Plunge in NYC summer shootings a good sign, mayor and police commissioner say
Gun violence in New York City plunged from June to August, according to the latest NYPD data, a positive sign after a year of increasing bloodshed, the mayor and police commissioner said Tuesday.
In August, shootings fell by 31% compared with the same month in 2020, department statistics showed. Most other major crimes — homicide, robbery, felonious assault and burglary — also decreased, which pushed the overall major crime index down by 5.4% for the month, according to the data.
"That is a really big step in the right direction," Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday at a news briefing with NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea and other law enforcement officials.
Despite such optimism, de Blasio and Shea reiterated that the state court system must be, as the mayor said, "fully" operational so trials and guilty pleas can act as deterrents to the small group of criminals responsible for the violence.
"We need to have a court system that is functioning from the beginning, right through the grand juries, right through to the end," Shea said. "That is going to be critical for moving forward."
After the pandemic hit in March 2020, the city saw a massive spike in shootings. By the end of 2020, gun violence had climbed nearly 100% over 2019, with just over 1,500 shootings and nearly 1,900 victims, levels not seen since about 2006.
At the start of 2021, shootings continued to rise at a rate of 86% over 2020. But just before the summer, the NYPD began deploying extra cops to certain shooting hot spots and initiated a concerted program of using "violence interrupters" to engage with gang members, as well as other community-based programs. Shea said those combined efforts helped push down the violence.
The police commmisioner noted that an increase of 250 shootings in the first few months of 2021 compared with the same period in 2020 is now down to just 37 more than last year. Shea said he expects more months of shooting decreases by year‘s end.
Overall, total felonies for the year are about the same as in 2020, still higher than 2019, which Shea and other police officials blamed on the impact of bail reform.
The Bronx continued to have a serious crime problem this year, with shootings up 36.4% over 2020, homicides up 40% over the same time period last year, and overall serious crime up 7%, according to police data.
In response, a state court system spokesperson said de Blasio and Shea were using "deceit" to describe ongoing gun violence.
"The de Blasio administration, in its continuing campaign to shift blame for their inability to blunt the surge in shootings, has now gone from gaslighting to outright deceit," said court spokesperson Lucian Chalfen.
Despite their awareness of a new firearm prosecution priority program in the courts that closed more than 150 open gun cases in three weeks, Chalfen said that City Hall’s statement implying the courts aren’t doing their part "is both the definition of the de Blasio administration and [of] mendacity."
Anthony M. DeStefano has been a reporter for Newsday since 1986 and covers law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs from its New York City offices.
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