What was the response of New York City to leftists calling to “defund the police?”

Mayor Bill de Blasio and the NYPD police chief got rid of the 600 member plainclothes anticrime unit. That’s the unit that interacts with people undercover on the street and is frequently able to stop crimes before they happen.

Leftists cheered when de Blasio caved and gave them the scalp of the unit.

So what do you think the result of that would be? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out but apparently it’s beyond NYC politicians like de Blasio.

From NY Post:

Shootings are surging this week in New York City, with 28 incidents and 38 victims reported since Monday — the day the NYPD disbanded its plainclothes anti-crime unit, The Post learned on Friday.

By comparison, the same week last year there were only 12 shootings for the entire week.

So the shootings more than doubled from last year.

“This is what the politicians wanted — no bail, nobody in Rikers, cops not arresting anyone,” one angry law enforcement source said Friday.

“All those things equal people walking around on the street with guns, shooting each other.”

The shooting spree includes at least five murders, sources told The Post.

As Jazz Shaw at Hot Air observed, there were five shootings in Brooklyn just on Thursday night. “To put this in perspective,” he noted, “the city recorded 97 shootings in just the first couple of weeks of June. Last year there were 87 shootings in the entire month.”

Now part of this may be the distraction/excuse of the protests that has increased/permitted a greater amount of lawlessness and police being largely detailed to protests. But it’s hard to see how the removal of this critical unit actually helps to save lives, including black lives.

If the alleged purpose of defunding the police is that “black lives matter,” then you don’t really show that by removing things that help save lives.

This is just the latest fiasco with the police department that de Blasio has wrought.

His willingness to jump on every social justice bandwagon that rolls down Fifth Avenue and blame the police before the criminals hasn’t exactly done much for morale among the troops. And his willingness to “defund the police” just as Gotham is seeing its first serious increase in violent crime rates after decades of progress isn’t helping matters. Don’t be shocked if you see the “blue flu” spreading into the Big Apple in the near future, both in solidarity with other police forces around the country and in response to the way they’ve been hung out to dry on their home turf.

What happens when you remove such a vital unit? You make the job tougher on everyone that now, instead of being able to work proactively against crime, now can only deal with the results.