A chilling video emerged on social media on Monday that police said showed a suspect in Harlem toss a firecracker onto a sleeping homeless man who suffered burns and was hospitalized.
CBS New York reported that the incident occurred at about 4 a.m. on Monday. The suspect could be seen lighting the firework and running with a big grin on his face. The others seemed to be entertained by the assault.
The homeless man, 66, suffered minor burns and was listed in stable condition. The city is offering a $2,500 reward for information that leads to an arrest in the case.
New York appears to be descending into chaos after days of looting over the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.
The chaos has reportedly continued and there have been 125 shooting incidents in the first three weeks of June, according to the New York Post. The paper, citing police sources, said the gunfire could be the new normal.
“We have to go back to June 1996 to get a worse start for June,” Michael LiPetri, the chief of crime control strategies, told the paper. “That’s a telling stat.”
Besides the shooting, residents in the city have reported an unusual uptick in the use of fireworks, with at least 11,535 complaints since the beginning of the year. Protests have formed outside Gracie Mansion calling on the city to act.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the city will clamp down on the use of fireworks and called them a “public nuisance.”
De Blasio also admitted that the shooting in the city is also becoming a serious problem and vowed not to “allow gun violence to continue to grow in this city.”
The Post spoke to a police officer who said the violence in the city will only get worse and de Blasio can no longer stake claim to a crime reduction under his watch.
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“He can’t brag about how safe the city is anymore,” the officer said.
Kimberly Guilfoyle, the co-host of “The Right View,” told the “Todd Starnes Radio Show” last week that New York should be a cautionary tale for the rest of the country if President Trump loses the election. She said parts of New York “look like a Third World Country” after recent protests.