Consultant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) criticized New York police as "framing" shoplifters as "monsters" following a tweet exhibiting a photograph of child provides and medication that had been recovered from thefts.

On Wednesday, the New York Police Division (NYPD) wrote in a now-deleted tweet, "After receiving quite a few larceny complaints within the Bronx, officers from the @NYPD44Pct [NYPD 44th Precinct] not too long ago arrested 12 people following an enforcement initiative focusing on shoplifters. The arrests made led to the closure of 23 warrants & the restoration of $1800 value of merchandise."

The submit contained a picture of quite a few merchandise, together with diapers, child formulation, child wipes, laundry detergent, bathe gel, child shampoo, lotion and over-the-counter medicines.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez NYPD shoplifters diapers
Consultant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has criticized officers with the New York Police Division for his or her social media submit exhibiting officers who arrested individuals for shoplifting diapers and child formulation from shops within the Bronx. On this photograph, Ocasio-Cortez is interviewed dwell onstage through the 2019 SXSW Convention and Competition on the Austin Conference Middle on March 9, 2019, in Austin, Texas.Jim Bennett / WireImage/Getty

"Once I speak about violent situations, that is what I imply," Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a Wednesday afternoon tweet.

"However hey, it is a lot simpler to border individuals who steal child formulation and medication as monsters to be jailed than acknowledge our politics and financial priorities create situations the place individuals steal child formulation to outlive," her tweet concluded.

Ocasio-Cortez has lengthy spoken about how poverty and harsh dwelling situations are a kind of violence that ends in poor individuals and other people of colour being focused by the judicial system.

In a February 14 interview with The New Yorker, Ocasio-Cortez was requested about how progressive efforts to "defund the police" in New York Metropolis have resulted within the election of former police officer Eric Adams as mayor.

"As a result of we run away from substantive discussions about this, we do not need to say among the issues which might be apparent, like, 'Gee, the child-tax credit score simply ran out, on December thirty first, and now individuals are stealing child formulation,'" Ocasio-Cortez mentioned.

"We do not need to have that dialogue," she continued. "We need to say these individuals are criminals or we need to speak about 'people who find themselves violent,' as a substitute of 'environments of violence,' and what we're doing to both contribute to that or dismantle that."

Ocasio-Cortez was simply one among a number of individuals who criticized the NYPD's tweet.

In a tweet, journalist Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg wrote that one of many arrestees was reportedly a 64-year-old girl who lives in a homeless shelter.

Eliza Orlins, a former candidate for Manhattan district lawyer, wrote, "The NYPD deleted this tweet, however the reality is that they proudly displayed having caught individuals who took diapers and cough medication. Primary. Requirements. This isn't public security. That is cruelty on show."

Shoplifting considerably elevated through the pandemic, The Washington Publish reported, citing interviews with over a dozen retailers, safety specialists and police departments nationwide.

On Wednesday, Adams unveiled a $98 million metropolis funds that might reduce 10,000 municipal staff and most metropolis company budgets by 3 p.c. The plan would additionally lower the NYPD's funds by practically $30 million, to about $5.41 billion.

Newsweek has reached out to the NYPD for remark.