Mr. New York, Mark Simone of WOR, on Crime in the Big Apple

BUCK: With me here in studio in New York City, Mr. New York, Mark Simone of 710 WOR, our fantastic New York City affiliate. Mark, thanks for coming to hang out with us. Appreciate it.

SIMONE: Hey, big honor for me. I listen every day. To actually be sitting here in the studio with you.

BUCK: We are honored to have the best guy coming before us in all radio in New York. So, thank you so much for that. Appreciate it. “Lead in” was the term I was looking for.

SIMONE: Oh, that’s great. When’s he coming?

BUCK: (laughing) So, look, there’s a fair amount of national attention right now in this case that we were talking about I guess last week the first time it came up, Jose Alba. Clay and I have mentioned — just to remind everybody — this guy was working in his bodega, he was attacked by somebody over a bag of potato chips, didn’t to want pay for the bag of potato chips. He was assaulted twice, ended up stabbing the guy, who then died. Jose Alba, 62 years old, charged with murder. We know the bail has been given. But the case is still ongoing. What do you think’s happening here, Mark?

SIMONE: Oh, this is very bad. He’s a pillar of the community. Everybody said he was a wonderful guy, always to everybody. If you didn’t have any money, sometimes he’d let it go for a while. He can’t sell the potato chips because the woman’s debit card isn’t working. She said, “I’m gonna go get my boyfriend!” Well, I assume that meant he’ll come in and pay. He comes in, shoves this guy against a wall, starts hitting him.

It’s a vicious, big, strong, tough guy. He’s been in prison. The last time was for assaulting a cop. Jose Alba had a box cutter there. It wasn’t a knife. It was a box cutter. And that’s what you do in a bodega, you open boxes all day. So he somehow got a hold of it and ended up killing this guy. The police arrest him, take him away to prison. They don’t treat his wounds. They get all infected. He’s still on antibiotics trying to get over those wounds. The woman pulled out her knife out of her purse, started stabbing him.

BUCK: The girlfriend of the guy who assaulted him, right?

SIMONE: Yeah, the girlfriend stabbing him, put a bunch of wounds all over him. She’s never been arrested, not even charged with anything. Alba was not only arrested but they didn’t charge him with manslaughter, accidental death. It was murder. They went right for murder. Horrible.

CLAY: Mark, you’ve been in New York a long time. We talked some with Buck about this too. Over the years you have seen the streets be unsafe, move to safe, and now increasingly moving to unsafe again. And that seems to be a general proposition shared by white, black, Asian, Hispanic New Yorkers everywhere. What are you hearing from people about the demand for police to be able to do their job again and essentially a repudiation of the BLM, defund the police movement? How widespread are you seeing and hearing it in New York City right now?

SIMONE: Very widespread. And this is different from before. Before it was sometimes telling the police, “Let this go. Let this crime go. Don’t go after the minor crimes.” This is something altogether different. This is… It started with no bail. They have this… New York State passed this no bail. So, criminals are all released immediately. Then this new DA comes in in January, writes a memo the first day, “No jail! Even when convicted, we will not seek jail sentences for anybody.” Got no bail, no jail.

Now with this case, this is another new level: No self-defense. You can’t even argue self-defense. If you talk to the real police experts, it’s about 2,500 criminals in New York committing these crimes, and they know who they are. They could round them up in a week and put ’em jail. But you got this crazy district attorney who doesn’t believe in putting anybody in jail. That’s why this guy that did this thing in the bodega, he’d been arrested 27 times, and he’s still out walking around, not put in jail. And the real villain here is the governor of New York. District attorney in New York is actually a state job. He works for her.

BUCK: Kathy Hochul —

SIMONE: Kathy Hochul.

BUCK: — who is one of the dumbest people in politics we say here.

SIMONE: I don’t know about “one of.” (laughing)

BUCK: She’s number one? That is bold. That’s bold.

SIMONE: She will not fire this guy, and even if you’re not gonna fire the guy, she’s his boss. She should have called him the night of this incident and said, “Drop the charges, let it go or I will have to remove you.” She has just been awful on this. And blame Joe Biden. This is going on in 26 cities with these lunatic district attorneys. He’s the head of the Democratic Party. He should call them all to Washington in one big room and say, “You guys can’t do this. You’re killing us.”

BUCK: I think this is so important. What Mark’s saying, Clay, about how it’s in the 26 cities, you go down a list of major American cities who have a true progressive, Soros-backed financial — not just ideologically — prosecutor. New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, although not anymore, Los Angeles, though maybe not anymore there, either, you go down a list of major city, the same thing playing out everywhere.

This became fashionable in criminal justice circles as the left took over. We’re speaking to Mark Simone. He’s on at 10 a.m. to noon Eastern Time on WOR NYC. Congrats, by the way, on being number one. We always talk about the cities we’re number one. He is number one across all formats in New York City in his time slot, Mark. Clay and I also often discuss the draft, so to speak.

If we had to pick somebody from the Biden administration, particularly on economic issues, who would it be? ‘Cause we’re willing to concede that while maybe disagreeing with the policy, disagreeing with the decision-making of the last Democrat administration, the Obama administration, there were some smart people. They brought in Rattner, who’s a smart guy from private equity world to be the auto czar.

SIMONE: Yeah!

BUCK: He’s a smart guy. I’m not sure I agree with what he was doing, but he’s smart guy. Who did you pick? You’ve actually done some looking into who’s making the economic decisions. Not Joe Biden, really. The advisors around him. These are not people you would want running your hot dog stand, never mind running the economy of the United States.

SIMONE: No, the great economist Steve Moore just published a study today. They looked at all the people involved in economic decisions in the Biden administration, about 60 people, to see how much business experience there. The number is zero. No business experience of any kind. Which means when you start doing these stupid regulations, you have no clue as to what it would do to a business or what it would cost a business or what it ends up costing the customer. So the biggest fan of Joe Biden is Jimmy Carter. He is so grateful to Joe Biden for now becoming “the worst president ever” and getting that nickname away from Jimmy Carter.

CLAY: Mark, there are many people fleeing high tax areas — New York City, L.A., Chicago — moving to Texas, moving to Florida, moving to Tennessee where I live. Have you ever seen anything like the high-end abandonment of New York City that is going on right now? And do you think Eric Adams, the relatively still new mayor, is going to have any success at all persuading people to either come back or delay their decision to potentially depart?

SIMONE: I don’t know. First, you’ve got a lot of people leaving. Maybe we’ve seen that before, but the dangerous thing is you’ve got businesses leaving. You know, there’s an old thing about poverty causes crime. You have to remember, it’s the other way around: Crime causes poverty. The businesses start leaving. Look at Los Angeles. Starbucks has to close some stores because it’s too dangerous.

7-Eleven is now saying they may close every Los Angeles location. Businesses leave, corporations leave, people leave, then you end up with ruined neighborhoods and crime just flourishes even more. We’ve never seen anything like this in New York. There’s actually a shortage of moving vans. It’s a big problem in New York. I’m not kidding. It’s not a joke. You can’t get a moving van. There’s like a three-month wait now.

BUCK: So Mayor Adams for my comes in to office here with a lot of support and fanfare around him from the media, they say he’s “police captain” is what I often hear about,” which is not really, you know, sort of had a role in law enforcement —

SIMONE: Ehhh, well…

BUCK: But they say, “He’s gonna come in; he’s gonna clean things up.” How’s it going in America’s biggest city so far?

SIMONE: He’s taking the Pete Buttigieg approach, which is if you got a problem, go there, take some pictures, make a speech, and then you’re done. That’s what Pete Buttigieg does. “Supply chain crisis? Picture me at the docks. I’ll make a speech. Airport crisis? I’ll take a picture of the airport. That’s it.” Adams is not doing what you gotta do, which is what they all gotta do, what Trump would do. Get everybody in a room and start screaming. Have it out with everybody in a big, huge conference room. And they don’t do that. Same thing with Hochul. She should be at One Police Plaza or at the DA’s office arguing about this stuff.

CLAY: Mark, thank you for coming in studio with us, man. Congrats okay number one in New York City. We’ve gotta advance on the rank. We appreciate you being our lead-in. We gotta keep everybody in New York listening. I know you’re killing it in that role and you’ve been awesome here, man. Thanks for all the work you’re doing.

SIMONE: Well, you guys are killing it. Congratulations on one big successful year.

CLAY: It’s been a lot of fun, and hopefully we’re starting to make some difference out there, and I know you have been making a difference in New York City for a long time. Check out Mark Simone as well. Can find his show clearly all over the New York City area.