HIZZONER IS FIRING BLANKS
Long on outrage but short on fixes as gunplay soars
Mayor de Blasio again decried New York’s out-of-control gun violence without offering any concrete solutions during a Tuesday briefing that included no police officials — on the heels of a day that saw 18 people shot citywide.
“This is something that very, very sadly we’ve seen in the past and we’ve had to fight back before and we will fight back again,” de Blasio told reporters.
“We do that by bringing police and community together in a common cause,” he continued, urging communities to “occupy the corners” of their neighborhoods.
Increasingly, those corners are cordoned off by police tape and dotted with evidence markers.
Eighteen people were wounded or killed by gunfire in 14 incidents across all five boroughs on Monday, a total that one police source said would be “high” for a Friday or Saturday — but was downright “astronomical” for a weekday.
As of 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, at least 120 shooting incidents had been tallied through the first 13 days of July — more than three times the 37 counted during the same period last year, sources said.
Indeed, there were 88 shooting incidents in all of July 2019.
Between 12:01 a.m. and 5 a.m. Tuesday, at least five more people were wounded in separate shootings across the city, sources said.
De Blasio on Tuesday swatted down questions about whether he’d fire NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea — and doubled down on the top cop’s decision to disband the department’s gunhunting anti-crime unit last month.
“He felt — and I agreed with him — that it was important to make a change in our strategy, to use the talents of our officers in new and better ways,” Hizzoner said. “I don’t know anyone who knows more about how to do that than Dermot Shea.” Nevertheless, NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan — the city’s top uniformed officer — on Tuesday linked the alarming surge in shootings to the elimination of the anticrime unit amid a nationwide wave of “defund the police” sentiment.
“The disbanding of anti-crime obviously has a huge effect,” Monahan told 1010 WINS radio. “Those are our best cops out on the street, grabbing guns. So there’s a feeling that it’s safe to carry a gun on the street — so we are looking for ways to change that mentality out on the street.”
The plainclothes anti-crime police were tasked with taking drugs and guns off the streets, but were also involved in recent years in a number of high-profile encounters, including the fatal arrest of Eric Garner and the friendly-fire death of Bronx cop Brian Mulkeen.
The effect of their absence seemed to be reflected in department statistics almost immediately.
Between June 15 — when the anti-crime cops were reassigned — and July 12, police collared 89 people on gun charges.
That represents less than twothirds of the 270 busted last year during the same period.
In the weeks prior to the unit’s disbandment, gun arrests had been on the rise, up by more than 11 percent for the month and 8 percent for the year.
In response, Monahan said the detectives bureau was bolstered by roughly 250 cops, who were reassigned from the now-defunct anti-crime unit, to help close the cases.
In addition, the department has added officers to its gun-suppression unit and moved units that had been on protest details back onto the streets, the chief said.
“We’ve asked them to get out on the streets, target the individuals that we know are part of these gangs that are doing the shootings,” Monahan said.
He also pointed to the general anti-cop sentiment in the air since the protests over the May 25 death of George Floyd, a black man, at the hands of a white Minneapolis cop.
“There is a feeling on the street
that the police are handcuffed, that they are not out there as aggressively as we were in the past,” Monahan said.
“The new law that was passed by the City Council has cops hesitant,” he continued, referring to legislation criminalizing cops’ use of chokeholds and other maneuvers that prevent air flow while making an arrest. “They are fearful that they may be arrested if they take some pro-active-type enforcement.”
Although de Blasio disputed the role of the anti-crime unit’s dissolution in the shooting spike, he did acknowledge the growing anti-cop sentiment.
“They’ve . . . experienced a lot of negative feelings directed at them,” the mayor said, referring to police.
“I wish more people who wanted reform would remember you’ve got to also remember the human beings who are doing the work and protecting us.”
De Blasio additionally tied the violence to the societal upheaval brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Every aspect of life has been dislocated,” he said. “C’mon, we’re not dealing with business as usual here.”
Hizzoner nevertheless expressed confidence that the city can get a handle on the gunplay, citing as evidence a “horrible spate of shootings” in NYCHA housing developments when he began his tenure as mayor.
“We threw everything we had at it,” he said. “We have to do it again.”