Glenn Greenwald Blasts AOC for Suggesting Headline About Crime Spikes May ‘Drive a Hysteria’

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Glenn Greenwald claimed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) “is mocking ordinary people” who are worried about increased crime rates, after she said during a Zoom call that we need to “look at these numbers in context.”

“We are seeing these headlines about percentage increases,” Ocasio-Cortez said during a Zoom conversation with Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY). “Now, I want to say that any amount of harm is unacceptable and too much, but I also want to make sure that this hysteria, you know, that this doesn’t drive a hysteria and that we look at these numbers in context so that we can make responsible decisions about what to allocate in that context.”

Greenwald slammed Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks, noting that she chose to vote “present” instead of no on a bill providing an additional $2 billion in funding for Capitol Police.

“All she had to do was vote ‘no’ – like Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush & Aryanna Pressley, with the GOP,” he wrote on Twitter Sunday morning. “Instead, she voted ‘present’ to get more police protection for herself.”

He then claimed that her comments were “mocking” those “who are afraid of violent crime in their neighborhood: people who, unlike her, don’t have reams of private security.”

Ocasio-Cortez, Bowman, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have asked Congress to put $400,000 toward the “Stand Up to Violence” program which works to limit gun violence through mental health counseling and outreach. Research has shown that more than half of all inmates in the country have a history of mental illness, and that working to alleviate those underlying factors could “both reduce recidivism and lower the costs” incurred by sending someone through the standard justice process.

Though Ocasio-Cortez’s comments were not explicitly targeted at individuals fearful of crime — Greenwald underscored that she is afforded a level of resources to maintain safety that many others are not.

“I think members of Congress — given their elaborate private security and resources — are far less likely to be the victims of violent street crime than poor & working-class, but either way, people who have private police protection shouldn’t mock the fears of those who don’t,” he said.

The discussion comes amid a recent rise in violent crime, including a 25% jump in murders in 2020 than the year before. According to BBC, “Overall, violent crime was up by about 3% in 2020 over the previous year, but this should be seen in the context of the longer term downward trend from a peak in the early 1990s.”