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New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino is speaking out after a violent mob took over a Queens neighborhood she represents, leaving a couple beaten and a car engulfed in flames over the weekend.
“This was a planned attack. This is all preempted. They were prepared to do exactly what they did,” Paladino said Tuesday on “Fox & Friends,” describing how the mob blocked off intersections and set a vehicle ablaze while another resident was being beaten nearby.
The attack began around 12:30 a.m. Sunday after a group of drivers were seen speeding across residential lawns and doing doughnuts on the corner of South Drive and 141st Street in Malba, a neighborhood located in Queens, according to the New York Post.
A private security guard who tried to defuse the situation was attacked by the crowd and had his vehicle set on fire, Paladino shared previously.
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Paladino claimed a lengthy police response time added to the problem, as New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani said he intends to keep the NYPD force at its current budgeted number of 35,000 officers.
“[It’s] a sufficient number. What we have to do, however, is allow those officers to focus on policing. And what I mean by that is that in 2020, the response time for the NYPD was less than 11 minutes. Today, it’s closer to 16 minutes. A large part of that is because officers are now having to deal with 200,000 mental health calls a year,” Mamdani told NBC News on Sunday.
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“So our proposal is create a Department of Community Safety, task it with the mental health crisis, the homelessness crisis. And allow officers to focus on serious crimes.”
Paladino voiced concern that Mamdani could be “talking out of both sides of his mouth,” telling Fox News host Brian Kilmeade that the democratic socialist will ultimately be a “wait and see mayor.”
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“As soon as Jan. 1 comes along, bam,” she said.
“Thank God we have [NYPD commissioner] Jessica Tisch.”
Fox News’ Julia Bonavita contributed to this report.
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