You gotta wonder where Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) came from.

You couldn’t invent a more mockable socialist if you tried.

She was asked by a constituent in a virtual town hall what did she think was the reason for the increase in crime in NYC.

First she claims that the police ‘defunding’ of a billion dollars hasn’t taken place yet. That’s true. But what is true is we’ve seen an incredible amount of leftist rioting and looting. We’ve also seen Mayor de Blasio force a dropping of the anticrime unit, again a leftist agenda item. Why? It was proactive against crime and stopped a lot of shootings before they happened. Now the unit has been dissolves and people reassigned, all they can do is react to the shootings rather than prevent them.

She claims that the six billion given to the police hasn’t stopped the uptick in crime. So of course her answer is to say defund? Funny how socialists think shoving more money at everything is better, except for police improvement.

There’s also the virus and bail reform which has resulted in thousands who should be in jail or prison being released out into the streets.

From Washington Examiner:

“Do we think this has to do with the fact that there’s record unemployment in the United States right now? The fact that people are at a level of economic desperation that we have not seen since the Great Recession?” the New York Democrat said.

“Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren’t paying their rent and are scared to pay their rent and so they go out, and they need to feed their child and they don’t have money so … they feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry.”

Economic desperation is why shootings have spiked in June and July?

Just this weekend, 15 people were shot in a 15-hour period, more than triple the number of shootings that happened there this time last year. There have been 43 shootings in the last week, compared to 13 during the same time period in 2019. Over Independence Day weekend, there were 10 shootings and one person killed in a nine-hour span.

June saw more of the same, with law enforcement sources telling the New York Post that murders and shootings were much higher than in the same period last June. Thirteen murders and 40 shootings took place between June 1-7, compared to five murders and 24 shootings during the same time period in 2019.

Funny how that coincided with rioting and doing away with the anticrime unit.

It’s also interesting that she finally talks about economic consequences of the pandemic, although notice how she doesn’t identify economic issues as being caused by the pandemic. Most Democrats have ignored these effects as they continued to push lockdown making them worse.

But people stealing for bread isn’t the reason for the spike in violent crimes.

Petit larceny is down 7.5 percent year-to-date. Murder is up 27 percent. https://t.co/LsyrqgET8B

— Charles Fain Lehman (@CharlesFLehman) July 12, 2020

Just shoplifting some bread. Go get that bread, gamers. pic.twitter.com/OoRrJg2r0z

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) July 12, 2020

I lived in NYC in the 1980s & 1990s.

My neighborhood had 103 murders in 1990.

It had less than 10 per year after @RudyGiuliani and @MikeBloomberg led the city.

Crime goes up when government demoralizes cops and emboldens criminals.

We have seen this before, @AOC.

— Joseph Steinberg (@JosephSteinberg) July 12, 2020

How are you going to eat the bread without a flat screen tv on the other hand?

— IT’S THE MONEY, STUPID. (@nvk) July 12, 2020

Yeah, the bread shoplifting by people who would never otherwise dream of committing a crime is a real problem https://t.co/XbL78ELIyS

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) July 12, 2020

Maybe increased crime has to do with the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow https://t.co/ZbwGrBAJau

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) July 12, 2020

Murderers aren’t “shoplifting bread.” https://t.co/velgY4SvH1

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) July 12, 2020

Pro tip AOC? This wasn’t about shoplifting bread and it’s in the Bronx.

Warning graphic:

THE NEW NYC: Just one of the around 50 shootings NYC was hit with this past weekend. In this brazen daytime drive-by shooting, a man was shot and killed while walking with his 6-year-old daughter Sunday in Mount Eden in the Bronx on east 170th & Sheridan. pic.twitter.com/WDdnvr0qj2

— Nachmen Donn (@NachmenDonn) July 6, 2020

HT: Twitchy