Police Commissioner Bill Bratton ripped into Chris Christie for questioning New York City’s crime statistics, saying the New Jersey governor “made a bit of a fool of himself,” warning him: “stay within your own neighborhood.”
“When you live in a glass house with a lot of broken windows, I wouldn’t be throwing stones and I think the governor basically unfortunately made a bit of a fool himself,’’ Bratton said on “Inside City Hall.”
“This is the safest large city in America, one of the safest in the world,’’ said Bratton, responding to Christie who questioned the city’s low crime numbers in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday.
“When he gets Trenton, when he gets Newark, when he gets Camden to be anywhere near as safe as New York city, then he might be able to criticize us,’’ Bratton said.
“Stay within your own neighborhood. When you have issues inside your own neighborhood that need fixing, fix those before you start criticizing things that are going on in another neighborhood,’’ Bratton warned.
Asked by NY1 Political Anchor Errol Louis about the differences between New York and New Jersey, Bratton said: “One of the things that separates New Jersey and New York City is the Hudson river and our crime rates. Higher crime rates over there than we have here.”
“There's a little bit of a deflect going on, I think you have a little bit of a deflect going on,” Bratton said.
“I think there's a little scandal going on over there in New Jersey today, that I think he's looking to deflect attention from. 'Bridgegate' has reared its ugly head with the United Airlines scandal, so once again...so, maybe the governor’s attempting to deflect attention away from that issue, but let's get real. “