12 more shootings
47 since nix of NYPD anti-crime unit
A night of more than a dozen shootings left one man dead and at least 18 others hurt across the city Saturday — carnage that prompted some weary cops to concede the Big Apple is becoming a war zone.
The four-borough, Fridaynight-into-Saturday shooting spree ended a week of bloody mayhem that NYPD sources are blaming on anti-cop fervor and policy pushes hitting a fever pitch in the wake of George Floyd protests.
In the five days since the NYPD disbanded its plainclothes anti-crime unit Monday, there have been at least 47 shootings citywide.
By comparison, last year, there were only 12 shootings during all seven days of the same week.
In stunning audio obtained by The Post from the height of the gunplay in southeast Queens Friday night, cops noted the Wild West lawlessness after a woman called the NYPD seeking an escort home.
“Female [inaudible] feels uncomfortable walking home, states that she is walking home, and it’s a war zone,” one officer says.
“Combination of fireworks and gunshots,” he adds on the recording, which was verified as authentic by a law-enforcement official.
“Welcome to New York,” a second officer quips in response.
“Tell me about it,” the first cop agrees. “[She] heard four to five rounds.”
The mayhem touched every borough except Staten Island, beginning at around 9 p.m. Friday in Morrisania, The Bronx, when a bullet went through an apartment window, striking a refrigerator door of the 28-yearold woman who lives there, police sources said.
Most of the victims were innocent bystanders to shootings by groups of young people, the sources said.
In Brooklyn, Kenneth Singleton, 35, was kneeling as he washed his car, his back to the sidewalk, when a man walked up and killed him with a shot in the neck.
Horrifying video shows Singleton crumple to the ground, and the shooter stalking off.
About two hours later in Brooklyn, police found Leyshaun Morris, 29, with a gunshot wound outside of 203 Montauk Ave. in East New York, according to police sources.
He told responding officers he was watching fireworks when he felt a sharp pain in his calf and noticed he’d been shot.
A 28-year-old man told police he heard bullets at the Queensbridge Houses at around 5 a.m., then felt pain in his leg, police said. He was taken to Cornell Hospital in stable condition.
At around 1:40 a.m., near Academy Street and Nagle Avenue in Inwood, a woman told responding officers she was sitting in a vehicle with her friends when she heard gunfire and felt a pain to the right side of her torso, where she discovered a bullet wound, police said.
The push to defund the police is contributing to the spike, sources said.
“They’ve handcuffed the police officers,” one source told The Post. “Cops are not going to risk their job and put themselves out on the line and possibly get arrested.