In 1978, the Rolling Stones recorded a song that described their collective experience of living in New York City: Shattered. The lyrics were a harsh condemnation of the once iconic city in shambles: “Don’t you know the crime rate’s going up, up, up, up, up?” The squalor of 70s NYC is being bested by the influx of illegal aliens – hundreds of whom are not inclined to follow the rule of law in the sanctuary enclave of the Big Apple. According to insider sources*, 75% of  Midtown Manhattan arrests for assault, robbery, and domestic violence are committed by your newly imported illegal migrant.

The city, however, reports that crime is down in general. Something doesn’t quite jibe. “Overall index crime across New York City dropped another 4.9 percent,” the city’s report states. It includes crimes such as murder, rape, grand theft auto, and vicious gang-related assaults. What’s up is pickpocketing, domestic violence, shoplifting, public intoxication, and the like, which has the police pointing the finger at the way Mayor Eric Adams and the state overall handle criminals.

Adams Over a Barrell

There is a lot of blame to go around in NYC, and those pointing their fingers at Mayor Adams are frustrated police and angry residents. For officers on the streets, trying to keep the latest illegal migrant from lifting Ray Bans at the Sun Glass Hut or Buckle Jeans that cost a couple hundred bucks a pair is fruitless. “There have been specific instances that those who are here illegally have created havoc on the streets,” stated Jay Oliver, LI News Radio host and political commentator, in an email to Newsweek. “One notably with the two cops that were assaulted in February by a mob of migrants and then only to be let go without bail. Hence, let go without bail, the main culprit of recidivism and criminal activity.”

However, perhaps the culprit is the city’s status as a sanctuary. The powers that be opened that door when campaigning on peace, love, and harmony and now can’t get it to close. NYPD is not allowed to ask suspected illegal migrants about their citizenship status. They cannot receive help from ICE. And for pity’s sake, they aren’t allowed to track the offenders after they use the get-out-of-jail-free card guaranteed by slipshod bail policies. Adams’ previous calls for the city council to change the sanctuary city laws have been denied, prompting the mayor to admit: “Right now, we don’t have the authorization to be able to go and coordinate with ICE. We have to follow the law.”

“Go ahead, bite the Big Apple, don’t mind the maggots,” as the Stones famously sang.

One Manhattan officer bemoaned: “You can’t be 100% sure [they’re migrants] unless you arrest them in a shelter or they’re dumb enough to give you a shelter address.” “They don’t care if they get arrested — they laugh if they get sent to Rikers. Where they come from, they get tortured in jail,” a Bronx police officer said.

The war on migrant crime in a sanctuary city is unwinnable, which has finally prompted citizens to raise a ruckus. People have organized and are making it clear in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill that they have had it. According to NYPD Assistant Chief Scott Henderson, who oversees Brooklyn North, residents in a once peaceful town are in the middle of  the “largest concentration of migrants outside of Randall’s Island.”

“We are at ground zero of the city’s mismanagement of the migrant crisis, and we need to demand better,” resident Alia McKee said. An organizer of protests at City Hall in July was loud about it all: “We have to be heard. Enough is enough,” said Renee Collymore, the Democratic liaison who organized the protest. “It’s not about anti-migrants. It’s about safety first.”

Another sticking point with the coddling of migrants is a stake through the heart: In New York City, a family of four migrants collects more funding every month than a family of four with a military veteran receiving disability compensation. That veteran’s family does not get free phones, VISA cards, and a free pass to shoplift. These families served this nation. The migrants living free did not.

Migrant Madness

Some media outlets are crying that NYC migrant crime stats are simply a “perception problem.” Yet, on any given day, Big Apple criminal court dockets are packed with asylum seekers who have run afoul of the law.

75% of the judicial docket is full of arrests of said migrants. In parts of Queens, the figure is more than 60%. New Yorkers are finding themselves held hostage in a city because they feel unsafe.

But mostly, residents do not feel heard. Adams keeps his mantra, saying the fault is not local – it’s endemic and “one of the largest humanitarian crises this city has ever experienced.” If only Adams would realize that it is the average New Yorker who suffers under that particular weight.

As Jagger would say, “Shadoobie. Shattered, shattered.”

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*The “insider” sources were reportedly from the NYPD and spoke on the condition of anonymity to the New York Post.