UNDER FIRE IN GOTHAM
Gunplay down this summer – but up for year
Summer in the city has been less bloody than experts predicted — but shootings for the year have surged past 2020’s tally, NYPD data show.
The number of shooting incidents from May 25 through Sept. 1 plunged 27 percent compared with the same period in 2020, from 723 to 529, the stats show. The number of shooting victims this summer also fell 27 percent from the same time last year, from 918 to 666.
For the year, however, shooting incidents were still up 5 percent — with 1,041 through Aug. 29, compared with last year’s 989 through that date. There were 1,246 shooting victims this year, a 2 percent uptick from 2020’s 1,217.
And this year’s 529 summer shootings are still a ghastly 81 percent higher than the 293 from 2019, NYPD data show. The 666 summer shooting victims represent an 86 percent surge from the 358 shot two years ago.
Among the most shocking recent shootings:
On June 27, a tourist was struck by a stray bullet while taking a Sunday-evening walk through Times Square with his family. Samuel Poulin, 21, a Marine, was with his wife, sister and brother-in-law outside the Marriott Marquis on West 45th Street and Broadway, when he was hit in the upper back by a ricochet just after 5:15 p.m., according to the sources and NYPD. A 16year-old boy surrendered to police in Manhattan a week later in connection to the shooting.
On May 8, a 4-year-old girl and two women were struck by gunfire about a block away from where Poulin was shot. Cops arrested Farrakhan Muhammad, 31, in Florida weeks later in connection to the shooting. Muhammad has denied responsibility.
The summer decline in gun violence didn’t impress Joseph Giacalone, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former NYPD sergeant.
“Anyone that says violence is down is being disingenuous,” he said. “New York City is going up against a near-record spike in shootings and homicides from 2020, and shootings are still up.
“It’s a bad harbinger of things to come,” he added. “There is nothing to celebrate here, just more hard work from the men and women in the NYPD to keep it under control.”
Giacalone believes “gang takedowns” have helped.
On July 1, more than a dozen reputed gangbangers wanted for a series of shootings were netted in a massive Brooklyn bust, with police officials calling them “as dangerous a group as they come.”
The 14 alleged members of the Babiiez street gang — a Flatbushbased subset of the Crip Gangstas — were slapped with charges including conspiracy to commit murder and weapons possession in an 81-count indictment.
Less than two weeks later, lawenforcement sources attributed three Bronx shootings — in which a 13-year-old boy and two other young men, ages 16 and 19, were killed — to a “major gang war” between ruthless crews in the borough who were unafraid of police.