One tide is turning
There’s still more than enough gunfire and bloodshed in the five boroughs to fill daily headlines and the evening news, and overall crime continues to increase, but there’s some very good news in police statistics that deserves notice: Shootings and homicides are down 7% and 11% respectively from this period last year. Over the most recent four-week period, there’ve been 43% fewer shooting incidents and 27% fewer murders compared to the equivalent period last year. Those are big drops that, if continued, will mean many lives saved.
The bending trendlines strongly suggest that Mayor Adams’ violence reduction strategy of choice — the deployment of new Neighborhood Safety Teams with a focus on confiscating illegal guns — is making a difference. The units started in mid-March, so it’s no coincidence that April and May saw sharp declines in gun crimes. Aided by the new patrols, cops have confiscated an average of 20 guns a day in 2022 and made more than 1,693 arrests on gun possession charges, a pace well ahead of previous years.
While it’s surely disheartening that a steady supply of illegal weapons from out of state keeps filling up what Adams calls a stream that feeds the river of violence, cops are doing their part to drain it.
We are all for investing intelligently in social services, from education to mental health care to anti-addiction and harm reduction centers, as well as scaling up successful violence interruption programs to try to stop cycles of retaliation and otherwise redirect bad behavior before it becomes criminal — but those programs didn’t get illegal firearms off the streets, where they were bound to maim and kill. Policing did.
Will progressive critics of Adams, including members of the City Council who are opposing his investments in the NYPD as budget negotiations continue, acknowledge this apparent success, or are they too busy polishing talking points about how the neighborhoods with the least material needs and the most support services are invariably the safest, as though focused, proactive policing can accomplish nothing?