State Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins is lost in Yonkers.
The woke pol, who is in lockstep with Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie on soft-on-crime and defund-the-police policies, has seen mayhem spike in her hometown, according to data obtained by The Post.
Robberies this year have surged 63% and burglaries have ballooned 33%, Yonkers Police Department stats show. Felony assaults rose 8% and auto theft is up 2%, the figures reveal.
There have been two murders so far this year, up from zero in the same period a year ago.
“It’s crucial that . . . Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins reconsider bail reform laws for the safety of her community,” Frank McDonald, head of the Yonkers Police Benevolent Association, told The Post. “Public safety should be paramount, and measures must be taken to break the cycle of repeat offenders that threatens the well-being of residents in Yonkers and all of New York state.
“The priority should be to ensure the community’s safety, not to cater to the whims of habitual criminals,” he added.
Heastie, and lawmakers like Stewart-Cousins, are facing pressure to address a rise in violent crime in New York.
The two Democratic leaders were leading advocates of the state’s controversial 2019 criminal justice reforms, which eliminated cash bail for most misdemeanor and non-violent felony charges — and created a revolving door for released felony suspects.
The Speaker’s Bronx district is currently dealing with massive surge in rape and robbery.
Yet Stewart-Cousins proclaimed to reporters in March 2023:“Our bail reforms have no correlation with an increase in crime.”
Tell that to Yonkers residents.
Two years ago a shocking video showed four brazen thieves use a sledgehammer to smash a Yonkers jewelry store window — then steal an estimated $100,000 worth of merchandise.
The broad daylight snatch-and-grab at Golden Square Jewelry on May 12, 2022, happened a little over a mile from Stewart-Cousins’ house. A car chase and manhunt ended with three of the thieves in cuffs, cops said.
“This is the Democrats,” a Golden Square Jewelry employee, who declined to give his name, said about the spike in crime. “Whatever I say, do you think we can change anything?”
Yonkers is still struggling with “post-Covid lawlessness,” according to Yonkers Police Commissioner Christopher Sapienza.
“We don’t believe in small crimes here in Yonkers. We believe that every crime is important. We’ve seen that small crimes turn into bigger crimes,” he told Fox News Digital in January, adding that bail reform and raising the age of criminal liability “make it harder to do our job and keep people in jail.”
Stewart-Cousins and Heastie “have been joined at the hip on bail reform and all of the changes to the New York state criminal justice system,” said Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “In the face of adversity, they have both continued to deflect and gaslight. It’s also not a surprise that both of their districts are awash in mayhem — you reap what you sow.”
