Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, the Democrat so hungry for power that she decided to run for two offices simultaneously, is facing renewed scrutiny for her city’s crime epidemic after two individuals paraded around town threatening to murder citizens during the week.
Under Cognetti’s leadership, Scranton had experienced an unprecedented crime wave. Through the first half of 2024, the city had experienced a greater number of murders than the entire previous year. When pressed by political opponents about her abysmal crime record, Cognetti dismissed her failures and instead blamed outlets for amplifying them, according to Fox News. She further downplayed the her city’s rise in violence, saying that crime was “relatively low” compared to other cities, many of which are also Democrat-run.
The newest incident comes directly from publicly available police reports, however. Officers were told that two men had confronted a victim, with one wielding a “large silver knife” and the other claiming to be armed with a firearm. According to the report, the victim was told by the pair that they intended to find “predators” to “murk.” While questioning the first victim, officers received a call about the pair from a woman who claimed that the pair held a knife to her throat and demanded to know who she was. Another victim at the same location reported having a firearm pointed at his head.
Police managed to find the duo and held them at gunpoint, at which the perpetrators fled. One of the deranged individuals attempted to hide the knife during his escape, but the weapon was recovered. Both individuals were taken into custody after a lengthy pursuit without further incident.
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Despite the dangers Cognetti’s police force faced from dangerous armed criminals bent on committing murder, statements from 2020 reveal that the mayor would prefer that her officers be disarmed.
"I do want to get to a point where we don't have to worry about any officers having holsters or guns in them. That is ideally where we get in our whole country," she said in an interview with the Black Scranton Project.
Instead of standing with the officers she would prefer to be without protection, Cognetti will instead be spending her time cozying-up to wealthy liberals at a fundraiser in Chicago instead of handling the crisis at home.
Cognetti is currently campaigning for a contentious congressional seat against Republican incumbent Rob Bresnahan. The race has garnered attention on the national scale, with the NRCC launching a website featuring Cognetti’s failures on crime.
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