Political commentator Bill O’Reilly said Monday night that New York City residents are “very uneasy” in light of the skyscraper shooting in Midtown, where four people were killed, including a New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer.
“But in New York City, the largest and most powerful city in the country, people are very uneasy. And the reason…is because the system has collapsed, the justice system,” O’Reilly said during his appearance on NewsNation’s “On Balance.”
The former Fox News host said that he often speaks to the city’s residents who tell him they are “100 percent” scared of going to work and taking the subway and concerned for the safety of their kids.
O’Reilly criticized New York Mayor Eric Adams, who is running for reelection as an independent, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), accusing them of “not trying to solve the problem.”
“And the legislature is insanely left-wing. So, once you have a culture of violence, which you do have in New York City, you have a culture of violence,” he told host Leiland Vittert. “Anything can happen at any time.”
The gunman, identified as Shane Tamura of Las Vegas, went into a high-rise building in Manhattan and allegedly opened fire, killing four people before taking his own life. Another person was injured in the shooting.
One of the four people killed was Didarul Islam, an NYPD officer who was with the department for over three years. Islam was an immigrant from Bangladesh who was married and had two kids, His wife is pregnant with their third kid, according to Adams.
“He was doing what he does best and all members of the police department carry out. He was saving lives,” the mayor said. “He was protecting New Yorkers.”
He also ordered flags in the city’s five boroughs to be flown at half-staff in honor of the victims.
Adams’s fellow mayoral candidates Zohran Mamdani (D), former Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who is also running as an independent — and Curtis Sliwa (R) responded to the shooting, calling the incident “heartbreaking.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), whose district includes parts of Brooklyn, also weighed in, condemning the shooting as “tragic and horrifying.”
