law part of being a responsible adult. But not in de Blasio’s topsy-turvy world.

The New York program will also be used to also argue that “universal basic income” is somehow necessary. And anti-gunners will argue the “gun violence epidemic” can be solved by handing out cash to people in particular “high risk” states and neighborhoods.

This is just the beginning.

Previous Post
Next Post

58 COMMENTS

    • This just normalizes the new “second class citizens”(felons). Create a class of people that are dependent upon you and you have an army of voters and protesters you can call up in a day or 2. Export any jobs that might pay enough for these people to work for a living and they are forced into crime and revolving door jails. This is what the “Great Society” was all about.

  1. Does this $1000 per month apply to nonresidents too? Because I have to go to NYC on business in September and while I’m there I can knock over a bodega or something, and I will promise never to do it again.

    • Hey Ralph got my cataracts fixed. Seeing very well now…not being wealthy I got the basic lens where I can see far-need reading glasses. Trying to figure out shooting. Any advice? Oh don’t do the crime😏

      • Hopefully the deblasio clown show will help Curtis get votes…lots if votes.

        Another clown show is Jim Crow Gun Control joe and his bozo pals. If you think your day was bad try getting a fight out of Afghanistan. Where’s the TSA joe?

      • “…I got the basic lens where I can see far-need reading glasses.”

        I fear you’re kinda screwed with the fixed-distance lens implant.

        I got the multi-distance lens (thanks to surviving nearly being killed), and I still have problems focusing on the rear and front sight of my rifles.

        If anyone knows a solution, I’d like to hear it…

        • Couldn’t be worse than it was Geoff…lucky I didn’t die driving or kill someone. No need to squint shooting-both eyes open.
          I have seen some advice on youtube about managing it. We’ll SEE🙂

        • “Don’t get blind drunk and wander onto a busy highway.”

          I no longer drink to get ‘blind drunk’…

        • The rifles ain’t so bad it’s the pistols I’m having trouble with. As much as I like shooting with both eyes open I have better luck using just one eye.

      • “Trying to figure out shooting. Any advice?”

        For home defense, a laser sight may help…

      • FWIW I had my eye doctor make me an upside down bifocal for my dominant eye. I had it made for an old pair of frames and now I can see my pistol sights great. Maybe something like that will work for you.

        • Thanks Bucephalus! I have 20/20 vision now & can see the front pistol sight outstretched arm. Thinking nightsites but not a laser. Have a light on it already. I don’t seem to have a “dominent” eye now. My essentially blind eye was formerly dominant but now they’re somewhat seem equal. I see the front sight better with my right eye fwiw so maybe I can’t do both eyes open…

  2. Shit, I want my 40 years of back-pay for not committing any violent crimes.

    Can I get it adjusted for inflation?

        • “I want mine in gold, silver and lead.”

          The Leftist Scum would be happy to pay the gun people with lead, applied to the back of your head… 🙁

  3. Yes! Incentivize the criminals from surrounding towns and states to move to NYC.
    Didn’t some high-profile event over the past 48 hours demonstrate pretty definitively you can take savages out of the jungle but you can’t take the jungle out of the savages?

    Well, as long as they’re all in NYC.

    • Seems this policy would encourage some to commit a crime so they could get a paycheck. Can’t find a job, well do a little crime and NYC will send you $1000 a month. I wonder do you get paid 1K per crime?
      One guy, “say what kind of job do you have?”
      Second guy, “I don’t work, I’m on the city payroll for doing a crime!”

  4. This is a disingenuous article. It isn’t paying them to not commit crimes. It’s paying at-risk youth to participate in a diversionary mentorship program. If done wrong, it’s just flushing money down the toilet. If done right, it’s successful, like Richmond, CA, that dropped gun homicides 55% from 2010 to 2016. Gang murders tend to be done by a relatively few number of repeat offenders, and those killers need to be taken off the street. Part of a successful program involves enrolling youth with records that seem to be escalating towards that level of violence. Maybe they have juvenile records of drugs, assault, robbery, or gun possession. It’s kind of like getting them a parole officer before they commit the crime and get convicted. The mentors are reformed OGs, which can teach the youth an alternative to the gang lifestyle from a position of experience. Teach them how to get and hold a job, and be a responsible parent. To be a father figure that most of the youth never had. If the youth don’t put in the work (fail drug tests, drop out of school, get arrested, stop participating, etc), they are out of the program and don’t get paid. $12k/year for a year or two is a significant savings compared to incarceration, not to mention the cost to their would-be victims.

    • Are you really that naive? Most of these were averaging $10,000.00 monthly from crime. Do you really think $1,000.00 is going to keep them faithful to a program where they basically just have to show up occaisionally and unless they get arrested again no one knows what they are really doing.

    • “It’s paying at-risk youth to participate in a diversionary mentorship program.”

      Kinda like how “Operation Cease-Fire” did it in east coast cities?

      If memory serves, it had real results…

    • ” Part of a successful program involves enrolling youth with records that seem to be escalating towards that level of violence. Maybe they have juvenile records of drugs, assault, robbery, or gun possession. It’s kind of like getting them a parole officer before they commit the crime and get convicted.”

      Uhhh… maybe you didn’t catch the nuisance’s for this program.

      These are “youth with records” as you want to call them which have already escalated to that level of violence. Its nothing like getting them a parole officer before they commit the crime and get convicted.

      “$12k/year for a year or two is a significant savings compared to incarceration”

      $12 K a year is nothing to these people. One of the motivators for their crimes was money, most of them raked in ~$120,000.00 a year or more from crime. $12 K a year will only serve to get them into the program into a status where they get “awwww…poor kid just needs a chance” and as they get their “good boy” scratch behind the ear with the $12 K a year while they game the system and use what they have already learned about getting caught to not get caught again for a while as they commit more crimes.

    • A better plan might be to put a $1000 bounty on the ears (or gonads) of known gangsta triggerpeeps. Modern-day Josh Randles cleaning up NYC.

  5. …gee, I thought this would be called extortion – paying thugs so they don’t burn down your business or house, kill your kids and/or dog.

    Truly bizarro-land!

  6. I say just pay the executioner the grand to pull the switch,
    Gets rid of the ghetto rats & gives someone a job, plus the funeral industry would benefit also.
    Bonus…, for the law abiding citizens.

    • The funeral industry has been running at better than full capacity for the last 18 months and by the looks of things will continue to be.

  7. Hey! Nice city youz gots, here. Be a shame that sumthin shout happen to it. I’ll make youz a deal. Pay me ten big ones a month an I’ll make sure none of my friends commit no crimes. Itza good deal for you cause I gots lots of friends. If you give them all a grand a month, that’s gonna be big bucks. But you pay me ten large a month and I keep em all in line. If not, hey, they might all be asking for ten a month. Then, watta you gonna do? Itza good deal.

  8. So, really, DeBlazio is just telling us how he does business: bribery, corruption, and waste. No data-driven approaches, no ethics, certainly no morals.

    I wonder who is going to get paid to hand out all this money.

    This is evil. Beyond stupidity. There is an evil purpose at work.

  9. But, if you’re a law abiding citizen who happens to make a mistake, he will want to jail you for life. De Blasio is the idiot’s idiot.

  10. The problem is, any time you have democrats distributing cash, corruption follows…

  11. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

    John Adams

    The atheist, the immoral, have done a very good job of tearing apart the constitution. Our “great seperation” will come. And very soon.

    • And yes, I know there are atheists who are moral people. But you are a very small minority among atheists. And you know it.

      • I’d agree that having some kind of external structure to guide your life is something that the vast majority of people seem to need and seek out if they don’t have it. Leftism is functionally a religion, and fills that void for many an atheist. I always grin a bit when I hear the “woke” make fun of Christians for their faith.

        • PS-though as snide comments begin to give way to denial of civil liberties under color of law and, all too often, the soles and heels of jackboots, it’s less of a laughing matter.

  12. That $1000 per month would be better invested by paying for the TRAINING, carry permit, firearm and ammunition for LAW ABIDING RESPONSIBLE CITIZENS. What better DETERRENT could possibly be IMAGINED? Even by someone as CLUELESS as De Blasio? Aside from true political and financial support to LEOS.

  13. How about if you commit a gun crime and we catch you, you’ll be executed on the spot. I LIKE that better than paying dirt bags not to be dirt bags.

  14. $1000 a month, well if that ain’t a bite in the ass, I worked 45 years to get $855.
    See, crime does pay , teach your children well.

  15. Several science fiction authors have written about future societies in which there are “citizens” and “taxpayers”. Citizens produce nothing and are wholly supported by the government through taxes paid by taxpayers. As a result, calling someone “citizen” is an insult while “taxpayer” is a mark of respect but only among other taxpayers. I’m old enough to remember that, during the 1960s, it was fashionable among college radicals to hold their parents in contempt for holding down prosaic jobs which provided food, clothing and shelter for their now radicalized children and paid their tuition at their radical colleges.

    I’ve been seeing, on Arizona television, political ads criticizing Jeff Bezos for his joyride into space while, the ad claims, his company, Amazon, pays no taxes. There are valid reasons for criticizing Bezos but he deserves credit for building Amazon from nothing. I order frequently from it to get merchandise local vendors can’t (or won’t) stock. Given his accomplishment, I don’t resent his spending a small fraction of it on his space trip even though it really was just a joyride. What I do resent is the attitude that, if you accomplish something, you automatically owe a share to those who didn’t contribute to it and, very likely, have accomplished nothing in their own lives.

    On YouTube, there is a series with the title Seattle Real Estate Podcast. It’s narrated by a Seattle realtor who reads and comments on timely new stories. According to a recent one, the Oregon governor has signed a bill which removes proficiency in reading and mathematics from the requirements for a high school diploma. If true, it means a functional illiterate who can’t do basic arithmetic can “earn” a high school diploma. I wouldn’t be surprised if the purpose of the law is to create the impression of higher graduation rates among minority communities where someone who actually tries to learn something is considered a traitor to his race. In the end it won’t matter much. Technical competence will be provided by Indian and Chinese engineers. They still have an educational system.

  16. Some people are born evil and there is no rehabilitating them; because they were never good from the beginning.

    • I do not believe the born evil.
      Environment
      The right environment and you can beat born evil out of any poltergeist.

  17. Outdoing himself yet again, DeBoobio adds several more board feet to his already Sequoia-size presidential timber. Send me my mail-in ballot NOW!!

  18. Crime pays, just look at all the dems in office!!!

  19. This is the dumbest thing I have heard. I do not know what his background is but it certainly isn’t in rational or logical thinking and goes along with the ideas of ‘defunding the police’ and early release of criminals and affordable bail programs all of which are programs of the liberal/progressive crowd. He should have left with his buddy Cuomo,

  20. Wow! And even IF this was an idea worth pursuing (which it is NOT), with the average cost of rent in NYC north of $3k per month, that’s REALLY going to get their attention! What a complete and total MORON!! And the fact that he was elected by the good people of the city should tell you sumpin’ about their level of intelligence….

    I guess Forrest Gump was right after all. Stupid is as stupid does.

  21. So, if I write to DeBlasio and tell him that, for $1000.00 a month, I won’t bust out his windows… he will write me a check instead of having me arrested for running a protection racket?

Comments are closed.