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‘Criminal Anarchy’: Fox News Panel Reacts To Knifing Of New York Paramedic

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A panel on Fox News discussed the fatal stabbing of FDNY Emergency Medical Service Lieutenant Alison Russo-Elling Friday afternoon.

“It is incredible. And you know, the read you just did, you said outrage sweeping the nation, I wish that was true. I kind of feel that is wishful thinking,” Greg Gutfeld said.

Russo-Elling, a 24-year FDNY veteran who was six months away from retirement, was fatally stabbed in a random attack Thursday.

“People are numb,” co-host Dana Perino said.

“Yeah, we are just numb to it, but it used to be one of these outrageous, grisly crimes could completely reverse a downward spiral into criminal anarchy. It would only take one, an innocent being knifed in a subway. But now, there are two things happening, they are happening with such a mundane pattern and activity that we are not used to but also the media isn’t interested in it,” Gutfeld said, noting that other media outlets did not seem to cover the crimes, preferring “activism, racism and pronouns.”

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Gutfeld went on to discuss the issue of mental illness involved in some of the violent incidents.

“This is a story that should be nationwide. This woman survived 9/11 and if you can’t survive a trip to the bodega — and this is the other thing, the crazy person aspect of this is becoming this thing with every story and it’s almost like it says, there is nothing we can do, the person’s mentally ill or crazy,” Gutfeld said. “You have to put them away, put them away, but what gets me, this guy is schizophrenic. Great, that means he might have been unaware what he did is horrific. Then why did he run and hide? Clearly he isn’t that insane if he didn’t stand by his work. If he stood by his work and said what he did, that’s crazy but he actually knew he did something wrong. So I think we have to rethink everything, but I always feel like we do the stories, we are speaking to clouds.”

Co-host Jesse Walters also mentioned the mental health issue.

“I looked into the crime situation here now and you basically have two types of criminals, you have the traditional criminal that goes out and preys on people and then you have your dangerously mentally ill person and I found out that in 1950, we had a half a million people institutionalized. How many do we have now? Thirty-seven thousand. What the hell happened?” Watters asked.

“Now, you see people just running around swinging at people and stabbing people so the country has to look and say, the pendulum swung too far on the left and now we have to get it to a place where the compassionate response is to institutionalize people,” Watters concluded.