Gunplay ‘really ‘scary’

Corey decries surge as a city ‘health emergency’

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson on Wednesday called the summer’s surge in gun violence a “public-health emergency.”

“This increase is stark and really scary for communities across New York City when you see a 1-year-old in Brooklyn getting shot and dying and a mother getting shot and dying,” Johnson said on WNYC radio, referring to the shooting death in July of little Davell Gardner during a cookout. “This is a public health emergency.”

The rise in gunplay has continued for 12 consecutive weeks in New York City. The Post reported that as of Monday there were 955 shootings with 1,174 victims so far this year compared to 510 shootings and 602 victims last year.

The council speaker stopped short of saying that a police slowdown was responsible for the surge in shootings.

“I don’t know if that’s the case.

I hope it’s not the case. I know the NYPD said it’s not the case,” said Johnson, who is running for mayor next year.

But he noted there has been a decrease in arrests and that relations between cops and citizens are “badly frayed” following police shootings of “unarmed black men.”

“We need to bring together community leaders and violence interrupters to fight this holistically,” he said. “We need to get the guns off the streets.”

Mayor de Blasio, meanwhile, said curbing the gun violence is a work in progress.

“The conversation over the last month or two has been about the need to have constant reform and improvement in the relationship between police and community and also the need to address the growing problem of shootings and gun violence,” the mayor said Wednesday at his daily coronavirus press briefing.

“I’ve heard from so many council members and so many community leaders that they are deeply, deeply concerned and they want to address both of these needs simultaneously.”

They said discussions center on tweaking a section of the law that makes it a crime for an officer to apply pressure to someone’s diaphragm. The police complained the law makes it more difficult for them to subdue suspected criminals.

“Chokeholds will be illegal no matter what,” de Blasio said.

Said Johnson, “There was language put in there related to the diaphragm that is subjective and not clear.”

Council Public Safety Committee chairman Donovan Richards (D-Queens) is trying to craft a compromise and the council’s minority caucus and criminaljustice advocates will have input, the speaker said.