Adams bodega panic buttons are make-believe politics and could be just the start

Remember when New York believed in the “Broken Windows” theory — the idea that addressing minor crimes could prevent major ones?Or when stop-and-frisk was the NYPD’s (controversial) tool of choice for proactive enforcement?Well, those were the good old days — when the city at least pretended to believe in preventing crime.Now, under Mayor Eric Adams, we’ve entered a bold new era: that of the Panic Button Doctrine.Why stop crime before it happens when you can just install a $3,200 plastic button to press after it starts?Yes, the city will spend $1.6 million to place panic buttons in 500 bodegas — a plan so reactive, so symbolic, so perfectly on-brand for modern New York governance, it makes President Trump’s Oval Office Diet Coke button look like real infrastructure.“Instead of just having the cats keeping away the rats, we’re going to have a direct connection with the police to keep away those dangerous cats that try to rob our stores,” Adams explained, proudly turning crime prevention into a confused feline metaphor.Nothing inspires confidence like a mayor comparing armed robbery to a Tom & Jerry rerun.These state-of-the-art buttons will connect directly to the NYPD’s command center, bypassing those pesky 911 operators who waste your time with trivial questions like “what’s your emergency?” and “what’s your location?”Now you can just hit the button and hope for the best.But wait — in a stroke of tactical brilliance, the city won’t reveal which bodegas have buttons.Why? To create “the element of surprise,” Adams says.Because criminals, as we all know, always check the Official Panic Button Registry before robbing a store.“Hold up, let me Google whether this deli is buttoned-up before I commit this felony.”But what if the Adams Panic Button isn’t just a floundering mayor’s desperate policy? What if it sparks a movement that spurs the rest of New York’s political class to get in on the button bonanza?Imagine if...