![](https://www.westsiderag.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Citibank-170-w-72-scaled-e1609268903443.jpg)
By Joy Bergmann
At around 10:00 a.m. Tuesday, a man entered the Citibank at 170 West 72nd Street near Broadway and demanded money from a teller, an NYPD spokesperson told WSR. Around $500 was taken in the incident, and the robber reportedly fled eastbound on 72nd toward Columbus Avenue. The NYPD was unable to confirm whether or not the perpetrator displayed any weapon.
NYPD described the suspect as a white male, approximately 25 years old with a medium build wearing blue sweatpants and a navy blue hoodie.
Do our elected officials have a plan to fix what’s going on in NYC? Asking for 8 million friends…,
The Wells Fargo on B’way and 71st was also robbed this morning. 🙁
Defund the police right???????
Take it from a former cop neighbors stay alert folks.Thanks Cuomo,DeBozio and P.C. Shea for throwing us all to the wolves.
The police should not be defunded.
The police budget should, however, be cut by 20%. It is like just about every department of city government, It is full of waste and inefficiencies,
The city is broke. The union contract needs to be renegotiated as there are too many giveaways. Police who torn off body cams should be dismissed. Verbal abuse of citizens should be severely punished.
As to the bank robbery it is a small incident. It happens.
Defund really means REFORM the police and maybe use other professionals to deal with family type disputes e.g. social workers.
I assume the bank has cameras.
Defund the police means exactly what it says.
Defund means stop funding.
Stop funding the police means the police department has no budget.
Having no budget means there’s no police.
Stop playing with words.
It means what it means and it started with the left – not the right.,
Got it?
No, I for one did not get it. Is there a more truthful way for you to explain it?
I refuse to believe that you actually think that’s what people mean when they say this. It makes a nice right-wing talking point, I suppose — the Republican Party has long operated at a bumper sticker level, and this fits that. But few people who say “defund the police” mean “we should not have police.”
They mean instead that we defunded schools, social workers, and mental health resources in favor of a model where the police were forced to solve every problem and cure every ill… and we should change that. Defund the police simply says that teachers should be able to get a box of chalk as easily as police officers can get military equipment, and that police officers should be free to solve crimes rather than be forced to try to solve mental illness or poverty or drug addiction. The bumper stickers are doing a great job of scaring you into thinking it’s a call for anarchy, but it’s not. It’s a call for sanity.
Why don’t you start defunding with Thrive NYC. When you get rid of wasted programs like these and you still need funds, then look at DHS and the hotel program. You can get to the police after you first trim the waste at almost every other city program first. As well intentioned as any may be, none are run responsibly. Did I mention NYCHA???
This reads like a bogus post by a right winger posing as a left winger. DEFUND is an unfortunate word and the Police are a necessary and important part of any democracy. What we need is to redefine the scope and role of the police dept versus other professions, demilitarize their operations, increase sensitivity/service training and not allow them to police themselves.
Defund doesn’t mean $0 funding. It means less funding with dollars going to other programs that may be more effective at preventing crime such as drug rehab, extracurricular school programs or other community oriented services. Doesn’t have to be black and white, there is definitely enough room in the middle to agree on the issues. Most people on the left support the police and understand it’s a very hard / dangerous job. Most people on the right understand that lower income communities would see a benefit to increased social services. There are obviously those on the fringes, but they don’t represent the majority, they just get the most airtime because it’s good for media ratings and helps to stand out in crowded political fields.
Thank Cuomo for bail reform.
I disagree on Shea. He is frequently on NY1 and as diplomatically as possible he expresses his anger at the fact that the mayor is making it impossible for the police force to do their jobs. In trying to be the anti-Bloomberg, deBozo has completely neutered our police department.
I would be thrilled to occasionally be stop-and-frisked (admittedly in a less aggressive way than was being done under Bloomberg) if it meant that the death spiral of this city would stop.
Yes, Jimbo, thank you!
Truly, most people who are guided by reason most definitely see a crystal clear connection between an idiotic slogan like “Defund the police,” which was picked up and widely disseminated by right wing media, and a bank robbery which netted $500. I mean, the logic is unassailable, right? For only a fool or a deeply ignorant man or woman would posit that there just may have been some other cause. And, believe me, they need help!
Oh, well, it’s okay then. The bank is insured, no one got hurt, and the guy got the $500 he needed. Win/win, I say. Let’s revise our attitude toward these “crimes,” and reclassify them as “forceful redistributions” — a kind of advance against just compensation for our neediest.
And if banks must therefore close their doors, it’s a big leap forward in the struggle to free the nonworking class from chains of poverty imposeed by a cutthroat system that rewards greed over compassion, cruelty over kindness and cupidity over charity.
“…and I am Marie of Romania.”
The only way we will be able to rebuild this neighborhood is everyone speaks up. The primaries coming up are crucial for the next steps and is only open to registered Democrats. Make yourself heard and eligible to vote by changing your party registration before February 14.
https://voterreg.dmv.ny.gov/MotorVoter/?_ga=2.112805060.1363169646.1609087351-646122680.1608522934
I’ve not been able to ascertain the source of the slogan “defund the police”. Could it be this was placed into consciousness and given power by the right wing. They would have understood its enormous negative impact upon more liberal leaning voters.
“Defunding police means defunding police. It does not mean budget tricks or funny math. It does not mean moving school police officers from the NYPD budget to the Department of Education’s budget so that the exact same police remain in schools. It does not mean counting overtime cuts as cuts, even as NYPD ignores every attempt by City Council to curb overtime spending and overspends on overtime anyways. It does not mean hiring more police officers while cutting more than $800M from NYC schools. If these reports are accurate, then these proposed ‘cuts’ to NYPD’s budget are a disingenuous illusion. This is not a victory. The fight to defund policing continues.” – AOC June 2020
$500 in 2020?!!!
Bonnie & Clyde would kick this guy out of the Bank Robber Union.
Then again, they got shot (about 100 times) for their efforts.
This guy will probably go free, no bail if ever caught.
Thank you 50 IQ twins Blaso & Cumo
.
The $500 wasn’t from the bank. A PERSON was robbed at the bank. That could have been any of you folks arguing for or against “Defund The Police”.
There is an element of unstable and unsavory people in the neighborhood. There is a woman who lives in front of that bank who I bought $20 of groceries at the bodega one night and was yelling F you at me the next day. (I don’t blame her.)
Just be wary and be safe friends.
The story says “demanded money from a teller”. I don’t know where you got your information from that an individual customer was robbed but it certainly wasn’t from this story.
Did anyone else read this and think, “$500 — that’s it??” It seems even the big banks are hurting for cash these days.
I heard that the robber asked the teller to Venmo him more cash than she had on hand but she had no cell reception.
Yes, definitely the fault of the politicians.
This is my bank. All of the tellers are behind an [allegedly] bulletproof barrier. If a robber tried to fit a gun barrel through the four-inch slot where the delivery of cash takes place, the teller need only run out of the very limited range or duck under the counter. And what about the emergency button at each teller station? Perhaps this is a bank procedure so the robber will run off with some cash and not endanger the customers.
ok so they described the subject…
but with the amount of cameras in there, and outside, and on the streets…
why not release his picture? sheesh
I don’t think it’s an accident this bank was targeted. The corner it’s on is a garbage mess. There’s a mentally ill woman living under scaffolding right beside branch. She sits in the middle of the sidewalk surrounded by trash. Instead of keeping their sidewalk clean, the absentee landlord posted a sign saying “no littering”. Ha ha. It’s obvious there are no consequences to breaking the law, so of course a robber would target that branch. Yes I am a fan of the “broken windows” theory of public safety and this incident is exactly what happens when you ignore standards of decency in public spaces.
Where are the police these days? I walk 20 blocks to work every morning and rarely see any police presence (other than traffic cops). Highly disturbing.
Haha ! Hope everyone knows banks today only hold $500 cash at the most at one time in their drawer and if you need more cash they have to go to the main drawer which is locked inside away from the public eye. No one bank teller carries more than $500 cash in their drawer anymore. Everything is done by transfer of account numbers… You can’t rob a bank anymore. The party’s over!!!! LOL!
That doesn’t seem accurate. I withdrew $1,800 in cash at Citibank in early December and the teller gave it to me without leaving her window.
I don’t think it’s an accident this bank was targeted. The corner it’s on is a garbage mess. There’s a mentally ill woman living under scaffolding right beside the branch. She sits in the middle of the sidewalk surrounded by trash. Instead of keeping their sidewalk clean, the absentee landlord posted a sign saying “no littering”. Ha ha. It’s obvious there are no consequences to breaking the law, so of course a robber would target that branch. Yes I am a fan of the “broken windows” theory of public safety and this incident is exactly what happens when you ignore standards of decency in public spaces.
It is all de Blasio mess. He ruined the city from every aspect and on the way neglected our safety and security, which are the basic fundamental rights as residents. He deteriorated the city into a $9 billion deficit wasting our tax payers money on pet meaningless projects to nowhere on the account of our safety. But I guess that what one could expect from someone who has been a politician and did hold a real job. Can we pls have Bloomberg back so he can return the city into its glory days.